Understand Your Buyer > How To Lose The Sale > Bad Automation
What is it?
Bad Automation occurs when your buyer is left feeling unimportant and like just another number in your spreadsheet of buyers and clients as a result of a failure in your automation.
Why does it work?
Automation is great. There are a LOT of cool things you can do to save time and energy.
BUT
When you use automation for interaction, you need to be EXTREMELY careful as it can be all too easy to make silly mistakes and talk to people without understanding the context of the conversation. Once someone realises they are in an automated exchange, it can be off-putting to the point of not just losing the sale, but getting a bad reputation too.
How can you use it?
If you want to make your buyers feel worthless and annoy them, then automate as much of your interaction with them as possible. If you want to do more damage you could even PRETEND that the automatic messages aren’t automatic, but being written by you in real time.
Hypothetical Example:
A software company sets up an automated email sequence to follow up with trial users. One user cancels their trial and immediately receives an email saying:
“We noticed you haven’t tried our premium features yet! Here’s why you should upgrade today.”
The user feels ignored and frustrated because the message doesn’t reflect their action (they already cancelled). Worse, the email pretends to be from a real person with a “handwritten” tone, which feels fake.
Instead, a better approach would be a simple, context-aware email:
“We saw you’ve decided not to continue your trial—thanks for trying us out! Was there anything missing or unclear that we could improve?”
Need help?
If you’re looking for help with automation, then I personally recommend the QUEEN of automation herself! Lisa Catto.
She’s even more organised than I am (!)
See also
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