Data analysis of 97.9 million sales messages sent by email shows talking about ‘pain points’ has an adverse effect on leads – and might set your deals back rather than advance them to the next stage
Throughout my career in PR and marketing, I’ve always made an extra effort to be aligned with sales. There are several reasons for this.
First, sales alignment has been an issue for a very long time. It was a hot topic in the trade media when I first started my career and remains so today.
Second, as a young account executive working for an agency, I quickly realized that getting involved with the agency’s business development efforts was a way to stand out among peers. Along the way, I picked up important skills that have been invaluable over the years.
Finally, as a business owner, I spent a good part of 2024 prospecting on my own behalf. And as most folks in B2B tech will admit, if they are being honest, last year was tough for a myriad of reasons.
So, when I saw a report on a new study about the current state of sales prospecting by Sopro, I set aside time to take a look. The company paints itself as a “B2B sales engagement service” and used several sources to compile its report.
Specifically, Sopro says it surveyed “404 senior B2B decision makers” and analyzed “data from 97.9 million emails and 21.6 million multi-channel touchpoints.” It also surveyed people who perform sales outreach.
It’s filled with interesting statistics like the following:
- More decision-makers on buying teams. The average B2B prospect has 4.1 decision-makers on the decision team. That’s up from 3.5 a couple of years ago. Further, 20% have 6 or more decision makers, and 7% have 10. That’s a lot of people to convince! If you’ve ever spent time on a big company committee, then you know firsthand that gaining consensus is hard.
- Top sales challenges. Here are the biggest hurdles the sales team wrestled with last year: 65% said buyers have tighter budgets; 45% cited increased competition; 35% said buyers are taking longer to decide; 32% said prospects go silent without explanation; and 29% said buyers expect sales to do more work, such as offering a more personalized experience.
- Buyers prefer email by a long shot. Nearly three quarters (73%) of buyers surveyed told Sopro the way they prefer to hear from sellers is by email. The telephone was a distance second with 49% (which is surprising, because nobody picks up the phone anymore) and in-person events placed third with 38%.
Yet there was one section of the report that really stood out to me – and that was on content and messaging.
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How effective messaging impacts sales
This is the second where Sopro analyzed the messaging used in those 97.9 million emails. They analyzed the messaging on a thematic level to understand the effect those themes had on prospects.
Messaging tones and themes that had a positive impact on leads included the following:
- Prior contact – called, your colleague, referred, spoke, spoken (+50%);
- Assurance – approved, accredited, trusted, certified, verified (+20%); and
- Explaining – therefore, which means, to clarify, because, that means (+18).
No surprise there, but the next section started to turn my head a bit. For example:
- Social proof – attributes like awards, accreditation, reviews, trust, endorsements, testimonials – had just a +7% positive impact on leads.
I would have expected that to be much higher. There are many sound psychological studies that demonstrate that social proof is a very compelling aspect of persuasion. Yet my interpretation of the data presented here doesn’t really support that – or doesn’t support it to the extent I’d expect.
Moreover, if you look at the graphic nearby, you’ll see social proof is tied at 7% with self-centered messaging. All I can think of is that, well, maybe this stuff has been overused in marketing – and people are just generally skeptical of sales messages. After all, there’s an obvious conflict of interest in any sales message.
But there’s more – look at pain points. It has a negative impact on leads:
- Pain points – obstacle, issue, challenge, struggle, burden, pain point (-24%).
Identifying pain points is a classic go-to starter kit for sales messaging and sales enablement. Yet this report, which is based on an analysis of behavior in response to such messaging, says otherwise.
Now it’s important to realize this analysis is drawn from sales emails to prospective B2B buyers. While it’s focused on sales, this is the same group of people B2B marketing aims to reach. And it has me thinking about the impact of such messaging on marketing.
At a minimum, this warrants further investigation because if these findings are true, it effectively turns long-standing marketing beliefs about messaging on its head.
For its part, Sopros did offer one important caveat in the report:
“This isn’t about adding specific words to your emails—there are too many variables for us to say that one word will improve lead rates. Instead, these insights highlight themes to guide your messaging (or prompts) for more effective outreach.”
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The full report is well worth a read. It can be downloaded without registration here: The State of Prospecting 2025.
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Image via Google Gemni and the respective report
Source: The State of Prospecting 2025 by Sopro
