Don’t tell me what to do

In cold outreach, whenever you use direct behavioral command words, they negate the outcome you want from the outreach.

"CHECK OUT" — that actually stops them from checking it out.

"LOOK AT" — that gets them to stop looking at your stuff.

"SCHEDULE" — that stops them from scheduling anything.

...Etc...only using 3 for the sake of simplicity here.

The reason being is the mind focuses on the word itself, not what the word commands them to do, so when you say check out, they don't check out your work, they think about the word check out, which in itself is an abstraction of an idea.

When outreach uses direct behavioral command words it instantly stops the flow of conversation and it makes it feel "salesy", you can feel something is off, but not quite sure what it is.

The stimulation of commands using words is very subtle and should be used indirectly.

So instead of "check out my portfolio and see how I can help".

It should be..."You know, when you ____ (e.g, need more conversions), then _____ so which will allow you to ____".

The key here "you'll want", they can only imagine what they want, and allow you to gives them permission for the outcome.

For the "look at", don't say look at my work...say "And you'll be able to notice how _____ and then once you do, then ____, and when that happens, you'll have _____".

For the schedule...instead of "schedule a call with me".

Instead, use: "When you're ready to discuss this, you can recognize that _____".

(Not “If” ❌️but “When✅️”)

See how I'm moving these intentions into their minds without making their minds obviously aware of what it is that's happening.

p.s. another way of looking at it is to wrap the command and nest it in a structure, so for example, when they "schedule", they "book time", so you say "you book time", obviously they have to "schedule" to book time. That's an easier way of looking at it so you can expand it into other ones.

p.p.s. Here's an example of "contact", what do they do when they contact? they reach out, so you say "once you reach out, you'll discover that ____", or "once you reach out".