BAD NEWS: With over 269 Billion emails sent every day, there's a lot of fierce competition flooding your prospects' inboxes.
So how can you, the stealthy salesperson, craft a genius prospecting email that warrants a response?
Here are six ways to prepare your email message so that you get more responses and improve your sales results:
You are asking a busy prospect to commit time to you. It's crucial that salespeople take time to understand the needs of a category of business because relevance is necessary to improve your chances of gaining a commitment from the prospect.
Search engines, trade association websites or magazines, or any other business category news platform can deliver the key insights you need to justify the "why."
Give them the “why” by sharing the insight you find.
Once you have information that you believe your prospect would like to discuss, show them why it is beneficial for them to talk to you. Do you have experience with this information or related information?
Highlight it. Prove it if you can.
This is an excellent opportunity to provide a link to a success story, relevant capabilities videos, or a referral. Doing this will help build the prospect's confidence in you, justifying the time they use to respond or give to you following the initial communication.
Always include data. This is critical to back up your history and insights. Prospects don’t have time to seriously look at every organization that wishes to do business with them.
Data will take you a longer way in a shorter amount of time. What numbers do you have that prove how you have impacted revenue, eliminated expense, or saved productivity with your expertise? Numbers matter. Include Data.
Show your personality and have a sense of humor (if that's you). Making a customer smile is a trust builder and makes you stand out from the 150 boring emails they are committed to reading before and after yours.
If this does not fit your skillset, it’s okay to borrow some humor from someone else. Use a cartoon or GIF if it relates to your message.
Dedicate some of your prospecting time strictly to the quality of your messaging. Schedule a timeline of when you plan to contact your prospect via email, following up with phone calls. Contact them seven times in ten business days. Frequency is important. Don't give up.
On the seventh attempt, tell them this is the last time you are going to contact them. It’s the break-up email. Humor is very important here. This email has the highest response rate if you have been relevant all along.
With dedicated research and a strategic communications plan, salespeople can use the most popular form of business communication (email) in their prospecting efforts... SUCCESSFULLY!
Don't skip these steps that will help craft prospecting emails that actually get responses.
*Editor's Note: This blog was originally written in 2018 and has since been updated.