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10 Sales Lessons You Shouldn’t Forget in 2016

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What did you do in 2015 to improve your sales emails?

Whether you crushed your sales goals and had awesome numbers in 2015, or made huge mistakes that left you a bit short, you need to learn from last years’ mistakes and wins if you want to improve and grow in 2016.

Either way, now is the time to reflect on last year’s lessons so that you make 2016 as successful as it can be.

Here are a few of our top blog posts about sales and cold email from 2015 that you can use to make sure you’re as prepared as possible to have big wins and avoid the same mistakes in 2016.

1. Hook Your Prospects With These Cold Email Introductions

Here are 3 different proven introduction strategies you can use to catch your prospects’ attention and inspire them to finish reading the rest of your email so you have a chance of getting them to respond.

2.  How You Can Avoid Having Your Emails Going to Spam

This post covers the fundamentals of email deliverability and why you should never send cold emails using Marketo, and how it can actually hurt you when sending outbound sales emails.

3. Maximize Your Cold Email Campaigns By Sending 8 Emails

If you are sending any less than 8 emails in your outbound campaign, you’re likely missing out on scheduling dozens of appointments with qualified leads. Here’s what you can do to make sure you don’t miss any of these leads.

4. These 3 Dangers Might Get Your Sales Email Deleted

Are you guilty of reaching out to your prospects with tired, uninspiring sales emails? Then you’re probably committing at least one of these three sales email mistakes. Read on to make sure you’re avoiding all of them.

5. Why Prospects Don’t Buy Your Wimpy Cold Emails

Cut the predictable cliches from your cold emails. Learn how to be persuasive and get to the point faster so you actually get responses from your leads. Otherwise people will probably laugh at you and you might just end up on our “cold email hall of shame.”

6. Avoid Losing Your Prospects by Avoiding These 4 Mistakes Zenefits Made

Even awesome unicorn companies like Zenefits can improve their cold email copy. See the mistakes they made to make sure your emails aren’t boring your prospects too.

7. 11 Things You Must Know to Succeed With Inside Sales

This post answers 11 of the most commonly asked questions about inside sales and cold email, including questions about cadence, email deliverability, and email copywriting best practices.

8. Don’t Let Vanity Ruin Your Cold Emails and Lose Prospects

Here’s why so many sales emails fail to connect with prospects and are only vain and obnoxious. Learn how to be more considerate of your potential customers so you don’t alienate them and make them send you to “the hall of shame” or mark you as spam.

9. Why Your Cold Emails Suck

Here are 3 mistakes I see almost every sales person making over and over again. Read it so you don’t make them too!

10. Why InsightSquared’s Emails Aren’t Very Insightful

Do you and your colleagues actually take the time to create thoughtful and unique responses to reach back out to your prospects, or do you just mindlessly send out canned garbage that belongs in the trash? Even InsightSquared’s cold emails could improve. Here’s how and why.

Cheers to the new year — happy cold emailing in 2016 ! ! !

5 Ways to Be A Better Salesperson and Human in 2016

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Douchebags usually suck at selling.

Contrary to the classic slimy used car salesman archetype, the best salespeople are usually thoughtful and have a lot of empathy.

We now have hundreds of awesome sales tools to help us automate most of the boring and tedious tasks we had to do before, but the salesperson’s job is still about managing conversations for building trust and human connections.

In order to win your prospective customers’ trust and close deals in 2016, you need to be thoughtful and consultative.  Aggressive brute force and cheap sales tactics won’t win deals anymore.

So whether you’re just getting into sales and looking to learn what you need to do to crush your quota, or already are a sales veteran that wants to up your game and close even more deals, here are 5 sales tips that can help you be more successful at sales and even life in 2016.

Sales Tip #1: Be Thoughtful and Considerate of Your Prospects

Whether it’s sales, friendship, or dating–you won’t get far if you think everything is all about YOU.

Think about your prospects: what do they care about, and what do they hate? (If you don’t know anything about them, start by doing some research to understand your buyer personas!)

Because our lives are all so busy, no one has any time or patience for vain and selfish sales pitches anymore.

This means all the activities in your sales funnel (cold calling, prospecting emails, giving demos, moving opportunities forward, etc) need to be centered on adding value to your prospects.

You can’t do this without having empathy for your prospects and understanding their needs.

empathy makes you better at sales

Sales Tip #2: Stay Focused – Less is More for Sales

In 2015 the average human attention span was 8.25 seconds.  In 2000 it was 12 seconds.

Focus is the key to persuasion. As our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, you have even fewer characters to catch someone’s attention and interest in a cold email or sales pitch.

Rambling on about a dozen different features does NOT work in a sales pitch or a cold email.

Your cold emails should be benefit driven, and they should focus on ONE benefit per cold email. (Here’s some extra help in case you don’t know the difference between benefits and features.)

Don’t try to cheat and cram in extra things. It doesn’t work, and it will decrease your response rate every time. I’ve split tested this hundreds of times, and the short and simple emails always outperform the longer and complicated ones in cold emails.

The same applies to sales demos and any kind of human interaction: rambling on only bores people to death and makes you look scatterbrained.

be a better salesperson--less is more

Sales Tip #3: Always Make Things Actionable

Have you ever walked out of a long business meeting thinking, “So what?!” wondering what the heck you spent all those hours talking about?

When things aren’t actionable, they make you feel like your time is being wasted.

This also applies to any kind of sales interaction or business communication.

If you want to keep things moving forward, you need to give clear and actionable instructions so the other person(s) know what the next step is.

Each of your action steps should move you and your prospect closer to your final goal.  Be proactive instead of reactive, and know exactly what you want your prospect to do throughout your pipeline before you even write a single cold email.

Specifically, when writing calls to action for sales prospecting emails, be sure to incentivize your Call to Action to entice your prospects to respond.

That will always increase your response rates and can also dramatically shorten your sales cycle.

strategy is the key to better sales

Sales Tip #4: Being A Little Weird Can Make You Unforgettable

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you see it), I don’t have to try very hard to be weird.

I grew up in a small town in rural America where my dad packed me “Bento Boxes” of fried octopus for lunch. Although I grew up in the US and not the Middle East, I still only know how to dance like a “Turkish FOB.”

Between all my weird quirks and experiences living in exotic places like Hong Kong or post-revolutionary Cairo, I always have something interesting and unusual to talk about, whether it’s in an email or in conversation.

Some of my best subject lines have been “kimchi and octopus,” or other strange lines like “11 chicken eggs” or just “eyeballs.”

You don’t need to be as weird as me to be interesting, but you should figure out what makes you unique and run with that. Everyone has something special about them, and that thing(s) makes them unforgettable.

Whether you’re an avid traveler, a big sports fan of a particular team, or your secret talent is making ice sculptures, just own it.

It makes you seem more real and authentic, which makes people connect with you faster.

This doesn’t mean that you should ramble on all about your hobbies in your cold email, especially when it’s not even slightly relevant to your prospect or your business. Just find a way to leverage what makes unique and weave it into your own personal brand somewhere.

One option is to work this into a quote or one liner in your signature.

My email signature is a play on my favorite Lao Tzu quote, and is written below:

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with one good cold email.”

Find what works with you and run with that. Then people won’t ever forget you again.

being weird can make you a better salesperson

Sales Tip #5: Never Give Up Easily And You Will Win In the End

Persistence and determination are the keys to being successful in sales and in life.

I have emailed certain individuals more than 13 times before finally getting a response from them.

I have followed up more than 16 times with an opportunity that gave me radio silence and went M.I.A. on a deal that I had mistakenly thought was already closed. It was a pain in the butt to stay on them, but eventually that client ended up being one of my biggest deals I ever closed.

On average you should send every prospect 8 emails before giving up. If you quit after only sending 4 emails, you’re probably losing out on about 34% of your potential leads or more.

However, persistence cannot be lazy or thoughtless either, though.

Just “following up” with your prospects over and over with the same repetitive message is inconsiderate and obnoxious.

Each time you follow up you must provide new value or ideas in your message.

Otherwise, people will get annoyed, which means they are much likely to mark your email as spam, which can hurt your email deliverability.

better salesperson in 2016

Happy cold emailing in 2016!

How to Use Cold Email to Get Inside Any Organization

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Would you like to send a cold email to any CEO or celebrity and get a warm response?

New relationships begin every day through cold contacts, whether through Twitter, Linkedin, cold calling, or cold emails.

No matter who you’re trying to get ahold of, the best cold emails start with thoughtful conversations that evoke emotions and deliver value to the recipients. On the other hand, lazy and self-focused bad cold emails get laughs instead of responses.

I’ve used cold email to get coffee with my favorite authors, land interviews with CEOs from top companies, and sell millions of dollars in software.

Here are some of my strategies that I’ve used, broken down into 25 actionable and entertaining slides:

For more tips on cold email, check out these posts and resources:

  1. How to conduct better prospecting research
  2. Top cold email mistakes to avoid
  3. 11 common questions about cold emails and inside sales

A Secret Every Great Salesperson Needs to Know

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sales secret

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Trish Bertuzzi, the President and Chief Strategist of The Bridge Group.  If you don’t already know her, Trish is a highly respected and incredibly knowledgeable inside sales expert with more than 30 years of experience as a salesperson, managing sales teams and consulting B2B companies on improving their sales strategies.  The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) has consistently named Trish one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professionals” for four years in a row.

In one of my most interesting sales interviews I’ve had so far, Trish and I discuss important inside sales challenges, and what sales executives can do to proactively resolve them. Topics discussed range from product market fit issues to what most companies miss when trying to attract women to join their sales force. Join our lively conversation and see how your company can tackle major sales snafus and share successful sales strategies with proven results.

Here’s what we covered in this interview:

  • 03:59  how to entice talented women to join your salesforce and avoid the turn-off mistakes so many companies are making
  • 05:41  if you’re relying on your technology to engage customers, here’s a major shift to your thinking that will increase sales
  • 06:40  the powerful sales benefit that resonates with prospects’ emotions much deeper than simply “faster and cheaper”
  • 13:10  the secret every great inside sales rep needs to know about successful sales conversations
  • 16:20  best practices for quickly training highly successful sales teams
  • 25:37  try this method instead of spamming your prospects with emails they won’t read
  • 32:59  hoping to break into the European market?  don’t ignore these considerations or you will fail at expanding into new markets

..and more! Listen to the rest of the interview to hear other advice for ramping up your sales team and optimizing your outbound email campaigns.

For more information on Inside Sales, check out these free resources from the Bridge Group.

Books mentioned in the interview:

-The Must-React System: User’s Guide to Prospecting C-Suite Executives by Kraig Kleeman

-Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com by Aaron Ross

-Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today’s Ever-Changing Sales World by Jill Konrath

Blog mentioned:  

-Inside Sales Experts

8 Actionable Tips for Killer Cold Email Campaigns

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close deals 3x faster

Not all the cold emails I receive go straight to my “bad cold emails” file. Some have just enough promise to make me take a second look.

You might have a killer benefit-focused message, but if your call to action is weak or you’re bombarding your prospects with excessive information, your cold emails will fail to make an impact.

My cold email critique this week focuses on how you can make minor tweaks in your messages to craft an amazing cold email that impresses your prospects.

If your emails are in decent shape, but could use some extra polishing, follow this advice. These DOs and DON’Ts  can help you transform your good cold emails into kick ass messages that pack a punch.

This email was sent to the Salesfolk team:

cold email tips

Cold Email Tip #1: Do engage your prospects with a thought provoking question.

What are some of the most significant problems facing enterprise sales teams?

If you want your cold emails to stand out from the all the other emails filling up your prospects’ inboxes, you need to find a way to make them notice you. Your prospects probably receive dozens of emails every day. The emails that grab the most attention are the ones that make them stop and think.

Your cold emails should be the start of a conversation with your prospects. Instead of throwing out a list of all your product’s features right off the bat, try warming them up with a thought provoking question.

Ask your prospects a question that is relevant to both your product and their business. Make them think about their business and the areas that can be improved. Once you can get them to recognize there’s a problem, it’s easier to offer your prospects a solution.

This question could be a little bit more thoughtful or specific, but it’s not a terrible start.

Cold Email Tip #2: Don’t bombard your prospects with too many questions or ideas

Are you facing similar problems? What’s your strategy now?

Asking too many questions can confuse your prospects and distract from your message.

Limit your cold email introductions to one or two sentences. Remember, the goal is to get your prospects to think about one specific idea, benefit or pain point. If you make them think too much, they’ll lose interest and stop reading.

Whether you use a question or not, your first sentence should be highly focused and conversational. Your aim is to solve your prospects’ problems, but you need to do one thing at a time to be effective.

Cold Email Tip #3: Show that you can add value to your prospects’ lives

Our leading research and technology takes these challenges head on, applying predictive and prescriptive analytics to the sales process and codifying industry best practices.

Your prospects probably aren’t responding to most of the cold emails they receive because they’re way too self-focused and feature-driven. They aren’t geeking out with you about all the bells and whistles your product has to offer.

Your prospects crave messages that speak to them and their unique needs. Show them that you understand them and the issues they face on a daily basis. Offer them benefit-focused messages that show your prospects how your product can improve their business and make their lives easier.

This sentence would be better if it explained more concretely how this company was able to benefit their clients, and it would be ideal if they could quantify the impact of these benefits.

Perhaps it would be more relatable and credible if it said something like:

“We helped Client X’s reps close deals 3x faster by comparing their sales process against industry best practices to spot inefficiencies that were holding back their sales cycles.”

When your prospects relate to your message, they’re more likely to take notice and respond.

Cold Email Tip #4: Don’t be vague about how your benefits

Our leading research and technology takes these challenges head on, applying predictive and prescriptive analytics  to the sales process and codifying industry best practices. As a result, your reps automatically focus on the prospects they are most likely to contact, qualify, and close.

Don’t just list the benefits of your product; add context to your messages so your prospects can clearly see how your product can help them.

While this example does highlight potential benefits to customers, it doesn’t connect with the bottom line benefit, which I assume, is optimizing sales cycles/processes to close more deals faster.

However, they do say that their “enterprise clients typically see double-digit gains in KPI’s, close rates, and top line revenue within about 90 days.”

That is a solid benefit, but they should focus on that idea more and build out that message to be the center of their “Social-Proof” sentence.

You need to make it dead simple for your prospects to understand your product’s biggest value to them if you want them to respond.

Cold Email Tip #5: Backup your claims with proof that your product actually works. 

Our enterprise clients (Microsoft, ADP, Groupon, Marketo) typically see double-digit gains in KPI’s, close rates, and top line revenue within about 90 days.

Doing business is full of risks for your prospects. Including supporting evidence like this not only helps to prove the effectiveness of your product, but also helps to ease your prospects’ doubts.

Social proof, like case studies and performance statistics, builds trust and credibility with your prospects and shows that you can back up your claims.

Name dropping a few satisfied clients like, “Microsoft, ADP, Groupon, Marketo,” offers your prospects the promise of future value. When your prospects can see that other companies have benefited from your product, it makes investing their time and money with you less risky.

Cold Email Tip #6: Don’t distract your prospects with articles, videos or external links.

Hear what our clients are saying, and find out why Salesforce.com refers to us as “the holy grail of what sales organizations have been looking for”. [article worth the read]  

Your prospects don’t have time to read through pages of information about your product.

The longer your message drones on, the more likely your prospects will get bored and give up on you. Keep your emails laser focused. The goal is only to get your prospects on the phone. You don’t need to educate them on every single feature and benefit your product has to offer just yet.

Adding external links or PDFs can be a fatal mistake. Any time you take your prospects away from your message, you risk losing them for good.

Don’t worry about giving your prospects all the facts at once. You can explain your product in greater detail once you’ve got them on the phone.

I’m not 100% against including any links whatsoever, but cold emails are not drip email marketing campaigns. You should not rely on prospects to click a link to be interested in your product; your copy must do that. Links are just a “cherry on top,” but alone are not enough substance to get someone to respond.  When I do include links in email campaigns, it’s usually in the “PS” of a later email, or in a breakup email.

Cold Email Tip #7: Do set a time limit to your phone conversations

If your interest or curiosity is piqued in the slightest, let’s have a 5 minute conversation within the next few days to see if our platform aligns with your role and priorities.

The thought of getting stuck on the phone listening to another boring long-winded sales pitch doesn’t excite anyone. You need to make the next step as easy and enticing as possible for your prospects.

It’s easier to get someone on the phone when they know you’re only going to only take 5-10 minutes of their time. This approach is less threatening than asking your prospects to commit to a demo or a phone call that might take up the entire afternoon.

Cold Email Tip #8: Don’t forget to reward & incentivize people for their time

How about later this week?

Believe it or not, your prospects aren’t jumping for joy to hear you talk about how wonderful your product is. They need to know that there’s something in it for them as well.

The problem with this call to action is that it doesn’t offer us anything in exchange our their time.

If you want to move your prospects to action, you need to incentivize your CTA. Offering a few actionable tips or a piece of valuable information suddenly makes a phone call with anyone’s time.

Be a goat, not a sheep!

We always strive to create captivating copy that is unique, actionable and adds value to prospects’ lives.

Want help with your cold emails? Request a call: