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Here’s What Happens When Carelessness Takes Over a Cold Email

January 30, 2018 By Matt Sanchez Leave a Comment

Here’s a glaringly obvious fact about cold sales emails: they are not hard to write. Running a marathon is hard. Performing open-heart surgery is hard. Taking the time to research a prospective client and send them an email full of useful details is not hard.

So including clues—intentionally or not—that tell a prospect they’re part of an arbitrary mass list makes you look lazy and untrustworthy, and won’t help your response rate.

This company clearly didn’t consider that when it wrote its latest cold sales emails:

Let’s take a look at what went wrong and how this company could fix their future messages.

1. The recipient has to do all the work.

The first strike here is that instead of providing an explanation about what an “explainer video production company” is, the sender merely references a previously sent email. Maybe that message included an explanation; maybe it didn’t. The point is, the sender wants the recipient to go to the trouble of searching for that initial email, which is more work than you should ever make a prospective customer do.

Why? Because referencing an old email doesn’t count as an explanation—you can’t assume that the recipient saw any of your previous messages. Each email should be unique, with wording and benefits the recipient will relate to. Messages that need to be decoded almost never entice people.

2. The sender openly admits to doing no research.

Never include a line like, “PS: I don’t know where you are, but I’m hoping that you are not affected by the hurricane.”

Not knowing someone’s location underscores the fact that you didn’t research your prospective customers and that this message is part of a mass list. In the case of this email, it’s also callous. The message basically says, “I would love to sell you something even if your life was just severely impacted by a natural disaster.” I probably wouldn’t respond to this message on principle, even if it applied to my business.

Instead, the sender should have checked their recipients’ locations and adjusted the message going to those impacted by the recent hurricanes.

3. The sender relies way too much on filler text.

The second email from this company is more of the same:

SalesFolk Hall of Shame 12-21-2

You only have limited time (seconds, actually) to capture a prospect’s attention, so making them work through empty questions like the opening one of this email won’t inspire prospects to read on. The subject line here is also empty of meaning. (Also, why is there a crown involved?)

Finally, the end of this email takes up almost as much space as the main message itself. Telling someone to “hit the reply button” is pointless, even as a pleasantry. Even “let me know what you think about it” falls flat as a call to action (CTA). A better route for this sender would be a simple ask like, “When do you have 15 minutes this week for me to talk to you more about this infographic?”

Finally, there’s that smiley face at the end. I realize a lot of folks believe it can set a pleasant tone for the end of the email. As a salesperson, you should never rely on emoticons to set the mood of your emails. Your time would be way better spent brushing up on basic copywriting skills.

Read any bad cold emails lately? Send them to [email protected] for consideration, and we might include them in our next Hall of Shame post.

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Filed Under: Hall of Shame Tagged With: bad cold emails, buyer persona research, call to action, cold emails

How to write unforgettable cold emails

May 6, 2015 By Kathie Jurek Leave a Comment

cold email storytelling

What was the first story you ever heard? For me, it was Sleepy Dog. As the title suggests, the book is about an exhausted puppy that doesn’t want to go to sleep and gets out of bed several times, probably making his parents wish they had never decided to have children.

“Sleepy sleepy up to bed. Sleepy sleepy sleepyhead.”

Two decades later, I still remember that book. The plot, the characters, the pictures, everything, down to the last word.

Studies show that today, people consume around 100,500 words per day, from text messages to emails, billboards to restaurant menus. That’s the equivalent of reading Wuthering Heights every single day.

Somewhere in that noise is your cold email.

Like Sleepy Dog, the best stories are like little brainworms– sticking around in our brains, occasionally coming to the front of our minds when something triggers it. Most cold emails are a soulless march through benefit after benefit, ending in a desperate plea for your prospect’s business.

Without an intriguing narrative, there’s no reason why your pitch will rise to the top. Want to turn your turn your cold emails into magical, brainworm-worthy narratives that won’t be quickly forgotten? Here’s three questions that will help you stick inside peoples’ minds.

Question #1) Why should the reader care?

Your prospects are reading a great American novel’s worth of words every day. As a result, the best way to get someone reading your cold email with interest (besides crafting a great subject line) is being able to relate to them.

The best way to accomplish this is by talking to people who fit your buyer persona. If that isn’t possible, a great second option is to search by job title on LinkedIn and read through a few profiles. See what skills they value and how they demonstrate their talent. The metrics they cite– number of deals closed, percentage of churn reduced– are good indicators of the things your prospect values.

Just telling a nice story about your product isn’t enough if it doesn’t address your buyer’s needs. A VP of sales doesn’t care about employee satisfaction metrics. But what he or she does care about is having an effective, insanely productive team. That’s the need your story should address.

Question #2) What’s your compelling story?

Every product’s features and benefits can be outlined in a way that resonates with your prospect’s biggest pains. By crafting them into a story, you can inject an element of reality that aren’t as visible in other types of emails. The most compelling stories draw the reader in and make them feel like they are the heroes, sent to save the day.

Here’s a few tips to help you get started:

  • Get your brainstorm on
Grab the closest dry erase board or blank piece of paper. Draw a circle for each benefit, spaced a few inches apart. Next, think about how each benefit might have a positive impact on a user’s life. For example, if the benefit is “reduce the amount of time it takes to screen applicants”, the impact might be “spend less time at the office and more time at the beach.” That’s a fantasy any HR manager can get behind.
  • Ask your customers
If you’re truly stumped, reach out to your best customers and ask them if you can interview them for a customer testimonial page or other marketing asset. Before the call, prepare a few good questions. Keep in mind that you’re trying to get your customer to talk about an experience they had with your product– this is your story! Good questions that will lead to great stories usually start with phrases like “Tell me about a time..” or “Give me an example of…”
  • Map out your cast of characters, setting and conflict
Once you have an idea of the story you’d like to tell, it’s time to lay out the basics. After you have this down, writing will be a breeze. CAST: Who is involved? Typically: you, your prospect, and a few examples of current clients. SETTING: When, where and why does your prospect need your product? CONFLICT: What’s the customer problem that your product can solve?

To help you along even more, here’s an example of an email that tells a great story about a fantasy football team:

SUBJECT: join {!Company}’s Fantasy Football sales team
Hi {!First},

Would you like to leverage the competitive spirit of fantasy football to give {!Company}’s sales team a new competitive edge? Applying the same mechanics of fantasy football, we helped [Client] 3x the average number of deals their sales reps closed over 6 months. When can we have a quick call to see if this same model could work for {!Company} or not?

Question #3. Why am I telling this story?

Just like knowing what your customer wants, it’s also important to keep in mind what YOU want. What are you trying to entice them into doing? How does your story lead them to the conclusion that they should get in touch with you?

The last line of your cold email story should entice them into turning the page by reaching out to you. If you’ve ever had someone spoil the conclusion to a book or movie before, you know how awful it feels. Once you know how the story ends, the magic is gone. It’s like skipping to the last page of the book and then having no motivation to go back and see how the characters got there.

The best types of stories reach conclusions that excite your prospects, not bore them. Just like not giving away the ending prematurely, you should keep your goal in mind as you write. Sometimes a story seems like a great idea until you realize that it’s missing a good call to action. When that happens, you don’t need to start over– just reread what you already have, revisit your notes and think about how you can naturally flow into a conclusion that fits with your company’s brand, product and marketing objectives.

Kathie Irwin is an L.A.-based copywriter and avid reader. 

For more tips on crafting killer cold-emails, register for Inside Sales’ online Web Conference on May 7 and watch Heather’s presentation on the “5 Secrets to Cold Email.”

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Filed Under: Persuasive Writing Tagged With: buyer persona research, how to write a sales email, sales content, sales storytelling

4 Ways to Research Your Sales Prospects Like A Journalist

April 30, 2015 By Heather 2 Comments

How well do you really know your sales prospects?

Do you know that they eat a poppy seed bagel with strawberry cream cheese and cinnamon at that cafe on 2nd and Market, or do you barely even know their first names?

You can’t craft a good cold email if you aren’t thoughtful. The first step to creating a single cold email or building a full-blown campaign is to deeply understand your audience.

Who are you sending cold emails to?

Personal trainers are very different than CEOs, and both are an entirely different creature than a VP of Marketing or Engineering.

Before you start writing any cold emails, you need a crystal clear understanding of who you’re writing to. Without this you’re hopeless.

Step 1: Be Curious About Your Sales Prospects

The best salespeople I know are genuinely curious individuals who are fascinated by their prospects and want to get to know everything about them and their pain points.

Before you start researching your prospects, you should have a few questions in mind. These questions will guide your investigation to make it more effective.

Ask yourself these questions about your audience or “buyer persona” before you start writing an email:

  1. What title/role am I contacting?
  2. What size company do they work for?
  3. What industry are they in? (Is there industry-specific jargon I should include?)
  4. What are their priorities at this time?
  5. What pain points do they have? What’s really keeping them up at night?
  6. How can you solve these pain points?
  7. What do they read? Who are experts they respect and follow? What do they talk about?

Step 2: Scour Your Sales Prospects’ Social Media

It’s great if you can actually talk to someone who fits the same buyer persona. This could be a friend, colleague, or one of your customers. However, if you don’t have access to these people and need to get started, a great approach is what I like to refer to as “e-stalking.”

Once you have decided what persona you’re reaching out to and what criteria define that persona, make a list of 5-10 people in each buyer persona that you want to contact.

Once you have a list of these people, research the heck out of them.

Go on Linkedin and learn everything you can about them.

For example, when I searched for Vice Presidents of Sales at Software companies with 200-2000 employees, I found some of these people:

sales prospecting

Let’s take a look at Doug Landis’ profile. He’s the VP of Sales Productivity at Box.

sales prospects

When doing prospecting research, you want to pay careful attention to your prospects’ “about section” to see how they describe themselves. In Doug’s case, he had a description about Box that was probably written by marketing, so that didn’t tell us a lot. So instead we can look at how he describes his past and present roles:

It’s not a big surprise given Doug’s role as “VP of Sales Productivity,” but Doug’s descriptions and recommendations are very sales driven, and focused on “strategy,” efficiency/productivity, and how he manages various programs. This gives us some clues about his duties at Box, as well as what he cares about and values.

Now let’s look at some of Doug’s skills:

sales prospects skills

Like the rest of your prospects, Doug’s skills are rich with keywords that tells us about his priorities and what technologies he regularly utilizes in his job. For Doug and other VP Sales at software companies, you’ll notice “Salesforce.com,” “CRM,” “SaaS,” “sales management,” and “leadership” all tend to appear.

These may seem obvious, but it’s important to make careful notes of the keywords on each person’s profile so you can start to see which keywords are repeated across 5-10 profiles to spot trends.

Let’s take a closer look at the recommendations Doug has received:

sales prospecting referrals

These recommendations both help you discover more keywords, and also give you a sense of the tone that is used in his industry, department and what KPIs matter to his career. You begin to see how “productivity” and managing programs are a theme for Doug. It’s important that we compare these to the other profiles though to see if Doug is an outlier with a unique experience, or if he has characteristics that are similar across our entire buyer persona.

After you finish 5-10 names of similar profiles you can see if there are any overlapping keywords that you should weave into your email campaign.

Next, hit twitter and google. Parse through their twitter feed to see what kinds of things they share, and pay attention for content type and recurring keywords. See if you can find any blogs they’ve created on Google, and check out their Google+ if they’re active on there. If they’ve spoken at a conference or other things, you can look at that too. The more you know about them, the better off you are.

Let’s analyze a few Twitter profiles from other VPs of Sales. I’ll look at Bridget Gleason from Yesware.

sales prospects twitter

Here’s what you’d find after searching just 5 minutes on Twitter:

  • Bridget recently attended the AA-ISP 15 conference
  • She seems to be focused on hiring, since she’s posted a number of articles about interview questions
  • Bridget highly values professional self-development based on the type of content she is consuming and sharing on Twitter
  • She is very data-driven: “Data almost always matches my intuition.” (April 21 tweet)

If you’re targeting a particular industry, research that industry a bit too. If you’re looking at salespeople, research things like “Top 10 sales influencers” or “Top 10 sales blogs.”

sales prospects research

Forums are also a great place to look. Once you decide which forums to look at, you should search them internally for specifics.  Quora, Reddit, and Linkedin Groups are great places to start looking.

Step 3: Take a Tour of Your Prospects’ Offices…Virtually

You need to understand your prospects’ environment if you’re going to grasp their mindset.

If I’m looking at software or technology companies, I typically start out by searching Crunchbase to see if they have any recent news or funding, but you also want to do a google search and visit their website. If their company has a blog, try to parse it for topics and tone, paying special attention to any blogs that are popular.

Learn to read like a writer. For every piece of content that’s being created and shared, you want to analyze the intention or goal behind it.

If someone posts an article called “5 Ways to Prospect Smarter,” their business is probably somehow related to sales or prospecting. After examining the company blog, product page, and price page (assuming they have them), try to determine what each company is trying to accomplish and who they’re selling to.

Then go a layer deeper and think about what their customers goals and pain points are, and how they’re trying to solve them with their product. This also helps you make sure this is indeed the correct audience/person for you to be reaching out to.

After you’ve gathered all this information and taken extensive notes, you’re ready to start thinking about how to create your cold emails. Skipping this step will make your cold email campaign a guaranteed flop.

Step 4: Make an Imaginary Friend & Write to 1 Person

This simple tip will make writing cold email campaigns so much easier.

Instead of trying to write an email that appeals to thousands, hundreds, or even just dozens of people, focus your message on a single person. Try to imagine everything you can about that person–from their morning routine to how they interact with their boss and their colleagues. The more you can imagine every detail of their life, the better the emails will be.

Do whatever you need to do in order to accomplish this—name them, print out a photo, draw a picture…whatever works for you.

Don’t worry about being too specific or narrow. The more you can feel you know this individual, the better your emails will be. It’s best not to think too much when you’re writing.

I always tell my friends and clients, “Write drunk, edit sober.”

Once you write the email, you can always go back and check your results against other names in your list to make sure what you wrote also works for them.

We have a great Buyer Persona Research Worksheet that you can use to build your own buyer personas based on the same internal methods our copywriters use when researching an email campaign. (All you have to do is create a free account on the SalesFolk Cold Email Crash Course, and you’ll be able to get that worksheet and preview other lessons in the course for free.)

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Filed Under: Sales Prospecting Tagged With: buyer persona research, growth hacking, inside sales, inside sales best practices, reverse engineer cold emails, social media research

Why Prospects Don’t Buy Your Wimpy Cold Emails

April 15, 2015 By Heather 2 Comments

wimpy cold emails 2

Are your prospects dazzled by your cold emails, or are they rolling their eyes every time they read one of your messages?

Who doesn’t desire simple, clean messages that get straight to the point. No one will take you or your product seriously if your messages waiver, nor if they are spiced with predictable cliches. Don’t forget that your prospects are unique individuals, not a just numbers in your mass email campaign. If you’re going to take the time to do cold email campaigns, you owe it to your prospects and yourself to create  highly personal emails that speak directly to your prospects’ individual needs.

So if your prospects are too busy laughing out loud at your cold emails to respond, here are a few reasons why your wimpy language is turning them off:

Wimpy Mistake #1: A lack of confidence is making your prospects uneasy

“Sorry to bother you, but I am very excited to introduce you to my company, _______________, and see if you’d be interested in discussing how our sales and marketing services can help your company gain traction and accelerate growth.”

Stop apologizing for reaching out to your prospects; it’s your job. If you’re reaching out to qualified leads that could benefit from your company’s business, then your prospects should be eager to hear your message.

Prospects are perceptive; they can easily pick up on your lack of confidence. If you don’t have confidence in your message and product, then your prospects won’t either.

Cold Email Pro Tip #1: Instead of apologizing to your prospects, try engaging them and getting to know them on a deeper level. Let them know that you’re genuinely interested in developing a relationship with them, and not just trying to make a quick sell. Approaching your prospects in a more human way puts them more at ease, and will make them more receptive to your message.

Wimpy Mistake #2: It’s obvious you don’t know who your prospects are

“Could you point me to the person over your inside sales team?”

Nothing screams mass email more than asking to be put in contact with the right person.

An impersonal introduction like this one, doesn’t make your prospects feel special. It proves to them that you haven’t done your homework, and that you don’t know who the decision maker is. Vague messages don’t engage prospects, and definitely don’t motivate them to take the next step.

Your prospects want to know that you understand them and their needs. Be specific about how your product can help improve their lives.

Cold Email Pro Tip #2: Make sure you’ve thoroughly researched your target buyer persona before you craft your cold email campaigns. To help you develop personalized messages, find two or three prospects that fit your ideal buyer persona on LinkedIn. Write a personalized email to each one for practice, and then reverse engineer the email to create a mass template. (We do this for 99% of the email campaigns we create!)

Think about how you would sell your product to these individuals. What types of responsibilities do they have? What issues do they face on a daily basis? How can your product help to solve these problems? The more you understand your prospects’ lives, the easier it is to develop highly targeted messages that will appeal directly to them.

Wimpy Reason #3: Relying on salesy jargon to excite your prospects

“I lead a Mastermind Crew that consists of other rain-making Sales Professionals, and right now our we are on FIRE!”

Your prospects aren’t fooled by salesy phrases, and corny lines don’t excite them either.

People respond better to direct, simple language that clearly explains the benefits of your product. Using cheesy language like this shows your prospects that you can’t be taken seriously.

Capital letters and exclamation marks can’t replace solid messaging. Your prospects are looking for substance that can add real value to their business, not ameatuer tactics.

Cold Email Pro Tip #3: Don’t rely on silly adjectives to create a sense of excitement in your prospects. Your cold emails should show, not tell, the value of your product. Instead, focus on how your product can benefit your prospects and help solve their problems. When your prospects see that you can make their lives easier, they’ll jump for joy to talk to you.

Wimpy Reason #4: You’re not motivating your prospects to action

“I wanted to circle back, particularly given our recent releases [Produt] v2.0 and [Product] CS v1.5, to see if a conversation is more appropriate at present.”

There’s nothing worse than engaging your prospects all the way through your email message and then losing them with a wobbly or missing call to action!

It’s like carefully carrying a basket of eggs from your grandma’s barn and then dropping them on the floor as soon as you get in the front door. (I have first-hand experience here….!)

Don’t do it!

If you’re asking your prospects if it makes sense to have a call, you aren’t going to get a lot of responses. It’s your responsibility to show them why a phone call with you make sense. If you’re reaching out to qualified leads with valuable and interesting information to offer, then a call is certainly “appropriate!” .

Your prospects want to know that there’s something in it for them by taking a call with you. If they give up their precious time, what are they going to get in return? You can’t assume that just because you think your product is awesome, your prospects will be dying to talk to you.

Cold Email ProTip #4: Make it worth it for you prospects to respond to you. Incentivize your call to action by giving your prospects something in return for their time. Actionable tips they can use to improve their business are enticing. Developing a relationship with your prospects is all about establishing a sense of trust and credibility with them. Your prospects will be more willing to do business with you, once you’ve proven that you can add value to their lives.
…So stop writing wimpy emails now, okay?!

super wimpy cold emails

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Filed Under: Persuasive Writing Tagged With: account-based sales, bad cold emails, buyer persona research, creating persuasive calls to action, sales prospecting

How to Write Cold Emails that Your Prospects Will Actually Love

February 13, 2015 By Heather 5 Comments

Are you writing cold emails that honeypot your prospects and make them fall in love with you, or do they run away because your emails are crappy?

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, here are 4 lessons that will help you generate dozens of qualified leads by crafting cold emails that your prospects will love:

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Filed Under: Persuasive Writing Tagged With: account-based sales, buyer persona research, great cold email, outbound sales prospecting

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