{"id":2708,"date":"2018-02-07T05:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/?p=2708"},"modified":"2018-02-07T11:03:19","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T19:03:19","slug":"sales-emails-look-like-youre-definitely-losing-potential-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/sales-emails-look-like-youre-definitely-losing-potential-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"If Your Sales Emails Look Like This, You’re Definitely Losing Potential Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was something undeniably frustrating about putting together this month’s Hall of Shame roundup. Maybe it was the sheer amount of information to pick through, or the\u00a0awful formatting choices. How, one can’t help but wonder, do messages like these<\/a> make it out of\u00a0draft and into someone’s inbox?<\/p>\n

People often mistake length for strength in a sales email,\u00a0cramming as many features<\/a> as they can into\u00a0annoying bullet-point lists<\/a>. Or they go the opposite direction,\u00a0thinking an extra-general\u00a0email will\u00a0appeal to anyone and get more responses. It won’t. And in both cases,\u00a0a crucial\u00a0element is missing: the\u00a0prospective customer and their business needs and wants.<\/p>\n

Behold,\u00a0February’s lineup of terrible cold emails:<\/p>\n

1. Factory of Features<\/h3>\n

Crimes:<\/strong>\u00a0length, mistaking people for features<\/p>\n

\"Artificial<\/p>\n

You want to know the worst part about a feature list? When the items aren\u2019t even actual features.<\/p>\n

At quick glance, this looks like just\u00a0another list of product capabilities (that\u2019s inexplicably written in blue font). Closer inspection reveals\u00a0it’s actually a list of employee types along with their tenure at the company. I realize the sender refers to these roles as \u201cresources,\u201d and sure, you can, technically, sell resources. But people are not faceless features. Treating them as such in a sales email just suggests you run the digital equivalent of a factory.<\/p>\n

Conversations builds sales relationships, so make your text conversational. The best way to do this is to read out loud what you\u2019ve written. If your voice drones on like a .matrix printer as you read, you might want to revise a couple times.<\/p>\n

\"Factory<\/p>\n

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2.\u00a0The Formatting Mess<\/h3>\n

Crimes:<\/strong> length,\u00a0pointless formatting<\/p>\n

\"Mess\"<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t decide which of this email\u2019s crimes is more overwhelming: the enormous amount of information or the gratuitous amount of formatting.<\/p>\n

In the span of one email, the sender covers: automation, stats from a new report, the role of salespeople in the digital age, and the job descriptions of multiple people. Laced throughout is arbitrary bold-faced font and the dreaded bullet-point list. To be fair, they did put a space between the paragraphs and bullet-point lists, which makes this email marginally more readable.<\/p>\n

With only seconds to keep a reader\u2019s attention, it\u2019s crucial to be as clear as possible about what you want. The formatting\u00a0issues combined with the numbers, names, and features, this email is just a mess begging to be cleaned up.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

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3. The Bridge Burner<\/h3>\n

Crimes:\u00a0<\/strong>length, untargeted, too many ideas<\/p>\n

\"Bridge<\/p>\n

Its admirable this person wants to \u201cbridge the gap\u201d between Academia and Industry, but they’re not going to do it with an email this long.<\/p>\n

Sales emails should be all about the other person, not a bullet-point list of your company\u2019s history and accomplishments. Those may boost your credibility, but they\u2019re better left for a phone call or, better yet, an in-person meeting where there\u2019s time to go a little bit off-topic. As far as the list of what I\u2019d be responsible for, it\u2019s more in-depth than most job descriptions on LinkedIn. In other words, it looks like a hell of a lot of work and I don’t want to read about it in a sales email.<\/p>\n

The goal of any good sales email is to make the recipient\u2019s life easier, not more tiring. Pick a single idea and stick to it throughout, or you’ll wind up burning a lot more bridges than you build.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

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4. ???<\/h3>\n

Crimes:<\/strong> completely un-targeted, utterly random<\/p>\n

\"Random\"<\/p>\n

I had to block out the names here, but suffice to say, a flower delivery company sent this, and the website the sender thinks is mine is actually a lead-generation site, which SalesFolk is not. Talk about a mass, un-targeted email. Then there\u2019s the bit about \u201csearching for moms.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we have flowers, lead generation, and parenthood in a single email. Combined, what lesson do they offer? That you should check your CRM data and\u00a0take time to research your contacts\u00a0before hitting the send button.<\/p>\n

\"Un-targeted\"<\/p>\n

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5. You Had One Job<\/h3>\n

Crimes:<\/strong>\u00a0length, faking an acquaintance<\/p>\n

\"Job<\/p>\n

This is one of several emails we received from this company, yet no one at SalesFolk has actually ever talked to the sender.<\/p>\n

And for an email sent by a stranger, this one asks me to do an awful lot of work: pass the message to someone else if the content\u2019s not relevant to me, answer a bunch of questions, and read through an enormous amount of text.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with sending a cold email to gauge someone\u2019s interest in employment, but you won\u2019t get many responses if you post the entire job description in the actual email. For one, it kills any intrigue you might have created by holding some details back. And this much information is really just another form of a feature list. As we\u2019ve discussed, over and over and over this week, features don\u2019t sell, even when you\u2019re the one offering to pay.<\/p>\n

\"You<\/p>\n

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