Posted on

Why Your Sales Emails Aren’t Working and How to Fix Them

Despite the popularity of social media and the growing number of instant messaging apps, email has maintained a steady presence in our online communication. According to Statista, in 2020, the number of email users eclipsed 4 billion people worldwide and this number is expected to grow to more than 4.5 billion by 2025. Email is also a very important component of successful content marketing strategies. In fact, data from Hubspot shows that 53% of marketers say email has been the most effective channel for early-stage lead generation. However, in order to increase open rates and better engage your target audience, your emails need to be well-crafted with specific criteria in mind to make them more appealing to the recipients.

In this article, we will share with you some possible reasons why your sales emails may not be working as effectively as you hoped and what you can do to fix them.

Your Subject Line is Not Both Clear and Appealing

If you have been wondering exactly how big of a role the subject of your email plays in the open rates of your emails, the answer is that it is one of the most important aspects of a sales email. A study done by Convince and Convert showed that 35% of email recipients open an email on the basis of the subject line alone. However, a great subject line needs to maintain a delicate balance of being simply informative and overly flashy. By being overly flashy you run the risk of the email not living up to the hype of the subject line. Therefore, instead of trying to come up with a clickbait subject line, try letting the readers know how they could benefit from opening your email.

From this standpoint, the simpler the better may be the right way to go. If you have been able to achieve outstanding results for past clients, let prospective customers know in the subject line that you are able to lower their costs, increase their efficiency, and any other benefits. Remember, only 9% of sales emails are opened. Therefore, you need to be able to grab the person’s attention right away.

Too Many Empty Words

When a prospect opens your email, they need to understand exactly why they have received this message and what they need to do if they want to act on this email. Remember, the vast majority of emails, 84%, are being skimmed. Therefore, you need to structure the email so that the most important information is easy to find. Consider the following structure for your email: a quick introduction about why the email was sent and then offer some clear value. Finish off with a call to action which could be something like signing up for a demo, a Zoom meeting, or even a phone conversation. Even though your email may not contain something revolutionary, be sure to be straightforward and provide real value.

Emphasizing One-Way Communication

A lot of sales emails are written in a way that merely provides the prospect with information instead of trying to engage them in a dialogue. A good way to fix this would be to offer the recipient an easy way of reaching out to you. If you have sent some emails to your prospects and have not heard back from them, consider sending them a follow-up email containing some potential options for continuing the dialogue. These options could include things like setting up a call, receiving another follow-up email next week, and also whether or not the reader is interested, which will let you know whether or not this particular lead is viable. This way all the recipient needs to do is select the option that best fits them.

Overthinking the Wording

When you are sending out emails to prospective customers, especially if it’s very big ones you are trying to get, it can be easy to get bogged down deliberating every single word. The result is an email that sounds stodgy and awkward. You need to remember that writing an email is not an exercise in creative writing, but rather a friendly chat between two colleagues or acquaintances. Therefore, the next time you write an email, reread it and ask yourself whether or not it would sound strange if you said it to someone in face-to-face interaction. If you wouldn’t say something to someone during a physical meeting, then you should not include it in the email.

Remember, the goal of the email is to make a genuine connection with the recipient. So don’t try to be overly professional, or use sales jargon or catchphrases that you would never say in real life.

Lack of Personalisation

One of the biggest mistakes a lot of sales professionals make is that they do not spend enough time researching the person they are corresponding with. Even small details about a person’s personal or professional life could make a big impact on their interaction with your email. A lot of the information you need can be found through a simple Google search. Think about questions like where are the prospects from? What sort of companies do they work for? What do they post about on public social

This post was originally posted by u/colin_stevens in /r/salestechniques on reddit. You can see the original thread here.

Posted on

What to do when a prospect Ghosts You…

It happens to the best of us! Everything is going well, the prospect really loves the product and raved about the presentation you gave, and then they start “ghosting” you. So what gives? Why would they suddenly stop answering? Did you say something wrong? Did another salesperson have a lower price?

Chances are, if you’ve been following my advice, the answer to that is, no. You did nothing wrong, and although others are calling the prospect every day, they are not talking to another salesperson.

They may not be talking to another salesperson about the project you’re working on, but they are most likely working on another project entirely.

With more and more companies adopting a “lean” way of running their operation, that means each employee has a few different hats they wear to work. Thanks to COVID, this is more true today than it was two years ago. And it was rampant, even back then.

With your prospects having more and more responsibilities given to them, they are going to have less time to work on your project. It’s not that they don’t want to, they just simply don’t have the time!

SHOULD YOU GIVE THEM SOME SPACE? 

When they ignore your calls or emails, it’s not a personal thing. They just don’t have time to work on that project, and some people feel guilty about that. Since you two do have a better relationship than most, they may feel badly that they are ignoring you. 

Well, think about it. When you feel guilty about something, don’t you tend to avoid the source of the guilt? And then it snowballs out of control and it would have been better to just face the issue in the first place?

What I’m saying is, if they feel guilty about not being able to take your calls, then it makes it increasingly less likely that they will answer future calls. So, yes, you should give them a little space. That’s not to say that you don’t call them for four weeks and then just try again.

It means you give them a week, or two, and you send them a “breakup email”, of sorts. Think about when you were young and were mad at your friend for some silly reason. I’m sure you’ve said, or have heard, “then, you’re not invited to my birthday!” a few times in your life! If you haven’t in real life, then I’m sure you’ve seen it in movies, but either way you’re familiar with the childish threat!

Well, in this situation we aren’t going to be childish or negative at all! In fact, we are going to make it short, positive, and empowering for the prospect.

Yes. A breakup email empowers the prospect. This is how.

In your breakup email, you’re going to assume that they are too busy on another project, and put the ball in their court for any further discussions.

You should send them something similar to:

Hey Prospect,

You’re probably busy with all the other projects they have you doing these days!

Hope they go smoothly and don’t add to the already stressful situation.

You won’t be hearing from me until next quarter, but if you need anything in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out at any time!

Take care, and I wish you the best of luck on your projects! 

This type of email does a few different things that will at least get you a response, and possibly even a timeline for when you should be following up with them. 

Funny enough, people typically don’t like when others assume things about them. Think of how people generally react when someone assumes their favorite genre of music, or assumes they’re doing something they aren’t! 

In this particular case, we aren’t being negative about anything, so assuming something about their situation isn’t going to elicit a negative response.

Rather, what you are saying to the prospect is that you understand they’re busy, you’re not taking it personally, and you want to respect their time, but also let them know that you aren’t just walking away from the project. 

A lot of salespeople, a majority of them, get very deterred when a prospect stops responding for no reason, or right before they were going to seemingly purchase something.

It’s quite natural to feel that way, but it’s much better to not let it bother you at all.

You have to remember, we are all humans, and humans aren’t perfect. Sometimes we ignore our duties and responsibilities, and sometimes we’re bad at texting someone back regularly.

You are a human, and you are selling to a human. Communicating to prospects with humility will yield you the best results and earn you their utmost respect. 

By using humility in your “breakup email”, the prospect will most likely respond to your email. I have used this technique more times than I can count, and it works an overwhelmingly large portion of the time.

Not only do I usually get a response, it’s usually within an hour or two after I send it. Going from getting NOTHING out of them, to an answer in the same day is a great thing. That’s a wonderful feeling as well. At least it is for me!

When they respond, they will usually tell you what their timeline is for when they can be back on your project, and it may even be sooner than you had thought!

Don’t kid yourself, a lot of times it’s a lot longer than you’d like, but either way, you have a timeline. And guess what? The timeline came from them, so they are more likely to honor it, unless something comes up. And guess what? Yeah, something may come up again.

SOMETIMES, YOU NEED TO BE MORE AGGRESSIVE

There are situations where the prospect is not actually too busy to talk to you, but they just don’t want to deal with a purchase request, or maybe they haven’t asked for approval yet and they are procrastinating. Or they just forgot about you and you just keep missing them. If you are following up as well as you should, they shouldn’t have forgotten you, but it happens.

The purchasing process is different for each company, and some are more daunting than others. Think about some of the pain in the ass procedures and policies at your job. Now think about how thrilled you would be to go through with one of those procedures. The prospect’s situation could involve a very daunting purchase request process. Especially if they work for a multinational company. 

In these cases, you want to get a little more aggressive with your breakup. No, we aren’t going to slash their tires or write “loser” on their office window, but we will get a response out of them. 

You can try something like this: 

Hi Prospect, 

Clearly I haven’t built a strong enough case to show you the value in this PRODUCT, and I wish you the best of luck with your current solution (or product search)

If anything changes in the future, I’d be happy to help you with the PRODUCT SPECIFICS. 

Take care, and have a wonderful day (evening, weekend, week, etc.)!

Self depreciation is in and of itself a great way to get a response out of someone. Again, if you follow my advice, you have certainly built a strong enough case to show them the value, they are just not taking action for one reason or another.

The point is, by putting it on yourself while wishing them all the best, you are now putting the ball in their court, so to speak. 

This will make them feel guilty about stringing you along for a while and then suddenly ignoring you. Like I said, it’s a little more aggressive than the previous example, but it’s much more effective at getting a response from someone. These emails typically get a reply within thirty minutes. 

Another reason you typically get a faster response is because you aren’t asking them to do anything. You aren’t asking them to give you a purchase order, or to look at product specifications, or anything. You are simply telling them that you are going to leave them alone, but the door is always open.

You are not applying any high-pressure sales tactics, and you are respecting their space. Even though they don’t consciously realize you are respecting their space, they will react as if they do. 

They will typically come back with some reason why they haven’t responded to you. Those reasons will range from being too busy, not having the money this quarter, not wanting to spend that kind of money this year, or a million others.

Notice how I don’t refer to them as “excuses”.

I feel as though “excuse”, in this context, is a negative or deceitful word. Calling it an excuse is telling yourself that you don’t trust your prospect to tell you the truth. If you don’t trust them to tell you the truth, why would they trust you to do the same?

Regardless of their reasons, they may also come back with an answer that hints toward when you should follow up with them. If they say they don’t have the money for the quarter, then you know you should follow up at the start of the next quarter.

Yes, you can do it on the first day of the next quarter. I have. It shows determination, and it shows that you want to earn their business. 

CONCLUSION 

Getting ignored by a prospect happens to all of us! It happens a lot more than salespeople like to admit, but we all know the truth. Regardless of industry, product, sales channel, all salespeople have been ghosted by promising leads, or even current prospects. 

By following the advice I give during Sales Therapy meetings, and in my articles, this will happen a lot less often to you.

You should know by now that the more often you engage with a prospect, and the longer you stay engaged with them, the stronger the relationship.

The stronger the relationship, the better the prospect.

It all comes from treating people like people, and always communicating with positivity, and humility. My number one rule in life is the simplest rule in the book, and it’s probably the first one we learn as children. 

Treat others the way you want to be treated! 

It’s that simple! Seriously! If you treat your prospects the way you would like a salesperson to treat you, then you will become a very successful salesperson. You will have the biggest accounts on your team, receive the largest purchase orders, and will be very happy with your sales career. 

Though these tips wont ensure that ghosting wont happen again, but it will be much less frequent than it is for you right now. 

Treating other people the way you want to be treated is never going out of style. That’s just being human.  So, be human, and sell to humans the way you want someone to sell to you. 

This article was originally posted by u/SalesTherapy on https://www.reddit.com/r/salestechniques

Posted on

How to Engage Multiple Decision Makers

In sales, we get so focused on “the decision maker” that we often forget the fact that multiple people could be “the decision maker”. But don’t worry too much about that! You don’t have to start from scratch to find the other decision makers! 

In fact, we can use empathy to get the main contact to introduce you to the other decision maker, or makers.

Depending on the size of the organization, there could be a handful of folks who would weigh in on any large purchases. 

If you are selling a product or a service which requires a significant investment from the company, they may all weigh in pretty heavily, in which case there is potentially a difference in opinion. 

Here are some ways you can get in front of the other decision makers within your customer’s company. 

Schedule a “Meet and Greet” Video Call

Assuming you have finished your prospecting work, and you have piqued the customer’s interest, it’s time to get in front of the other folks who will have to work with your main contact. 

Think of it this way, when a customer is interested in something, and there are other decision makers, they usually say something like, “yeah, I really like it, I just need to get everyone else on board.” 

Well, guess what?

When someone says that, what they are actually saying is, “I need to sell this idea to people who are higher up than me.” Well, isn’t that a salesperson job in the first place?

Rather than sending your customer in there alone, you can offer to go in together as a united front! And that is exactly how you should pitch this idea! It should be all about helping the customer. 

You can say something like, “How would you feel about all of us getting on a Zoom call just to at least open a dialogue? If the other folks have any objections, I can handle them and be there to help support you with building a case. I’ll take the brunt of it.” 

Now, they may not say “yes” every single time, or at least not at first. But you can push back a little bit, and really make the case that it’s to help them as much as it is to help you. And it’s not a lie! You’re helping them pitch an idea to their bosses. Since you offered to take the fall if it goes poorly, they have nothing to lose.

Use that logic in your counter argument when the customer hesitates on the idea. 

Would it Help to Identify the Other Decision Makers?

Yes, it would, and it probably should be the first thing you do. There are times when you are dealing with a single decision maker within a company, and there’s no reason to schedule a conference call. 

I still strongly suggest scheduling a “Meet and Greet” with just them, but that’s a different topic. 

That said, before you schedule anything, it’s usually a good idea to ask something like, “who else needs to weigh in on this? Is there anyone else we have to get approval from?”

That question does a few things.

Firstly, it asks an open-ended question, so they have to answer with names, and they usually do.

You also said, “we” and again reiterated the team mentality with the customer. 

Either way, it’s always a good idea to identify the other folks within the company who make decisions.

If for no other reason, it gives you more people to contact in the future the next time you may pitch them on something. In my experience, when I ask about the other decision makers, the person will actually tell me their names and job titles. That is extremely valuable to me, because I can go on LinkedIn, confirm I have the correct spelling (without having to ask the customer to spell the names) and I can “guess” their emails. 

Well, not really guessing their emails. I use a very interesting tool to get their company’s email format! 

If they have an automated phone directory on their main line, you can easily get their extension, so just by asking that question (“who are the other decision makers?”), you can really build up a contact page in your CRM for those folks. 

Do You Have to Keep in Touch With All of Them?

This may very well depend on your particular product and industry, but in my experience that is not really the case. I am regularly involved with business deals which require several decision makers. I typically have one main point of contact, and include the others in important conversations. 

So, yes, you have to keep in touch with all of them, but you should have a single main point of contact, in my personal opinion. If you think I am wrong, or if that won’t work for you, that is perfectly fine. 

However, in my personal experience, having a main point of contact within an organization is the best way to operate. If you start calling the other folks, especially when your main contact isn’t answering, that could seem like you’re going around them or over their head. 

You certainly do NOT want to do that! 

When it comes time to have important discussions, it’s always best to schedule conference Zoom calls with everyone, and ideally you want everyone to show up.

If you at least copy them on relevant emails, and make them part of the discussions, they’ll be more likely to show up to Zoom calls. 

Why Do You Want to Include Multiple People Anyway?

It may seem like the more people you involve in something, the harder it will be to gain momentum, right?

That is actually true, but only to an extent. 

In my experience, there is usually a “lead” decision maker who really calls the shots. The others sort of go with the flow unless they see or hear something they really don’t like. In which case, they will usually question the leader. 

Either way, there are a ton of reasons why you should have multiple points of contact at a company. 

The most obvious one is, you want to meet everyone you possibly can who weighs in on decisions that require your product or service. That’s just a given, yeah?

The other reason, that may not be so obvious, is that your main point of contact there isn’t obligated to work there until the end of time. They may leave one day, and it may come so suddenly, you have no time to find someone else within the organization. 

Believe me, I have had this happen to me multiple times in the past, and I finally learned from my mistakes, and I now have many contacts at each of my accounts. I try to stay in contact with them as much as possible, just to have an open conversation about something. 

However, when you have one contact at a company, and they are one day gone, you have to pretty much start all the way from ZERO. It sucks. 

So, be sure to include multiple decision makers in all your sales processes, when applicable. 

CONCLUSION

I’ll be honest with you, I actually Googled, “most common sales challenges 2021” and one of the results was about how to reach multiple decision makers within a company. Well, since that is something that I do for a living, I figured I’d address the issue, and share what I do with everyone. 

If you’re having trouble with navigating multiple decision maker decisions in general, that’s a completely different topic, and it’s something we could always discuss during a Sales Therapy meeting if you’d like! 

But, if you’re having trouble with just getting started, then this article should set you up rather nicely. If you try these tactics, and they don’t work for you, please do let me know!

These techniques work for me, but that doesn’t mean they have to work for you! 

Good luck, and Happy Selling!

This post was originally posted on r/salestechniques by u/SalesTherapy