Email is a powerful tool if you use it right, and that means you need to be very careful and very precise in how you use the channel – and you need to be extra careful not to try and make your emails do the heavy lifting in your sales process
Very often we want to sell a buyer on an offer or product, or on having another meeting, and in trying to get that outcome, we write emails that are too long, contain far too much content, too many ideas, far too many notions.
And that means you’re giving your buyer a whole bunch of homework – instead of receiving an email they can reply to right then and there, they get an epistle so long, they literally have to schedule time for reading it all. And you bet that long before they get spending the time, something new and urgent will come up – that’s how your email disappears behind a slew of urgencies and priorities, and it’s how you get ghosted.
And yes, it makes sense to try and get your buyer interested in what you do and in having another meeting. After all that’s how you generate sales.
Except email is the wrong vehicle for that. If you want your buyer to be interested, you need to be interested in them and their problems, and you demonstrate that you are interested by asking questions, in a conversation, for instance when you have a triage call.
And that means your email needs to accomplish one job and one job only: to get you a reply.
After all, how are you going to keep a conversation going, if your buyer doesn’t reply to you?
When you send your buyer an email, and they don't reply, then what do you do?
Then you either forget about the opportunity, or you start sending followup.
In the first case, nothing will happen and in the second case, most of the time, nothing will also happen.
Which is a terrible way to waste resources, because getting a buyer to engage with you has a direct hard cost, in terms of marketing and business development and networking and what have you.
And each time a buyer interacts and then ghosts you, you’re looking at lost ROI.
So to make your sales process and your emails more effective, go back to first principles, and consider what email is actually for:
Having a conversation, a dialogue, communication. You know: people replying to each other.
So use your emails as a way to get a reply from people.
Because so long as your buyer replies, your conversation is ongoing and your opportunity is still alive.
Whereas if you don’t get a reply, your opportunity might or might not be dead, and you have no way of knowing, because you’re not getting a reply.
Very simply:
The wrong way to send use emails is trying to make a case and get people to buy in to your idea.
The right way to se use email is getting your buyer to reply.
And the best way to get a reply?
Make your buyer think – not about whether or not to buy your offer, but make them think about the problem they have, the cost of keeping the problem, and what would change in their life and their identity, were they so to solve the problem.
That way, you’re far more likely to get replies, you get to keep the conversation going, and asking for a meeting will be a logical, relevant, and often welcome extension of the conversation you’re having.
This – asking questions that make your buyer think – is at the very heart of Sales for Nice People, and it’s why asking questions is one of the most important modes of conversation you can engage in with your buyers.
So, here’s a question for you: is a few hours of reading worth it, in order for you as a nice person to have an easier time engaging in your sales process?
If the answer is yes, the reading you’re looking for is here.