When will salespeople realize that old tactics to get attention do not work in a modern sales world? Below is part of a real, actual email that was found in our spam folder - so even Gmail knew we didn't want it! My note to "Mike" is after his email to me:
Lori, I am writing you to see who in your organization is responsible for overseeing your web and audio conferencing costs. Our company sells all the top web conferencing and audio conferencing services at the guaranteed lowest cost in the industry.We offer the following to all of our customers:
If you are currently using a web-conferencing or audio-conferencing service, I am confident that XXX XXXX can offer you a superior service at a much lower rate. In fact, we are the only web and audio conferencing provider in the industry today that offers a low price guarantee. Most of our customers realize savings between 50% and 70% annually! Could we schedule a time to speak later today or tomorrow? All the best! Mike -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Dear Mike,
no, no and no, but please let me ask YOU a few questions:
Are you aware of how selling, marketing, and growing revenues has changed in the last 5 years? 10 years?
First of all, your message went directly to my SPAM folder - as it should have. It is only because we've had some issues with SPAM lately that we even check it these days. But that is just one element - please, read on:
You have no clue that I am a small business and it appears to be a blanket email. Had you even taken a moment to see that I am an influencer, connector, and adviser to many businesses of all sizes - I am sure you could have crafted a message to sound, well, slightly more personalized. I am not a number, Mike - I am a person!
You also might have seen that I blog on many sites and am very social - in fact I teach social selling. You can find my email through one of these means, and you could craft a well-written offer based on me being a potential strategic partner of yours - or an offer for my clients - or you could advertise on my newsletter - so many, many ways to be different.
But you need to be different, Mike - what worked before does not work anymore.
Hey, what if you were creative and offered some sort of a "webinar services" shoot-out where people could compare their product to yours? Now that would get my attention. You could also get my attention if I knew that you would make a donation to one of my mighty causes I believe in -
Mike, please take a look at some of my colleagues work on crafting e-mails that work. Visit KLA Group for their e-mail marketing audio seminar or this post from YesWare or Wendy Weiss, Queen of Cold Calling's article on the topic.
Mike, just so you know, I'm not interested in a new solution, even if yours is cheaper or better, because I am very satisfied with what we use. You'll have to have another angle if you want to get my attention.
Lori Richardson is America's B2B Sales Detective - she helps companies grow revenues at Score More Sales, and is a speaker in the upcoming AA-ISP Boston Conference on Inside Sales. Subscribe to get all the latest tips via the weekly newsletter, 1 Minute Sales Tips.