SYSTEMA.SI

The emails you send to your customers, and the emails you're not sending, could be shooting your sales performance in the foot.
Believe it or not, changing the way you email your customers can do more for your bottom line than just about any new sales technique you learn this year.     

#1 Educate.

As a sales person, one of your primary roles is to educate your prospects about your company, your products and services, your competition and other important factors that influence their purchase decisions.  Of course, another primary role is to build a relationship of trust with your customer and to listen to each customer's needs to help them find the solution that is the best fit.  Add to this the fact that customers are busier than ever and getting their attention is often the biggest challenge.  No question that balancing these factors is difficult.

We can probably all agree that in the long term, it's more valuable to focus on building the relationship with the customer.  So, how about letting email handle some of the educating for you so that your one on one time with the customer can be focused on listening and establishing trust?

When the customer makes a request like, "Can you explain the differences between your two product versions?" you can respond to their request and stay focused on learning about the customer.  Try responding with "I have a detailed comparison chart that highlights the different options in our products, including pricing and services that I'll email you.  I'll be happy to suggest the best option for you as soon as I've been able to learn some things about your needs.  Would you mind telling me....?"

To get started, write down the things your customers most frequently ask you to tell them about - features, pricing, delivery terms, comparison with competitors, etc. - then create emails you can use to inform customers or, even better, create a web page so you can send them a link to that page on your site.  In many cases, these emails can be more useful to your customer because they'll have a record of the information and they can easily forward the information to others on their team or possibly use it to refer you to a colleague in another company.

#2 Connecting with Busy Leads, Prospects and Customers. 

Often, sales people spend more time attempting to talk with prospects than actually meeting with or talking with them.  Repeated calls, voice mails, discussions with assistants and maybe even dropping by can be very time consuming.  More importantly, it can be very annoying to your prospect.  These days, many busy business people actually prefer to communicate via email to preserve their own time.  You can use this to your advantage by sending emails requesting an appointment or even asking specific questions that the prospect can easily answer via email.

A technique that I find very useful when trying to make initial contact with a new lead is to combine calling and emails.  Create a campaign where you call once and leave an introductory voice mail.  Then call back in a couple of days and leave a more informative voice mail.  Then 2 or 3 days after your second call, email them expressing your interest in talking with them to find out some specific things about their needs or to share some valuable information with them and request a specific time for you to call.  Those that are interested but, just too busy to call, will often find it convenient to quickly reply to your email.  Even if all they do is respond with "I'm traveling and will not be able to speak with you until the 1st of next month.", at least you've got a two way conversation going and you can stop wasting your time and annoying the prospect in the mean time.

Of course, the campaign could go on from there and involve into a sequence of several calls and emails.  The key is to make it automatic.  Use your contact management or CRM system to tell you what the next step is and when to take it.  Make the emails completely automatic if you can.  That way you're spending less time trying to decide what to do and more time just reaching out to more customers and prospects.

#3 Firing Prospects. When you call and email repeatedly and you still get no response from prospects, there is a reason.  Usually the reason is that the prospect is too busy to respond and the product or service you're offering is not something they feel they really need right now.  However, until you actually hear from the prospect, you don't know that's the case so, we just keep calling for weeks and weeks.  You can take advantage of the fact that prospects expect to be "chased" by sales people and in fact, derive a sense of power from it, by firing them.

If you call several times and receive no response, how about an email that says something like "I've called several times to learn about .......  Due to the constraints on my time and the number of companies interested in 'my company', I'm going to take you off my call list.  I will send you a couple of emails designed to help you identify if 'my company' can help 'your company'.  If you'd prefer, you can quickly let me know how best to proceed by responding to this email."

Then you create a series of emails that highlight the reasons the prospect may want to invest some time talking with you.  Again, make sure it's automated in your contact management or CRM system so that you can just "turn on" the emails and then move on to other prospects.

You'll be surprised how often prospects will respond to being fired.  They want to be on your list (the classic take-away).  Especially in the most common case where they are interested in your product or service but, just haven't gotten it on the top of their priority lists.  Those prospects will respond and tell you when and how to get in touch with them.

#4 Nurturing Lost Opportunities. For many businesses, this can have more impact on your sales than anything else.The fact is that you probably close 20 to 30% of the leads you get or opportunities you pursue.  That means that 70 to 80% of the leads you talk to don't buy.  In addition, the most common reason that sales are not closed is that the customer decides to do nothing.  Meaning, they chose not to buy anything or not to change suppliers right now.  That means they're still prospects, it's just a matter of timing and priorities.

Because sales people are driven by near term quotas, when a customer says no, they hear "No, not ever." and stop pursuing the lead altogether.  Only you can decide whether a lead that's gone "cold" is worthy for you to follow up with again in a few months but, what if you could schedule a lead nurturing email campaign for the lead?

This doesn't have to be anything complicated.  Just an email once a month asking for an appointment may do the trick.  If you can come up with a series of different things the prospect will value to send to them, that's even better. The main point is that you're branding yourself and your company with the lead.  When things change for them and they're ready to learn more about the type of products and services you offer, you'll get the call just because they'll have your last email and will remember your name.

Does it really work?

Staying in touch with 80% of the leads you talk to that have gone cold: If you talk to 100 new leads each month, then after 6 months, you've got 480 leads you're touching via email.  Assume a conservative 1% response rate and now you're talking 5 additional leads each month that are probably better qualified than the average brand new lead.  Sticking with a 20% close rate and that means 1 additional sale each month!  

Firing Prospects: Experience tells me that a minimum of 1 in 5 unresponsive prospects will respond when you "fire" them.  How many leads have you been chasing for too long already?  This technique should get as many as 20% of them to email or call you.

Connecting with Busy Prospects: How much time do you spend calling prospects to make the initial connection?  This should free up a good 25 to 50% of that time for you to focus on other customers or prospects.

Educating Customers: This one is hard to quantify because it could impact your customers and you in so many different ways.  However, the most powerful example is this...  You've gotten that initial meeting with the key decision maker and you tell him you'll send all the specifications in a follow up email so you can focus your time with him on learning his needs.  Now you've got his attention AND, when you send the email, he instantly forwards it to the 5 people in his company that need to be part of the decision and copies you. That's priceless!