Sales Tools to Increase Your Odds for Success

Written by Kendra Lee

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5 Secrets to Effective Email

Email has changed everything, and people now hit the delete button on their voicemail messages the instant they hear something they don't like -- which is usually when it's a message from an unknown sales rep.

Years ago voicemail was all the rage. There was no e-mail, so people tended to honor and even return their voicemail messages. It was a good time...

But that's history now. Email has changed everything, and people now hit the delete button on their voicemail messages the instant they hear something they don't like -- which is usually when it's a message from an unknown sales rep.

What to do?

The good news is people still respect email, and I think it's become the primary mode of communication between business people (and everyone else for that matter). The even better news is that there are 5 secrets that will set your emails apart from the thousands of others your prospects get, and if you use these 5 secrets when constructing your emails, you'll have the best chance at getting yours read and returned.

Here's what they are:

Email Secret #1: Use the prospect's first name in the subject line. Putting your prospect's name in the subject line (first name) will automatically distinguish your email from the hundreds of others your prospect gets. In addition, we're all partial to our own name, and this will draw your prospect's eyes like a magnet.

Email Secret #2: Customize the first few lines of your email as much as possible. Many people preview your emails by reading the first paragraph in Outlook, and the beginning better be short and have immediate value to your prospect. Something like:

"Hi Barbara, Mike Brooks here with HMS software. I've got some ideas about your networking issues for your new office that's opening in Houston next month. We've helped a lot of companies in this area, and I think you'll find it useful if we talk."

Again, keep it short, to their point, and provide immediate value.

Email Secret #3: Keep your email short and easy to read! Nothing will turn your prospect off more than long, information packed paragraphs. Their eyes will glaze over! Break up your sentences into paragraphs if possible to make them easy to read and accessible. I say no more than 3 sentence paragraphs

Email Secret #4: Ask for a return response - whether they are interested or not. This is a great way to end your email and a good way to get a response. Simply thank them in advance for their consideration and that you're looking forward to their response on this.

Email Secret #5: Promise to follow up by phone if they don't respond. Let them know that you understand they are busy, and that out of consideration if you don't hear from them you'll follow up with a call in a day or two. This increases your response rate.

Bonus: Be happy when you get a "not interested" response. These prospects just disqualified themselves and saved you a lot of time and energy. On the other hand, there will be others who don't respond and they become your follow up leads!

These are the 5 secrets to emails, and believe me they work! Take a few minutes right now to script out the outline for your emails and then fill in the details as you need to per prospect. And then watch your contact, response and success rate skyrocket!

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Prospecting has never been harder – or easier. Yes, it’s hard to get responses, but you have all the tools at your finger tips to increase your odds of grabbing the attention of your top contacts and getting a reply.

Gone is the dialing for dollars mentality. You can do better than that.

Sales Tools
You can use these tools to do everything from identifying who your best-odds prospects are to deducing why they’d want to speak with you, writing a powerful email, and ultimately attracting them to you. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Identify the who. Once you know the profile of the types of contacts and companies you want to approach, use Zoominfo.com, NetProspex.com, Insideview.com or Hoovers.com to search and get the names of the best contacts to talk to.

2. Delve in. Go a step further and do some research for the contacts you’ve uncovered on those same sites. What have they written? Where have they been quoted? You can quickly get a feel for what’s top of mind with them and where their passions lie. Use this information to craft your grabber value proposition for phone calls and emails. Use it to write blogs or articles that’ll attract their attention and peak their interest. Comment about your ideas on social networks.

3. Secure contact info. Start with these same sites to find the most current contact information for your target prospects. Jigsaw and NetProspex are maintained by people like you and me, so they’ve often got very current information. While you’re there, add a few contacts of your own and earn points for free contact information downloads. You can also use LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks as a tool.

4. Find elusive email addresses. If you still can’t find an email address here’s a trick to try. From your search engine type "@their website domain” and it’ll pull up anywhere on the web where email addresses for that domain appear. Now you’ll have the email protocol for that company and can more effectively guess your contact’s email address.

5. Watch your prospects. No, we aren’t talking stalking. Watch what your top prospects are doing using alert services like Google Alerts for free. Set up a daily alert and see all the tweets and comments they’ve made and where they’re mentioned. You’ll know what to talk about when you call and more importantly, when they need you to call.

6. Make your emails stand out. Use Gobbledygook.grader.com to pick out trite or hype-filled words and phrases you don’t even know you’re using. It’s a great tool to increase the impact of your brochures and online copy, too.

7. Know if they’re listening. One of the biggest challenges with email prospecting is knowing if anyone has read what you sent. Use ReadNotify.com to trace email opens and forwards, numbers of times read, and URL clicks. Use Bit.ly to shorten long links for social network comments and emails. You can track how many times the links are opened, forwarded and by whom.

8. Increase your own productivity. If you’re a Microsoft Outlook user Xobni.com is a plugin that makes searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy. You can even search social networks for information about your contacts.

Getting people to reply is the most difficult aspect of prospecting. These tools give you new levels of information and insight to increase your odds of success.

Interested in more information on prospecting, click here.

Kendra Lee
		About the author:
		Kendra Lee is a top IT seller, sales advisor and business owner who knows how to shorten time to revenue in the SMB market in innovative ways. She is the author of the best selling book Selling Against the Goal: How Corporate Sales Professionals Generate the Leads they Need. Under Ms. Lee's direction her organization has assisted sellers in increasing referrals more than 328% in just 7 weeks, penetrating SMB markets in just 6 weeks, driving new client acquisition more than 31% year to year, and increasing annual revenue. .