老外教你如何通过电子邮件销售Sales skilled_1.doc

Dont Be Boring: 4 Keys to Writing Effective Sales EmailsLast week I was cleaning up some old files when I ran across an email account used during my first years in the call center for storing copies of client sales emails I sent. I was glad I had saved these emails, believing that I could use them for educational purposes in the future, and boy, was I right. Some of them made me cringe and think: What was I thinking? Some of these are awful.Weve talked about voicemail messages in the past and identified points to include and not to include. But what about the emails we send to our clients?In addition to a compelling subject line, what are some things you should include and how should the email be structured to make your emails more effective at initiating a conversation?Lets dissect the following email I found in my archive. Its so generic that I see email messages with a similar format land in my inbox today:Hi Bob,Hope this e-mail finds you having a great day.Following up in reference to you getting on our website, insert your website here and downloading insert your reference document from us. Wanted to touch base to see what led you to the website as well as to see if I could be of any additional help.Would love to get in contact with you via phone or e-mail. Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience.For a LIMITED TIME special Economic Stimulus Pricing Contact me for further details.Look forward to hearing from you.Have a great day!Like I said, its very generic-and not very engaging. But the format is prolific, probably because its quick and easy to create.Lets do a review and discover where it falls short.The PleasantriesHope this e-mail finds you having a great day.In this first line, my plan was to initiate the conversation with some type of pleasantries by referring to the great day I hoped he was having. This was a great plan, unless Bob was not having a great day. He could have been having a wonderful day. He also could have had an accident that morning and had to get a ride to work from a coworker. Or maybe Bobs doctor had called him with some bad news regarding a medical test.If Bob is not having a good day, my message wont match his state of mind, and my email will likely be passed over at best and deleted at worst before he gets to the good stuff.How are you doing and Hope youre having a good day are such lackluster openers that most of us respond with equally lackluster and automatic answers, like fine or good. Opening lines like these really dont engage your prospect. What you really want is to get their attention immediately and build rapport, just like you would do in a voicemail message. If I were rewriting this email, I would drop this line and open with a relevant fact of some type.The Reason for the Email No. 1Following up in reference to you getting on our website, insert your website here and downloading insert your reference document from us.This line refers to the prospect visiting our website and downloading a document. At the time, I thought it was a good move because it established a common reference point. In retrospect, Im not convinced of its effectiveness.My prospect knew that he was on my site. He knew that he downloaded my white paper, and he knew that in order to download the white paper, he had to supply his contact information. This line says: Im watching you. Ive got nothing better to do than to sit by my laptop and wait for prospects to get on my site like a spider in her lair waiting for her next meal to wander into her web.In retrospect, I would leave off all of the extra words and simply confirm the download by stating, Yesterday, you downloaded the document name of document and then explain why that is significant. Sounds like a fact to me. Maybe this fact should have been my opening line.The Reason for the Email No. 2Wanted to touch base to see what led you to the website as well as to see if I could be of any additional help.This line tells them the purpose for the email. Im just following up to make sure that you found everything and see if I could be of any further assistance. Is that the real reason for my email-to make sure that they found everything that they were looking for or to see if I could be of any assistance?As sales people, when we make these types of calls or send out follow-up emails, we arent acting in a customer support role. We arent calling to discover if they found everything that they needed. We already know the response well get: Yep, found everything I needed. Nope, dont need any further help. And while knowledge of what prompted them to visit our site is helpful, a self serving statement like, Wanted to see what brought you to our site shouldnt be in the email unless you are conducting a marketing survey or a website review.This is a sales letter. When we make these calls or send these emails, we are doing so as sales people looking to move the prospect to the next stage in the sales process. Again, I wouldnt even bother with this line unless Im calling in the capacity of customer support.The Call to ActionWould love to get in contact with you via phone or e-mail. Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience.This is an ugly line that makes me cringe when I read it. Here, Im stating that I would love to get in contact with my prospect, but there is nothing in my email indicating why this is good for them. They already have the white paper. Why do they need to talk to me? I give them no compelling reason to have further contact with me.Then, to make it worse, I tell them that they have to contact me at their earliest convenience. Thats never going to happen without a very compelling reason for them to do so.The OfferFor a LIMITED TIME special Economic Stimulus Pricing. Contact me for further details.Lastly, I reference something that might be of interest to them-special pricing. But its at the very end of the email, added as an afterthought. And once again, the onus is on them to contact me.The ResultI have plenty of sample emails using this general format. The resulting returns were less than stellar, as you may have guessed. In fact, they were abysmal.Here are some samples of a typical response when prospects took the time to respond. Again, these responses are so generic that they could have been lifted straight out of a How to deal with pesky sales people manual:We are short staffed this and next week so I do not currently have time to discuss. You can feel free to send me more information including times and cost; however, currently my time is very limited. Thank you.Or:Thank you for the information. All of it looks interesting and worthwhile; however, I will not be able to make any commitment until insert your favorite date here. If you want to put me in your tickler file, that would be great.Both are very generic, polite rejections. They are telling me that they dont have time to figure out what Im requesting.How To Do it BetterWhen writing an email as a part of your process for developing leads and guiding prospects through your sales process, keep these points in mind:Keep it short. Long emails tend to scare readers. Remember, the purpose of the email is to get your prospect to the next stage in your sales cycle. If you get leads from your marketing team, or your automatic web form alerted you that someone downloaded your white paper, decide what you want the prospect to do before you compose your email. Write it with the purpose in mind.Break up large blocks of text. Tight text on a screen looks like a wall of words and is an invitation for your prospect to hit the delete key. Compose your text so that your reader can simply scan it, easily consume it and quickly comprehend it.Get their attention at the beginning. Weve placed plenty of emphasis on composing an enticing email subject line encouraging the recipient to open the email. Now, what do you do once they have the email opened? Get their attention at the start and entice them to read further. Use one of the five methods you use to open your voicemail messages: mysteries, shock, enticing facts, compliments and stories.Have one call to action. In some of my early emails attempts, Ive used multiple product lines with various conditions and multiple calls-to-action attempting to make the decision process easier for my prospect. The resulting action was typically no decision on their part. Use just one call to action and make it easy for your prospect to move forward.Remember, this is a sales response letter, not a marketing letter. I sent these emails to one prospect in response to one query to get a specific response, not a general letter targeted at a particular demographic to drive interest.When you send out your email messages, first look at your process. Determine the purpose of your email, decide what you want the prospect to do, and then compose your message to that prospect.Above all, use your email to drive a real conversation and youll be better positioned to move your prospect forward in your sales process5 Secrets to Selling Yourself FirstIn an episode of The Flintstones, Fred and the family take a trip to Rock Vegas where Fred and Barney run off to one of the casinos to make some extra cash. Fred explains that he knows the secret to playing the slot machines and proceeds to show Barney exactly how its done.After dropping all of his money into the same machine for half an hour, Fred says that the machine is ripe for a jackpot, but neither of them have any more coins to play. So, Barney goes off to find another coin while Fred guards his machine. Thats when a nice little old lady shows up to try her hand at that particular slot machine, and Fred is powerless to stop her. With one coin, the little old lady hits the jackpot. The next scene we see, Fred is watching this little old lady and her son carry out bags of money-his winnings-from this one machine.Im sure that many of you have had similar situations in sales, where youve put your heart and soul into nurturing a prospect only to have someone else sneak in at the last minute and walk away with the fruits of your labor.1. Dont Let Someone Take the Credit When You Do the WorkMy Fred Flintstone moment happened during one of my outside cold calling excursions. I found a potential account and identified the point of contact. I met with him, determined his needs, left him information, sent him emails and left him voice mail messages.When the prospect was ready to move, he called the office and told the kid at the front desk that he wanted to take the program we were discussing, but he didnt mention my name. The kid said, I know who you should speak with and sent a message to another sales rep in the area telling him this was a hot lead.Of course, the other sales rep was very apologetic about the misunderstanding, but that was after he had signed up the prospect and established ownership of the account.At any time, you can lose a prospect or an established account to another member of your team, to a sales rep in a competing company, or to simple customer apathy. Minimize this by selling yourself first and making yourself memorable before, during, and after you begin selling your product or services.2. Adopt a Servant MentalityWhen I was training for my NLP certification, I heard a lecture by M. Scott Peck in which he talked about an attitude of service and the difference between having the mindset of a slave versus that of a servant. He stated that a slave gives his master what he wants while a servant gives his master what he needs, and the servant gets to decide what his master needs.When I think about this statement, the person that comes to mind is Bruce Waynes servant, Alfred Pennyworth. The guy doesnt just clean up behind Wayne, he brings him his Cheerios in the morning and his champagne at night. Alfred offers sagely advice, assists Batman in his efforts to clean up Gotham City, and acts as his conscious when Wayne has his moments of doubt.When we are fighting for our sales and trying to show our prospects and customers value, we sometimes believe that this means being on call for the prospect 23 hours out of the day and jumping through hoops when they say, I want another quote for the sixth time. At second glance, however, this behavior seems more like that slave mentality that Peck mentions where we simply give the customer what they want without fully understanding why they need it.If you really want to act as a servant to your prospects and clients, you need to help them decide on the best course of action with the right resources for the job.Remember, Alfred Pennyworth makes up a big portion of the Batman mythology and Bruce Waynes life. However, we never see the doormat at the front door of Wayne Manor. In your daily activity, dont be person that your prospects take for granted and is never remembered. Be the servant that everyone depends on to make things happen.3. Be Memorable for the Right ReasonsI had an ugly situation while I was traveling with a sales manager to meet with the purchasing agent of one of our larger clients. The purchasing agent had called my sales manager and requested a meeting.Actually, she said, I need to talk to you in person NOW!I was a part of the sales team and considered a trusted technical advisor by the sales manager, so he invited me along. However, I didnt like the feeling that I was getting. Typically, purchasing agents dont strongly request a face-to-face meeting with a sales manager.When we arrived, her actions confirmed my intuition. The purchasing agent was hopping mad. Immediately after the sales manager said, How can we help you today, she asked, Do you people want my business?She then went on a tirade. When I found an appropriate break, I countered with a cushion and apologized. I said that I was unaware of what was happening and tried to salvage something out of the challenge by saying that I would be more aware of and responsive to their situation.Thats when she said, Oh, no, I dont have a problem with the way youve been interfacing with the technical team. I spoke with them before this meeting and they said that youve been a valuable resource for them.It turns out her problem was with Bob, her sales rep. When I call, Bob doesnt call me back. I cant get a decent quote from Bob in a timely fashion. Bob doesnt seem to know the product line and certainly doesnt know what we do.The sales manager tried to repair the situation by asking, What can we do to make this right?Her response: If you want our business, then I want a new sales rep. I dont want to deal with Bob anymore.As a sales rep, you need to communicate well with everyone involved in a prospects buying process. Only a few key people can give you a yes in deciding to buy your solution. However, many people in the process can say no. Show a mentality of service to these individuals as well-and make them feel important to keep the sales process moving forward.Dont undervalue your services or bend over backward to win business from a prospect that wants you running an obstacle course for their entertainment. You are conducting business.However, if you are talking with a legitimate prospect and you want their business, part of selling yourself involves being memorable in a positive fashion. That means providing everyone in the buying process with timely, meaningful, and relevant information, offering suggestions to their team, and creating solutions that the competition cant recreate. You want them to remember you for the right reasons.Otherwise, youll end up getting the boot like Bob.4. Show Them Youre CommittedSometimes we are so focused on expanding our market, generating new business and picking up bragging rights about our new prospecting conquests that we forget about the mundane activity of keeping up to speed with our current customers. You cant forget about those contacts who have already bought from you. Find reasons to stay in touch with them and theyll stand by you.In the call center, I would often forward my clients interesting and relevant notes, white papers, and websites that I found during my online travels. These werent justifications for them purchasing our service. I targeted these informational items at some challenge that they were facing and they could possibly use the information to help resolve their issues.During one cold calling session, I overheard another inside sales rep speaking with a prospect on the phone. I couldnt hear what the prospect said on the other side of the conversation but I did hear what the sales rep said: What? You say you are already dealing with a sales rep for this and youre happy with the results? Can I ask whom you are dealing with? Larry Prevost? OK. Thank you for your time.Weve talked about overcoming the difficult objection of No thanks. We have someone taking care of that for us. But I guarantee you, when you are the sales rep the customer is referring to, this objection is music to your ears. Sell yourself by showing your commitment and your clients will reciprocate by staying committed to you.5. Give Them a Sample ImmediatelyWhen I sold technology, one tactic that we often used was to offer the prospect a demonstration. Sometimes that meant inviting the potential client into our headquarters for a demonstration, and other times, it meant that we loaned them a demo unit giving their team time to play with it. If the sale was big enough, we always found a way to get their team some time on a machine.When I sold training solutions, I often sat down with the potential client and ran through a few simple exercises with them as a demonstration of what t