Sales emails and calls are crucial tools for generating leads, building relationships, and closing deals. But they can also backfire if you make some common mistakes that annoy or alienate your prospects. In this article, we'll cover six sales email and call blunders that you should avoid at all costs and how to fix them.
One of the worst things you can do is to send unsolicited, generic, or irrelevant emails and calls to your prospects. Not only will this damage your reputation and brand, but it will also waste your time and resources. Spamming your prospects will likely result in low response rates, high unsubscribe rates, and negative feedback. To avoid spamming, you should always research your prospects, segment your audience, personalize your messages, and follow up with value.
Also, make sure to give your prospects an opt-out option. Not only is it the law in many jurisdictions, but if people are tired of hearing from you and can't figure out how to unsubscribe, it's so easy to just mark you as spam, which is so much for your email domain health.
Communicating with your prospects daily does not automatically bucket your outreach as spam. Nor does it automatically bucket you into being just another salesperson. As long as your prospect cares, you're making progress. If your messaging solves a problem, creates dialogue, answers a question, fulfills a need or makes your prospect smile, it's working. Don't confuse spam with progress.
If you’re being helpful and providing value or insight in some way, I feel that’s acceptable. Also everyone has different communication styles now where I feel that using different outreach methods is necessary but tying all those together is important. For example, if leaving voicemails, state that your sending over an email and reference you left them a voicemail in your email, if you have their email. This will provide multiple ways for them to get back with you and display a little more effort.
The subject line and the opening of your email or call are the first impressions you make on your prospects. They determine whether your message will be opened, read, or listened to. If you use weak, boring, or misleading subject lines and openings, you will lose your prospects' attention and interest. To use strong subject lines and openings, you should always focus on the benefits for your prospects, create curiosity, and use clear and concise language.
Subject lines should be short and crisp. Too long a sentence in the subject or the opening can lose the attention of the prospect very quickly. Something that generates curiosity or relates to the problem prospect might be facing. Opening lines can also start with something based on a prospect's or company's LinkedIn post, especially if it's a cold outreach email.
Another common mistake is to talk too much about yourself, your company, your product, or your service. While it's important to establish your credibility and value proposition, you don't want to sound like a sales pitch or a brochure. Your prospects care more about their own problems, needs, and goals than about you. To talk less about yourself, you should always ask open-ended questions, listen actively, and tailor your message to your prospects' pain points and challenges.
Put more effort into trying to create a great dialog instead of a great monologue (elevator pitch). Being a great listener is key but I feel listening to what prospects and customers mean rather than just what they say is even more key.
One of the main reasons why prospects ignore or reject your emails and calls is because they don't see enough value in them. Value is what makes your message relevant, useful, and compelling for your prospects. It's what differentiates you from your competitors and motivates your prospects to take action. To provide enough value, you should always offer insights, solutions, case studies, testimonials, or incentives that address your prospects' specific needs and desires.
The cardinal sin in sales... "Show up and throw up." Your prospect doesn’t need to know every detail related to what you are offering. They don't care about every detail. They care about what results your product can deliver. Your product solves a problem for them, and that is where the focus needs to be. There is no better way to showcase inexperience than showing up to a meeting/writing your copy to only throw up every detail of your product/service. Sales messages must be tailored to the wants/needs of the prospect. Ask more questions to understand where to take your message. Get your prospect to do most of the talking. Stick to the points that matter based on what you know about the customer.
Finding the right balance between being too pushy or too passive is a key skill for sales email and call success. Being too pushy means being aggressive, demanding, or disrespectful. Being too passive means being vague, timid, or indecisive. Both extremes can turn off your prospects and hurt your chances of moving them forward in the sales cycle. To find the right balance, you should always be confident, respectful, and assertive. You should also use clear calls to action, set expectations, and follow up appropriately.
The last mistake you should avoid is not proofreading or testing your emails and calls before sending or making them. Typos, grammatical errors, broken links, or technical issues can ruin your professionalism and credibility. They can also cause confusion, misunderstanding, or frustration for your prospects. To avoid these errors, you should always proofread your emails and calls for spelling, grammar, punctuation, formatting, and clarity. You should also test your emails and calls for deliverability, compatibility, and functionality.
Proofreading! Yes! Need to be intentional to slow down and re-read the email. In fact, read it out load. This will allow you to “hear” what you wrote. Hence, you may pick up the tone of your words. The emotion you are attempting to portray often times gets lost and this will catch any negativity or being to direct.