get your sales emails UN-ignored.

Photo by Paolo Chiabrando on Unsplash

I'm torn today.

I'm feeling lazy to write but still want to add value...so I'm stealing from my favorite business/marketing thought leader Seth Godin lol!

His emails are one of the only newsletters I allow into my inbox (and I am anal about protecting my emails). 

He wrote something two years ago that I still benefit from, to this day. After I'm done writing a cold email or cold call script I'm proud of, I use this article to destroy my pride lol, but squeeze out an effective message that gets prospects to respond.

He talks about a hotel memo he received, but the principles of effective sales communication still apply.

Enjoy.

 Get your memo read

The unanticipated but important memo has a difficult road. It will likely be ignored.

The difficult parts:

a. no one is waiting to hear from you

b. you need to have the clarity to know who it’s for, what’s it for and precisely what you want them to do

c. you have to have the guts to leave out everything that isn’t part of (b)

Consider a memo that was left outside my door at a hotel recently. The management distributed 1000 of them and perhaps ten people read it and took action.

Here’s what to keep in mind:

1. Pattern interrupt. When was the last time you listened to the seat belt announcement on an airplane? We ignore it because we’ve been trained to ignore it. When you show up in a place, at a time, with a format that we’ve been trained to ignore, we’ll ignore you.
2. Write a story. You seek engagement. Talk about me. About you, about yesterday, today and tomorrow. If you earn the first sentence, you’ll need to sell me on reading the second sentence.
3. Frame the story. Help me compare it to something. Create urgency. Make it about me, my status, my needs.
4. Chunk the message. How many things are you trying to say? (Hint: two might be too many). Let me scan instead of study.
5. Include a call to action. Right here, right now.

Here’s a before and after of what inspired me.

 action steps

Take your current email copy and cold call scripts, and run them through Seth's five criteria above. It'll make you a better writer, communicator, and commission-check-picker-upper.

If you want to test your cold call script or email copy - reply to this message. I'm happy to be your sounding board.

I don't want you practicing on your million-dollar clients whom you only get one chance to impress. 

conclusion

You'll find that the shortest messages - with one- to two-sentence paragraphs, and a lot of white space throughout - win your prospect's attention.

More customers are checking emails on their phones. The more they have to scroll on your message, the less likely they'll respond immediately, if at all. You've made it too costly to read your message, and it'll get buried with further with incoming emails and other distractions. 

Optimize for how customers process messaging, and you're set up for success.