The Other Golden Ratio
Experts in geometry, renaissance art, and Dan Brown novels may be familiar with the Golden Ratio. It's famous for its appearance in nature and use in art. Did you know the other Golden Ratio? It’s the You:I ratio, and if you forget its importance, your emails might never have their intended effect.
The "You : I" Ratio
Take a peek at the last several emails that you sent to a customer or prospect, and look closer at the first few sentences of each one. Here is a question for you - Who are those sentences about? If they are anything like the emails I get from vendors, chances are good that those sentences start with “I.” The problem with that is, realistically, we’re lucky if we can capture half of the attention of our intended recipient when we send an email. For many people, an inbox is a to-do list, and to-do lists were made to have items crossed-off. An email without relevance is an email easily deleted, and an email deleted is a task accomplished.
In those first few critical seconds when our customer or prospect is reading our email, he or she is making quick decisions, some even at the subconscious level. What or who is this email about? Do I recognize the sender? Does it require action on my part? Is it relevant to me? They might not even make it past the first sentence before their mind is made up.
One way to make sure our emails don’t pass the relevance test is to make the topic about ourselves rather than the recipient, and the guaranteed way to do that is to start off by talking about ourselves. “I saw on your website…” “I am the market sales manager for…” I, I, I. We’ve finally got our customer’s attention, and the first thing we’re doing is talking about ourselves! Before we've had a chance to get to the point, the customer is tuning out. It’s simple human nature that we prefer to read, hear, and see things that are addressed directly to us.
So, the You:I Ratio is the comparison of the number of sentences in your email that are about yourself (or start with “I,” or “My,”) to the number of sentences that are actually about the client. The more sentences in your email that are about yourself, rather than the intended recipient, the less relevant your communication will seem.
“A-ha,” you say. “My sentences start with ‘We!’” Dude. Everyone knows that “We,” is code for “I,” in sales-speak. I know this because I’m guilty of it as well.
Flip the Script
Here are three tips to make your emails more relevant, more likely to capture attention, and more likely to form a connection with your customers and prospects:
- Show your work. The cliche is that you should demonstrate you have done some research about the prospect, but that doesn’t mean you can open up with “I was looking at your website and…” Instead, try “Your company’s products/services look like they could solve a lot of common problems people are having with ____”
- Reference a shared contact or mutual interest. “Michael Scott was telling me how much you love paper products the other day, and…” Or, “Did you see Sister Jean do a backflip at the Loyola game last night?” Both are much more likely to establish that a) You aren’t a robot, and b) have something interesting to say.
- When all else fails, get right to the point. “Would you be interested in seeing some of the websites we’ve designed for other clients?” I get so many cold emails (and LinkedIn messages) that are basically giving me a four-paragraph reading assignment before I can figure out what the heck the person on the other end is asking for. I try to be understanding, but my own initial reactions are always a good reminder that I need to tighten up my written communication as well.
Are you willing to share some of your communication and selling strategies? What’s working for you?