Ten years ago, when a sales person was ignored, it was a non-confrontational way of saying “I’m not interested”. It wasn’t professional, but that’s what happened most of the time. A persistent sales person was asked over and over again: “Can’t you take a hint?” Well today, your prospects could be very interested in your service, and they’ll still ignore you. There are so many easy, immediate, and free ways to get information that your prospects won’t call or email you back until the last minute … and they don’t apologize for the 20 times they ignored you. Today, ignoring sales people is not an unprofessional hint that they’re not interested, it’s just a standard way of doing business. The unspoken mantra is:
“That’s interesting, but I’m busy right now. I’ll be able to Google that when I need it or search my inbox for your email, so I don’t need to respond.”
There are multiple reasons for this behavior, but for this post let’s just accept that this is a common way of communicating today. Unfortunate, but common.
We’ve got to use email, right? Even though the probability of a reply is lower than direct mail’s ratio in the 1980s, email is the most used form of communicating in business today. So, how do we use email more effectively to schedule appointments with our prospects? Below I’ve listed some rules of thumb. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll discuss the “when”. Below is a list of “what” to do…
- Make sure your email can be read in less than 25 seconds. Not your 25 seconds (sales people tend to read / skim faster than others), but the standard 25 seconds.
- Have one call to action that can be acted upon by your prospect from their smart phone in six words or less. If they can simply type something like “11:30 works”, you’ve got winner.
- Suggest one date and time for your meeting. Don’t worry if they’re not available at that time. If they’re interested, they’ll reply that they’re not available and may even offer other times, but at least you’re in a dialogue. If you offer a general time like “next week”, then they’ve got to do work and suggest a time to you.
There are a million other ideas – just google “best emails” – but these three are simple and will get you most of the way there.
What do you think? What techniques have you used in the past?
