Is your Email Even Worth Deleting?
By: Jon Manley
Tags: Business, Marketing, Covid-19, B2B, Sales

I want you to close your eyes and think back on a simpler, easier, more innocent time in your life when you actually had the available time, or curiosity to read every random email that came into your inbox.

As with most people in sales, my inbox is flooded with incoming email 24 hours a day. Same with my social media accounts like LinkedIn.

IF I was going to set time aside to read every email or LinkedIn request I receive, that is all I would be doing, so unless I am being messaged from someone I know, on something specifically pertaining to me, or by someone who has done a fantastic job crafting their message to quickly grab my attention, most of these emails and messages get buried in the busyness of the day.

Just during the 5 minutes it has taken me to write this so far, I have over 15 new emails, and 3 LinkedIn messages.

The last email had the subject line — “Did you see my email?”

If I had saw your previous email and didn’t reply, your message did not have enough value or reason for me to reply, and if I did not see your previous email, replying with a direct forward/copy of it is not going to stand out and grab my attention this time around.

I am not ignoring people to be a jerk, having spent my career in sales, I empathize with their challenge, especially this year with COVID, and the unprecedented challenge that has added to prospecting for sales professionals.

That being said, when you are in sales, it is not your target prospect’s responsibility to take time away from their day to hear what you have to say, you must earn that right by quickly catching their attention with a tailored, intelligently crafted message that is designed to highlight what is most important from your prospect’s point of view.

In 2020, this is not an easy task, people’s inbox’s are flooded with messages, and we all have information overload, standing out from the white noise is not going to happen by accident or by following the standard templates of alpaca farms, or a description or services, and a request for your prospect’s time to talk further.

Your email must immediately catch your prospect’s attention within the first 2 sentences, and needs to be precise, while using the least amount of words possible. No one wants to read a book in their inbox, and if people see a wall of text they won’t even bother looking.

Do not expect a prospect to reply to generic requests to touch base for their time or business.

In order to catch their attention effectively, reverse engineer your ideal prospect’s point of view, understand what is most important to them, and the statistically most common paint points they are likely feeling, that your service and solution address.

Stand out, be different, be unique, and do this by taking the time to understand that every prospect is different, and each person deserves a message designed specifically for them.

Your target prospect will appreciate and respond when you first take the time to understand what is most important to them.

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Thank you for reading, my goal is to add insight and motivation for your day. I am always thankful for likes and shares to your network as well.

#spreadpositivity

*special announcement* ~ I am very excited for my sales strategy book, “Stop Touching Base” which releases on 10/27/20 — I hope you will check it out and it makes a difference in your life and career.

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Before getting into IT sales in 2006, I was being paid minimum wage as a telemarketer; before that I had bounced through countless low-level jobs — I had (have) no college education, and it would have been very easy for my life to never change.

I came into the sales profession with 0 experience, knowledge, or connections. Since that time, I have worked my way up from Account Executive, to SR VP of Enterprise Sales for a 200M National technology VAR. Throughout that time, I have analyzed my formula based strategies, and honed them down to simple, easily repeatable processes that can be easily adopted and executed by any sales professional, regardless of their tenure.

It is amazing to me that 14 years later I find myself where I am today, with an incredible career, one of the top IT sales professionals in the country, and wonderful family and friends.

This turn-a-round in my life did not come by accident, and I will always owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who helped guide me along the way.

This is my way of doing the same for others.