Emails are powerful tools for connecting with prospects, but if your sales team’s outreach efforts are comprised chiefly of email blasts, then sales expert and Board of Experts member, Vanessa Nornberg, warns that your company is at risk of losing millions in revenue.
“Salespeople, especially younger ones, think that the way to a customer’s ear, heart, and ultimately pocketbook, is through connecting digitally. Their reasoning is always the same-;sending emails allows them to feel they are not bothering the prospect. They figure that the unobtrusive email will land in the customer’s inbox and if he wants something, clearly, he’ll call to buy. However, my twenty plus years of selling shows exactly the contrary. Emails don’t work. Here’s why.”
1. Emails are easily overlooked. – Most people’s inboxes are flooded with emails. Often it’s very difficult to tell which are worth a look see and which aren’t. If emails are your only method of sales outreach, then they could easily get lost in the sauce.
2. Emails don’t create a sense of urgency. – Vanessa warns that time is of the essence. While your team is busy typing out emails, your competitor could be working to actually get your prospect on the phone. Guess who’s more likely to close the deal?
3. Emails encourage back and forth instead of a closed deal. – Many times closing the deal is closely associated with being present at the right time with the right information for the customer. Emails don’t do a good job of capturing that moment, that opportunity to close a sale. Call based sales outreach DOES.
While Vanessa takes a slightly harder line on emails than we do as a company, there’s no arguing with her point that sales outreach is the most effective when emails are just one component of their outreach. Nothing replaces the human interaction that happens with a live conversation. As Vanessa says:
“The operative term is obviously CALL-;because merely sending emails into oblivion will send your company to the same place.”
You can read Vanessa’s article in its original form at Inc. Magazine’s website.
Article originally posted on birthingofgiants.com
Lewis Schiff is the author of Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons From the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons, the executive director of the Business Owners Council and the co-founder (with Norm Brodsky) of BEN Global Mentorship that helps business owners transform their companies into scalable enterprises and, eventually, enduring institutions with help from rockstar entrepreneurs from around the world.