Sales Prospecting By Email – Are you making these mistakes?

Do you use email for your prospecting?

When used correctly email can be a great way to open up new business. Unfortunately, very few salespeople can use email effectively to open up new business opportunities. I was reminded of this when I  received a typical badly structured sales prospecting email yesterday. Here it is:

Hi

Please forgive the direct approach, but my name is xxxxxxxx  and I work for The xxxxxxxx Group and I am an online marketing consultant in your market sector.

I really like your site, but you may be curious as to how your site could rank much better for a wider range of relevant search phrases, and with that in mind I wondered if you would like a free SEO audit looking at the meta-data, the keyword density and a detailed analysis of the back-link profile.

That should give you an excellent insight into how your site is performing, and allow us to develop a plan for getting your site some much better search positions.

The audit is free and with no obligation. So do please get in touch.

Thanks and kind regards,

xxxx,

This came from a UK company and not one of those Indian SEO companies that sends out thousands of emails a day. It also came via my website enquiry form so I know the person had visited my website.

So what’s wrong with it?

Where is the personalisation, the relevance, the promise of a better future and business outcomes for me?

So what could they have done differently?

Here are a few ideas from me and I would love you to leave a comment below with your own ideas.

• Include my company name! They visited my site so they knew what my company name was.

• Include my name. There is an about me section on my website and they could easily have got my name as a contact.

• Don’t apologise for making contact (first line) – You immediately come across as unconfident and almost subservient in a potential business relationship.

• Use very specific and impactful language. “may be curious” – Are they or aren’t they?

• Make reference to the key search phrases that my site is geared to rank for in Google. Anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge could find out my desired search phrases within 30 seconds.

• Make reference to where I  currently rank for my key search phrases.

• Reference something about me or my company – Even a simple search on google would show anyone that I am active in social media and have written extensively about SEO and the role of social media in modern selling.

• If they really wanted me as a client they could use ‘trigger event’ selling., This is a process of identifying the key things that cause a prospect to want to seek out your services. An example could be a drop in search engine rankings which actually happened to me last week. For an SEO company this is easily achieved by a rank tracking software which would notify them immediately of any changes in my rankings for my key search phrases. A timely call or email based on that would make a huge impression on me.

• Reference a client or result they have achieved to peak my interest and to let me see what might happen in my business.

A very quickly drafted new version of their email could go like this:

FAO: Peter O’Donoghue

Hi Peter,

We recently noticed you dropped from number 1 to number 2 in Google for your websites main search phrase xxxxxxxxxxx. We appreciate this can have a major impact on the number of inbound leads coming into your business as recent research has shown that the number 1 spot get around 60% of the search click throughs whilst the number 2 spot only gets around 25%.

We specialise in working with companies that are already on page 1 for their main search phrases and want to consolidate their position as number 1 without worrying about losing rankings and business by dropping out of the search.

We recently worked with ABC Training company and consolidated their position from 4 to 1 within 2 weeks which has seen their inbound enquiries double.

We have a system we have designed to allow us to do this quickly and effectively and would like to demonstrate it to you in an online demonstration. Just click this link here xxxxxxxxxxxxx  to register and we can show you how  we do what we do. It’s a very structured online demonstration that will take no more than 8 minutes of your time plus whatever time for questions you have of us?

Warm Regards

XXXXXXXX

Which one would you respond too?

I won’t deconstruct my email yet as I would love to hear from you to see why you think I have included specific elements. Trust me they are all their for a reason! In a couple of weeks I will revisit the blog and deconstruct exactly why i have included certain sales triggers here.

Show me you are alive and join the commentary!!