Hi I'm Pat 👋 Want To Get Married?
What We Get Wrong in Cold Outreach
Welcome to Commission Breath! The quick weekly newsletter that helps sales professionals stay on their game and be their best self. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, you can do so here.
Morning friends.
Last week I received a cold email from a b2b sales rep. It was a NOVEL of a cold email (seriously - wouldn’t surprise me if that email is for sale on Amazon someday).
While I’ve never sent THAT long of an email, by no means have I been perfect with my cold outreach. Whether it’s email, LinkedIn, etc. I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’ve sent some longer than necessary messages before.
So today, I use a dating analogy to show what bad cold outreach can look like, and provide a framework for a good cold email - something I’m always fine tuning.
Let’s get to it!
Honeymoon in Mykonos?
You’re out at the bar and you see someone you’re attracted to.
You have two options when you approach the person:
Tell them your life story and explain in detail why you should get married
Say hi and ask an engaging question
We can all agree option 1 is a little psychotic, and option 2 is the more natural approach that gives you a better chance at continuing a conversation.
But when it comes to cold outreach, sales reps are closer to option 1 than to option 2 more often than they should be.
Why tho 👀
Cold outreach isn’t easy. And when it comes to email and LinkedIn outreach, it’s a gray area where sales, marketing, and copyrighting all come into play.
Combine that with sales people who believe in their product, and they end up explaining every single feature to a prospect to convince them how great it is.
But on the first email, including all of it is too much. It’s skipping steps - rather than just selling the next step in the process, you end up trying to close a deal in one email.
Most of us probably aren’t sending novels in our cold outreach like the one I received last week, but it’s good to take a fresh look at our approach.
Cold Email Framework
Keep it short. My max word count is capped at 200, but ideally it’s half that. Remember: long emails run the risk of burning your prospects eyes upon opening it.
With that in mind, here are the 3 components of a good cold email:
1. Quick Introduction
Introduce yourself and move toward your reason for the outreach.
Pattern interruptions such as a GIF, calling yourself out for cold emailing, etc. can help humanise you and drive a prospects curiosity to read the entire message.
2. Value Proposition
Fight the instinct to list all the features and statistics of your product/service, and instead explain how those features would help them.
Remember: people don’t care what your product can do, they only care what it can do for them.
Adding a social proof right after the value prop can be a nice touch as well. Something such as “This is why X number of companies use our product” or “This is why [big name client] happily uses our service”.
3. Call to Action
You’ve done the hard work - now just push the next step with your call to action.
Passive: “If you’re interested, I’m happy to have a chat to discuss it further”
Direct: “What time works best this week for a call?”
I’m a fan of the passive CTA as it feels less sales-y than the direct, but if your targeting is on point and you’ve written a good email, you should get a positive response regardless.
* * *
All in all, it takes time and effort to write a good templated cold email, but it definitely pays dividends in the long run.
Other Notes:
Personalized emails are of course the best approach, but when working with a prospect list of thousands, templated emails are necessary.
Subjects: there’s lots of strategy around this to drive open rates, but personally I’ve had 60%+ open rates with generic subject lines so I wouldn’t overthink it.
I’ve seen many dating analogies for sales, but the one used above was from Collin Cadmus via LinkedIn
I’m thinking of creating a resource with actual examples of good cold emails using the framework above - let me know if you’d like this!
What Do You Meme?
cc @Jason via Twitter
Quarantine in a nut shell.
Interesting Finds
Limited Edition Dr. Fauci Baseball Card Shatters 24 Hour Record
A Topps baseball card - featuring the man who always sounds like he needs a glass of water - doubled the sales record for a single card after selling 50k+ copies in 24 hours
17 Year Old Identified as the Twitter Hack MasterMind
A seventeen year old hacked 100+ Twitter accounts including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Kanye West - then schemed his way to $120k in Bitcoin.
Coca-Cola Gets Into The Spiked Seltzer Gam Through Topo Chico Brand
Too many spiked seltzer brands to keep track of. If it’s not a black cherry White Claw, I don’t want it!
Looks Like Microsoft is Buying TikTok..?
Does anyone over the age of 25 even use TikTok?? Regardless, it’s apparently a national security threat so 🤷♂️
Food For Thought
I left a quote below that I stumbled on awhile ago.
My translation of it is this: By accepting the fact that you might fail at something, you take the pressure off yourself which lets you perform better and increase your chances of success.
It’s a cool little mental hack that can help in high stress situations. I hope it helps you when you need it.
Have a great week y’all!
-Buck$
“It is the one who has surrendered the outcome who has the greatest chance of success. It is the one who has surrendered to the fact that he could fail, who has the greatest likelihood of not failing. Until you surrender the outcome, you will always be the greatest enemy to your own success. In order to reach your greatest potential you must operate with a heart posture of gratitude, commit to the controllables, surrender the outcome, and trust the process”
-Rex Weyler, Chop Wood, Carry Water
P.S.
Please reach out with any questions, suggestions, or constructive feedback by emailing me: pdbuck15@gmail.com . I’d love to hear from you!