I’ve written hundreds of cold emails over the past year and come to a few conclusions about how to elicit a positive response. I’ve also received a few myself and consistently see people use strategies that just haven’t worked for me. Here’s my two cents on how to cold email prospects effectively.
Do:
Keep it 4 sentences or less (ideally 3).
When you send someone you don’t know a novel to read, you’re making them work. Busy people have too much on their plate to dedicate time to a speculative narrative – so they don’t read them diligently (this may not apply if your email domain rhymes with moogle or hicrosoft).
Most long, cold emails I receive are from JV sales people that rarely …
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Many people miss opportunities because they don’t make things easy when they ask for something.
The best way to increase the number of positive responses you receive when you ask for anything, is to make it as easy as possible for the other person to follow through. The more difficult fulfilling a request appears, the less likely they are to do it.
I want to take this opportunity to highlight a few examples of “making things easy” done right so people know what this looks like.
Hiring
This is an email from my buddy David Fraga. Instead of making me hoof it over to the Shutterstock site to fetch all this information to forward along, he linked to it throughout the ask email. He …
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Business Development professionals live and die by their network. Thus, many of us end up living and dieing by our LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s greatest value is that it provides transparency to the personal networks of my immediate network in the form of 2nd degree connection. This information is often the gateway to the deals, partnerships, and sales we strive for on a continuous basis. Consequently, it’s in all business development practitioners best interest to expand their *true LinkedIn network. After all, the difference between the deal of a lifetime and no-deal could be just one warm introduction. But in order to even identify these opportunities there must be transparency.
A best practice to make sure you’re effectively engaging in this is to schedule …
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Meetings can be a colossal waste of time especially in a field that harbors speculative conversations like Business Development.
When appropriate, one practice I use to maximize meeting efficiency is to email the meeting attendee(s) an agenda 2-3 hours prior to the meeting. These emails typically contain the meeting objective, an outline of what will be discussed, and any questions that I know that I’ll be asking. An example might look like this:
Subject: Meeting Agenda For Today’s Call
Hi Scott,
I just wanted to send you an agenda prior to our 2pm call so that your team has an idea of what to expect.
The goal of this call is to see whether your team is ready to implement our solution within the next …
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People you don’t know are always more likely to respond to your emails when you’ve been referred. It signals you’ve been vetted.
Unfortunately, we don’t always have someone willing to introduce or refer us to the person we’re trying to reach. One way to combat this is by creating a referral. The methodology is pretty simple and can be applied even before you’ve identified the decision maker:
Step 1. Call Above Someone in the Organization
By calling above, I mean call someone who holds a higher, related position within the corporate hierarchy. I.E. If I’m trying to reach the VP of marketing, try calling the Chief Marketing Officer’s office.
When you reach this person, simply ask them who is responsible …
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In the business development world, the world silence usually has a negative connotation, but when you’re pitching it can be a good thing.
People are naturally uncomfortable with silence during a phone conversation with a new acquaintance. When they encounter it, they don’t know what to do…so they just start talking.
Often there are valuable pieces of information that prospects hold close to their chest. An example might be how interested they are in buying your product or service. Just like on a car lot, they might not want to seem too interested to maintain bargaining leverage. Other times there’s questions that are just awkward to ask directly.
You can use the silence disposition to your advantage in these type of scenarios. Purposefully …
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I just posted a new class on Skillshare called Business Development: Going In Cold
About The Class
This class is an entry level Business Development/Sales class focused on how to go about getting meetings with people you don’t know. This class is ideal for entry level BD/Sales people working at startups who will need to maverick their way into getting in the door or anyone interested in this role at a startup.
In this class I’ll teach the basics of:
Building A Pipeline
How to Identify Decision Makers and Play LinkedIn like a Keyboard
How to Find Anyone’s Contact Information
How to Write a Cold Emails that Actually Gets Responses
How to Ask for Intros Without Being A Toolshed
Cold Calling Strategies* – Cold calling will always suck, but …
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One mistake people make in BD and sales is they assume prospects speak their language.
“We provide a free API….”
“It’s the simplest CMS on the market…”
These are presumptuous statements. I’d like to think that the prospects I reach out to know what an API or CMS is, but it’s just not always the case. If understanding my value proposition is contingent upon familiarity with specific terminology I risk losing an opportunity. Why? Because people are too lazy to investigate something they’re not familiar with. That’s why it’s imperative to communicate your value in such a way that anyone can understand. It sounds incredibly obvious, yet I see people make this mistake time and time again.
For initial outreach I aim to include …
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