Archive for March 23rd, 2009
8 Good Email Sales Lessons From One Stinkin’ Sales Email
I got this email today from one of the LinkedIn groups I am associated with trying to sell me outsourced services for my business. I opened it up, read the first three lines and deleted it.
Then I decided to pull it back out and see if I could improve on the efforts of the original sales person and make a sales lesson out of it. I am ignoring the spelling/gramatical mistakes as I am not an English teacher, I am a VP of Business Development. The names have been changed to protect the sales or marketing knucklehead that wrote it.
The Original – feel free to skip ahead as I could not get past the first 3 lines of this email on my first pass.
HEADLINE: For Possible Business Collaboration / Oppurtunities
Dear Mr.Val,
I represent ABC Company, an offshore based services outsourcing Organization. We help our world-wide clients with our outsourced services such as;
Global HR Services – All Technologies, All Business Domains, All Business skills, At all levels of expertise & Knowledge.
- Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO),
- Worldwide Contractor staffing – Offshore/Remotely working resources/Onsite resources
- Online/Remote/Onsite Training & Development -Technology & non Technology training, e-learning courses development & Administration, Monitoring & Managing Training needs etc.
- Payroll Processing
- Employee records maintenance, & verifications
- Travel &, Accommodation
- HR policies & strategies
- Market /Competitor research
- Employees Compensation & Benefits
- Performance Appraisals processing, Administration & Management.
In addition, ABC Company helps worldwide organizations in the following areas;
1. Information Technology services (IT solutions development, customization, integration, Migration, upgrading, Implementation, Maintenance, Support etc. – All Technologies & Business Domains
2. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO services – (a) Engineering – Mechanical, Civil, Architectural, structural b) Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO – all skills) c) Technical Writing & Communications d) Remote infrastructure Management (RIM – Monitoring & Managing any IT resources remotely, Technical Help desk, Systems & Database Administration, support, e) Animation, 2D, 3D modeling etc.)
3. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO – Document processing, Data entry, help desk, Data analytics, Data/market/IP research, Billing, verifications, Transcriptions etc, Outbound/Inbound Calling services etc – All Business domains and skills)
4. Bioinformatics (Contract/Collaborative Research & Development, Consulting, Life Sciences Software Applications & Tools, Data Mining/Data Analysis, Data & Applications Integration. Clinical Trial I/Medical informatics, LIMS, Internet/Intranet Applications, Multimedia & Virtual Reality Applications, Education & Training)
We have seen the following benefits accruing to our clients from our services;
1. We have a large team of highly qualified, experienced, talented, efficient, young and enthusiastic resources to support your organization in any of the areas shown above.
2. Our teams work as an extended team of onsite teams of our customers, thereby adding more strength and bandwidth and increase your teams’ skills and servicing capabilities.
3. Our resources can work on a 24x7x365 basis; our turn-around time for our service is very short. In most cases, the output will be in your inbox when you reach office the next day morning
4. We help our customers in cost savings of as much as 30-60% on case to case basis
5. We can provide our resources in good numbers at a short notice, and quickly ramp-up to meet your business needs.
6. Our clients save the hassles of constantly searching around for resources, every time, a task needs to be accomplished.
7. Our teams bring to the table, a very strong technical & English Communication (verbal & written) skills, highly professional & helping attitude, business ethics, services delivery expertise & commitment
I would be very glad to know, if ABC Company can be of any help and support to your organization or any of your client organizations, in any of the areas shown above please. I appreciate your time.
My Version
HEADLINE: Are You Running Your Business or is Your Business Burying You?
ABC Company helped me save my business! ABC helped me identify why my operations costs were increasing even as our sales were slowing down. ABC handles the backend of my operation so I can focus on bringing in new sales.
Jay Richards, JR Enterprises (VIDEO CLIP: Jay talks about ABC Company)
Val,
Imagine I gave you a magic wand that let you eliminate every aspect of your business that you don’t enjoy, or that just seems to take your focus away from the things you feel you need to be doing.
How much better would your business be if you enjoyed everything you did and had the time to focus on growing your business?
What could you do if all of that extra weight was lifted off your shoulders?
My name is Val King and I specialize in helping guys like you offload all the excessive weight that keeps your business from soaring.
It is not magic, though, it’s our business.
Here are the Top 5 things our customers typically ask us to offload for them.
Human Resources.
Payroll.
Insurance & Benefits Programs.
IT Services & Help Desk.
Billing & Collections.
Call me at 800-xxx-xxxx and let’s identify the Top 5 things weighing down your business.
If it makes sense, I will offload your Top 5 list for Free for a few weeks so you can experience our brand of magic and experience the impact you can have on your business once that excess weight is gone.
Val
ABC Company manages all of the time consuming aspects of my business that I hated. Our business is growing again and I spend my days doing what I love. Thanks ABC.
Dave Johnson, Johnson Medical (VIDEO CLIP: Dave talks about ABC Company)
LESSONS LEARNED
The original email reads like a laundry list, these guys are into everything from 3d animation to Life Sciences and Bioinformatics. They list a lot of capabilities but this sales guy has no idea what my problems are, so he just lists everything they do in this email to make sure they cover every sales base possible.
LESSON: Research your customer and avoid firing a shotgun email like this one. Narrow your focus to what you are absolutely best at.
The intent of this extensive list of services is to show me that they can help me in many different areas of my business with a huge stack of sales offerings and services. However, I read this feeling that they could not possibly do all of this well. I have no way of knowing which sales offering is their strongest, nor do I want to take the necessary time it would take to figure it out, so my instinct is to hit the delete key.
LESSON: Avoid the temptation to send out a laundry list disguised as a marketing email. It weakens your message and erodes some of your credibility.
The original email establishes no credibility for this company. I have never heard of them and the only person telling me how great they are is the sales guy.
LESSON: If the only person saying your company is good is the sales person then no one is saying anything good about your company as far as I am concerned as a customer. Use legitimate references I can call or for a bigger bang for the buck, use video references I can watch.
There is no tie to what any of these services do for me, the guy that is supposed to pay for this fabulous service. The sales professional should paint some sort of picture of how my life as the business owner or how my company might be better if I just offload this stuff to them.
LESSON: It is your job as the salesperson or as the organization sending the email to explain to me how I will benefit from your product. If you don’t make that connection, don’t expect me to respond.
There is too much text in this flippin’ email (and probably this post.) The text is small, there are acronyms all over the place (RPO, KPO, LPO, RIM, and LIMS.)
LESSON: Be as short and concise as possible as you are imposing on my time with your email and use language that is plain and free from industry jargon.
They use the work “all” eight times in the email. Example: ”Global HR – ALL Technologies, ALL Business Skills, at ALL levels of experience and knowledge”
LESSON: Horsefeathers. I don’t believe it. I will delete it.
There are 7 stated benefits for me the customer. Some are ridiculous adjective fests…
Benefit 1: Large team that is highly qualified, experienced, talented, effiecient, enthusiastic and as if that was not enough they are also described as being young. I don’t know about you, but I feel better already.
Some are not benefits to me at all; they are minimum standards like…
Benefit 7: Our teams bring very strong technical and English communication skills.
LESSON: It is only a benefit if it benefits me. Write your email as if you are standing in my shoes, not trying to talk me out of them.
This was the closing line. “I would be very glad to know if ABC Company can be of any help and support to your organization…in any of the areas shown above… I appreciate your time.”
When I read this closing line what I get out of this email and what the salesman wants me to get out of this email are clearly two different things. I am sure the salesman would like me to look at the list like some sort of ala carte menu, make a few selections and get back to him so he can work up a quote.
What I read is that the salesman at ABC Company is too lazy to figure out what my business is or what I do all day. He has effectively hit me with a list of SIC codes and a Scan-Tron asking me to color in the little circle next to my selection with a #2 pencil and get back to him.
LESSON: Figure out what I need to buy before you try to sell me something. It seems to work better that way. If you are going to be lazy and not do the research then don’t send the email at all.
Got a suggestion of your own to improve on my improvement? See another lesson here worth covering? Add a comment.
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