Access Business Analytics
Cold emailing is the equivalent of cold calling – the solicitation of a potential customer who had no prior interaction with a salesperson – and is simply handled by email. It means you reach out to a sales target without them having made the first move. And that’s why it amounts to shooting an arrow in the dark. Why? The prospect doesn’t know you. Your email may land in a spam filter or remain unread even if it was delivered. Cold emailing is a tough exercise. Sometimes your arrow will hit, but often it will not. What you have to do is add a bit of light to the darkness to increase your chances of hitting the target. But it’s not as easy as flipping a light switch on. It requires discipline and – for most LSPs – a complete rethinking of how to email prospects.
You don’t want to address prospects with a generic message about your company. Instead, use sales targeting principles whereby you define a target market, the best entry points into each market (so-called “client personas”), and then prioritize the leads most likely to buy (see “How to Target Sales Efforts on Leads Most Likely to Buy”). This enables you to form groups of sales targets with similarities in needs and interests.
This process includes gathering at a minimum:
The next step of the preparation phase consists of determining how you can best address the issues common to the client persona you are targeting. Each persona in each market may end up with a slightly different version of your answers.
Most LSPs use cold emailing to present what they do, describing offerings and features. Prospects can then self-select whether they see the LSP as a fit and can reach out for more info or a quote. Selling this way is terribly difficult, plus these emails are particularly aggravating for their recipients – they are seen as time wasters.
Instead, change your approach:
In our sales workshops, we spend entire sessions dissecting actual cold emails from LSPs. We define best practices from the subject line to the opening statement, all the way to the signature. The emails we receive from providers trying to sell to us prove time and time again that very few LSPs have mastered the art of writing solid emails that won’t go straight into the prospects’ spam or trash folder. We’re observing a growing interest from LSPs in optimizing sales efforts – whether digital marketing, cold emailing, or cold calling. It takes discipline and effort to change ingrained mass mailing behaviors. However, by following best practices for targeted sales efforts, business developers can experience a noticeable increase in prospects’ engagement with their emails.
Director of LSP Service
Focuses on LSP business management, strategic planning, sales and marketing strategy and execution, project and vendor management, quality process development, and interpreting technologies
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