Tired of your emails not getting returned?

If you’re a sales rep who is sending emails and waiting….and waiting for responses that never come, then why not use some best practices that will give your emails the best chances of getting a response.

Here are five things you can begin doing right now:

Email Secret #1: Use the prospect’s first name in the subject line.

Putting your prospect’s name in the subject line (first name) will immediately distinguish your email from the hundreds of others your prospect gets. Because we’re all trained to respond to our own name, and this will draw your prospect’s eyes like a magnet.

Email Secret #2: Customize the first few lines of your email as much as possible. 

Many people preview emails by reading the first paragraph in Outlook, and the beginning better be short and have immediate value to your prospect.  Something like:

“Hi Barbara, Mike Brooks here with HMS software. I’ve got some ideas about your networking issues for your new office that’s opening in Houston next month. 

Again, keep it short, to their point, and provide immediate value.

Email Secret #3: Keep your email short and easy to read! 

Nothing will turn your prospect off more than long, information packed paragraphs.  Their eyes will glaze over! 

Break up your paragraphs into sentences if possible to make them easy to read and accessible. 

Just like I’m doing right now…

Email Secret #4:  Ask for a return response – whether they are interested or not. 

This is a great way to end your email and a good way to get a response. Simply thank them in advance for their consideration and that you’re looking forward to their response—either way—on this.

Email Secret #5: Promise to follow up by phone if they don’t respond. 

Let them know that you understand they are busy, and that you’ll follow up with a call in a day or two if you don’t hear back.

This really increases your response rate, and if you get a “not interested,” that’s okay! This prospect just disqualified themselves and saved you a lot of time and energy!

On the other hand, there will be others who don’t respond and they become your follow up leads…

Take a few minutes right now to script out some of the outline of your emails and then fill in the details as you need to per prospect. And then watch your contact, response and success rate skyrocket!

Further resources are available in the Mr. Inside Sales blog by clicking here (including an online training program to get even more proven inside sales techniques).