Want to Sell? Stop Sending Emails

Leads, leads, leads — the basis of all business to business sales in the world. You need a lead to make a sale, to fuel your business, to make it profitable, to then hire someone to get more leads…you get the idea. In centuries past, the idea of selling to each other was relatively simple: I raise cows, you grow wheat, let’s trade and both have more effective farms and lives. As time went on, industrialization ushered in a new era, and things changed. It wasn’t a small cooperative or the corner store anymore, it became what are now conglomerates trying to grow year over year with increasing returns and brand portfolios.

Imagine being a purchasing manager in 1873 looking to buy a series of new office typewriters. There would be Bill from one company and John from another that you probably knew on a personal level who were trying to get your business. There was only so much competition, with businesses being much more difficult to start up, and trying to reach potential customers was a laborious and time intensive job. Good years may have meant a small sale once a week or a bigger sale once a month.

Cue the ringing of a telephone.

With rapid implementation of telephones in businesses in the first half of the 20th century, along with the now archaic phone book, being a salesperson got a little easier. Or at least that’s what many thought. With much easier access to more people in a much shorter period of time, pressure increased on sales to increase sales. After all, a salesperson who wasn’t on the road could talk just as well on the phone as in person, so why not keep them in the office and and “always be closing”?

Cue the shrill tone of a dial up modem.

Now obsolete to younger generations, fax machines were the next sales tool in trying to reach a greater amount of people with less effort (note: as much as we think fax machines are now obsolete, almost every major corporation still uses fax and many larger organizations and government offices still won’t accept an email as an official communication method, sadly. Long live the modem dialling concertos). I vividly remembering working at a store whose fax machine would print off an incoming fax advertising sales on office supplies, Alaskan cruises, and retirement homes. While this seems like an even more effective method than a telephone call, I can’t imagine many people were convinced to buy items from a company who was wasting their toner and paper without their permission.

Cue the silence of a router.

We’ve finally reached the final and current phase of the evolution of sales. Welcome to the internet — where ten minutes feel like one and now you’re late to a meeting about responsible workplace internet usage. Everyone has received an email similar to this in the last 20 years: “Dear Sir/Madam, We are A Commpany looking for A Representative In Your Country and We pay top wages $100,000.00 US DOLLARS. We hope YOU contact us For ThiS job offer thank you sir/madam”. While these spam emails are still going around, in the last year many clients of mine, along with me, have received well thought out emails that I’m positive have brought higher response rates.

An effective product website encourages you to make some sort of action. Whether that’s inputting your email to receive a coupon, or to call now to claim your exclusive offer. For example:

Subject: Possible call tomorrow at 10:30 AM

Good afternoon,

I hope this email finds you well. Are you available for a call tomorrow morning at 10:30am to discuss your current marketing strategy?

All the best,

John Doe

The email prompts you to take action, instead of just an informational email, and a number of people I know have been duped by these types of messages. However, it doesn’t take long to hang up on what someone thought was a genuine marketing agency, but instead is someone in a call center overseas. A room that used to be a few buyers and a few sellers has become a few buyers, and thousands of sellers crowding up the room. The pie baking hasn’t kept up with the pace of everyone’s appetite and it only gets harder with the increasing connectivity of the world.

Let me get back to the basics of sales and say that these emails, or any emails, faxes, and most phone calls, are a waste of time. Your best bet to make a sale is to take it back to a century ago. Talk to people, ask what they work in, what services you provide, and see if you can work together or help one another. Once you establish a relationship, then move to technology to communicate wherever needed.

I’ve been in some sort of sales since I discovered the concept of supply & demand in my early teens. I’ve had CRT monitors, a Motorola Razr, and brand new iPhones that I can use to send an email from anywhere in the world. None of that technology brought me a sale on its own.

Did it help? Sure.

What really got me a sale? I took my hand off my mouse, and used it to shake hands instead.

This article was originally published on February 28, 2018