“Don’t blow all your talking points in that first email, so that you have something else to say when you follow up. And make sure to spread it out through the cadence and you won’t run out of things to talk about.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 388
Thank you Jason for all of your great tips and good luck with your new show!
Join the conversation below and be sure to connect with Jason!
Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay on LinkedIn
Jason Bay on Spotify
Submit a Sales Tip
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. This is going to be the last time that we get to hear a great prospecting tip from Jason Bay at Blissful Prospecting for a while because he’s getting ready to launch his own podcast. Here he is with his final tip, for now:
Jason Bay: Cadences or sequences as they’re called with Outreach.io’s platform is essentially a series of touches that you can use to get ahold of a prospect. So there’s outbound sequences and cadences and or inbound sequences and cadences. I’m going to talk to you about outbound and the reason why this is a really relevant thing is that typically when we work with companies, I tell them that you need to reach out to the prospect 10 to 15 times over the period of 30 to 45 days and usually get a lot of concerns. And number one concern is… “Hey, I’ll run out of things to say.” Number two is… “Well, aren’t we going to be bugging the prospect.” And number three is… “Yeah, I don’t want to be a spammer.” And these are all legitimate concerns. But the reality is that most salespeople might call once or twice send one or two emails and then they give up. And I have a theory on why this happens and I want to share why it’s really important to not quit after three or four times, even if you’re doing an outbound sequence where the person did not sign up to hear from you.
The first theory I have is fear of persistence in the best way that I could describe this is through ad campaigns. And if you think about really popular companies like Nike and whatnot, a lot of the studies that they’ve done with ad campaigns is that we need to see an ad 7 to 10 plus times. That rule of seven is a really good one to use, but we need to see it 7 to 10 plus times before acting. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a well-known brand like Nike or a brand that you’ve never heard of. So the takeaway there is that most of us don’t have the brand recognition of a company like Nike. I’m assuming if you’re listening to this, so it’s not normal for a prospect to respond to your first few touches. So if you think of your outbound sequence, like a highly targeted personalized ad campaign, you’ll approach it a lot different. So now it becomes how can I create enough intrigue for this person to respond to this email order answer the phone. So just keep in mind that if someone doesn’t respond, they don’t respond to Ad campaigns from really well-known companies either, so you gotta be persistent.
The second theory I have, and this is a lot of what people have shared with me is… “Hey, I have nothing left to say. What do I say if I’ve got to reach out to the person 10 or 15 times?” So the action item here that you can focus on is not blowing all of your talking points in bullet point form in your first email. The big mistake I see sales teams make is that first email has three to five points in it and it’s all their value props, all the challenges they fix. It’s this huge, long-winded email and it leaves them with nothing else to say when they follow up.
So what you can do is come up with two to three strong value props or talking points that address what your prospect wants to accomplish and then challenges that might get in the way of them doing that. And you’re going to spread it out throughout the sequence. So sequences and cadence, there’s no magic formula, but a way that you can approach this is if I have three talking points. So talking point A is something around saving time and you want it to obviously be more specific than that, but I’m just saying something very generic. We can talk about saving money and then for us we might use the third one might be increasing response rates, let’s say by doing something with your cold emails.
So that first talking point, that first email is only going to talk about the value props associated with saving money and then any challenges associated with that. And then you’re going to call the person and your value prop that you’re going to lead within the challenge that you’re gonna talk about is around saving money and how you help people do that.
The second email, let’s say the person doesn’t pick up or respond to the first couple outreaches, that third touch, so you’ve already done a phone touch and an email touch. That third touch is going to be an email with a really short followup and I might say any thoughts or it might say… “Hey, I forgot to mention we have a case study with a company that’s very similar to yours and I wanted to share it for this reason.” So that’s three touches right there. And then you can add a four’s touch connecting with someone on LinkedIn and just sending a connection request.
So there’s four touches with two emails, one phone call and then in LinkedIn a message all centered around that first talking point. So that’s four touches for one talking point, multiply that by 3 and you have 12 touches with three talking points. So don’t blow all your talking points in that first email, so that you have something else to say when you follow up. And make sure to spread it out through the cadence and you won’t run out of things to talk about.
Scott Ingram: What’s ironic is that the title of this tip is I Run out of Things to Say. That’s really not Jason’s problem at all, and not why he’s moving on from his regular spot on the show. Instead, he’s really got more to say and we’ve talked about the podcast that he’s planning to launch in March and you’re definitely going to want to listen. So do yourself this favor and click over to DailySales.Tips/388. First, connect with Jason on LinkedIn, and then follow the link to Blissful Prospecting and join his mailing list so you’ll get to hear about his podcast launch, and in the meantime, I’ve created a Spotify playlist of all 32 tips that Jason has contributed. The short link to that is DailySales.Tips/JasonBay
Thank you Jason for all of your great tips and good luck with your new show.
Now don’t forget to come back tomorrow, for another great sales tip!