Author Topic: Sales resources!  (Read 1730 times)

monstermonster

  • Magnum Stache
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Sales resources!
« on: March 09, 2017, 08:40:27 AM »
Hello fellow mustachian entrepreneurs:

I'm looking for great, free resources on getting better at sales. I started my business 5 months ago, and it turns out that sales is my weakest area. Which isn't good when you need money in the door!

I'd love things that are particularly targeted at speakers, if possible, but I know that generally sales is applicable regardless of industry.  My biggest struggle is dealing with the awkwardness of cold-emailing college administrators (my clients), I put it off if I don't have a connection.

bunchbikes

  • Bristles
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Re: Sales resources!
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2017, 12:24:50 PM »
I'd love things that are particularly targeted at speakers, if possible, but I know that generally sales is applicable regardless of industry.  My biggest struggle is dealing with the awkwardness of cold-emailing college administrators (my clients), I put it off if I don't have a connection.

Well, if you're dealing with college administrators, I think speaking on the phone is going to work better than email.

However, if cold email is the route you want to go, you gotta get over the awkwardness. You need to re-frame this:  "I am selling something that will help them with X. My email isn't annoying, it's something they'll want to read".

If the possibility of a non-response is making this awkward for you, then realize that it's not that they don't want to respond to you, it's that they're too busy.  Which means you need to contact them again.

When I am doing cold-email campaigns to retail store owners, I will email 4 times. If they respond even somewhat interested, then I will continue emailing/calling indefinitely until I get a "ok here's my order" or a "fuck off!".   If you don't have one of those two responses, then you aren't emailing/calling enough.  You should not have anyone in the pipeline that is an unknown that you are not regularly trying to get ahold of.

I use quickmail.io to auto-follow up on my cold email campaigns.  Then, I use Pipedrive to manually manage any warm/hot leads and keep track of re-orders.

The Quickmail.io blog has lots of good of articles on cold emails: https://quickmail.io/blog/

Also Alex Berman's youtube channel has fantastic videos on cold emailing: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtkcfOqeArMZ0xlzB8TnQEvgkYrJRkNUa

bunchbikes

  • Bristles
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Re: Sales resources!
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2017, 12:33:31 PM »
If it helps, here is my 4 email cold-campaign. Not saying it's the best way to do it, but it does get me a 35%-40% response rate.

The campaigns goal, is to get either a response from the decision maker "Yes, that's me" which warms them up for you to send them your pitch. Or to get the email of the decision maker, which you can then email them with "Hi Mr. X, so and so said that I should send you an email about our products... proceed with pitch".

You definitely should not be pitching them on your first email.


1st email:

Subject: Appropriate Person?

Hi,

My name is CargoBiker and I'm the owner of XXXXX. We are looking to partner with a few established XXX Businesses like [Store Name]. Could you please direct me to the person that handles XXXX product buying?

Thanks so much for your help!


2nd email (3 business days later):

Hi, Just wanted to make sure the email below didn’t fall through the cracks. Please point me in the right direction when you get a second.


3rd email (3 business days later):

Just checking in again to make sure you received the email. If you get a chance to let me know I would really appreciate it.


4th email (3 business days later):

Just wanted to reach out again - if you could spare a couple of moments to let me know, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!