Three Cold Sales Emails: One Good, One Not So Bad, and One Ugly

This guy (since you cannot see me right now, just note that I am pointing at myself).

Well, maybe not all prospecting--there are certain methods I do not prefer. But overall, I do not hate prospecting.

This is probably not how every salesperson thinks about it, but the way I think about prospecting is this: I am the author, and there is only one audience member. What do I want to tell that person?

To answer that question, I of course consider my ultimate goal. But everything in between--how I reach for that goal--is style. My style is to tell a story that I custom-write for the one person who will read/hear it.

In some cases, I can do this at scale (see "The Not So Bad," for example). In other cases, I am speaking to a smaller segment--more than one person receives the same message, but not enough people to constitute scale (see "The Ugly," for example). But the best experiences--for both me as the author and the prospect as the audience--are one-to-one (see "The Good," for example).

Here are the actual emails I sent (names redacted, of course) and the responses they elicited. One of the three yielded two deals with one client worth a combined $120,000.

I think I will just let these emails speak for themselves.

(After you read them, tell me what you think).

--Subject--

Michael Jordan

--Body--

Look, there is not really a comfortable way to say this without sounding arrogant, so I will just just go for it...

Remember Michael Jordan?

(That is a finger "W," by the way...W for [company name, which starts with a W]).

Well, [company name] is the Michael Jordan of marketing, and if you show up to our next webinar (like this recent one, [URL]), I can prove it.

Just reply with the number of RSVPs, and the Michael Jordan of marketing will take care of the rest.

Should I put you down for a table of two?

JC

--

Jon Colgan | [company]

Talk to me now: [phone number]

Talk to me later: [URL]

Punch me in the face, M-F, at:

[office address]

--Response--

Thank you,

Friendly A. Female

--Subject--

When bad guys kidnap your family

--Body--

I am going to go ahead and demonstrate a little emotional intelligence: I am probably annoying the hell out of you.

I get it. No one likes to be interrupted by a salesperson.

(...who presumes that what he has to say is more important than what you would have otherwise spent that two minutes doing).

But here is my predicament.

You know that classic movie trope when a gaggle of bad guys kidnaps your family and then extorts you to do undesirable things to ensure their well-being?

Well, that is sort of like being a salesperson. To keep my family fed, I must do what I am paid to do--which is to ask people when they would like to evaluate [company]'s software.

So here is a proposal for how we can both get what we want.

If you reply with a date on which you would like to look at our software, then I will quietly disappear, not to reemerge until you and I speak on that date.

Deal?

JC

--

Jon Colgan | [company]

Talk to me now: [phone number]

Talk to me later: [URL]

Punch me in the face, M-F, at:

[office address]

--Response--

Wow, this was about the most offensive subject line I've ever gotten on one of these inane sales pitches. Here's a deal for you - your email address is now permanently blocked on [company]'s domain, so good luck ever hearing from us again.

Angry A. Dude

--Subject--

--Body--

Guy,

What if Sun Tzu worked for you?

(aside from the obvious requirement that he wield bras instead of bullets)

Let me take a stab at it.

One of Sun Tzu's six main principles in The Art of War is avoid your competitor's strengths and attack their weakness.

“An army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness.”

1) Strengths

• Unlike [company], Victoria's Secret has a veritable army: over 80K employees. Most of these work in Victoria's Secret's brick-and-mortar stores.
   
• One advantage of having a brick-and-mortar presence is that customers get to touch, see, and try before they buy.
   
• Another advantage is the advertising that each store's prominent real estate affords.
   
• Altogether, Victoria's Secret has stronger brand recognition than [company].

2) Weaknesses

• Much of Victoria's Secret's brand recognition owes to its catalogs.
   
• Yet its catalogs have historically driven very few sales.
   
• Which is why Victoria's Secret plans to abandon catalogs.
   
• Instead, Victoria's Secret will begin allocating more resources to retention and brand loyalty programs.

3) WWSD (what would Sun do)?

• [company] has the advantage of selling exclusively through its e-commerce store.
   
• You require fewer employees.
   
• Your brand recognition does not and (has never) relied on extraneous marketing efforts that do not drive sales.
   
• Every ounce of your brand recognition today owes to one of your customers having had a positive experience with buying from your e-commerce store.
   
• This makes you more efficient and gives you much greater output for your marketing inputs.
   
• [company] is better positioned for the loyalty and retention fight.
   
• Victoria's Secret intends to abandon what has been one of its competitive edges in owning consumer mindshare (catalogs), focusing instead on increasing loyalty and retention.
   
• Unlike Victoria's Secret, you do not have to solve the omni-channel challenge of capturing and leveraging all of your customer data.
   
• All of yours lives exclusively in your e-commerce platform.
   
• Victoria's Secret's is spread across all of its various POSs (points of sale).
   
• Sun would attack Victoria's Secret now while they are mid-transition, by simply being better and faster at retention than them.
   
• Specifically, to play to your strength and Victoria Secret's weakness, Sun would automate your retention efforts.
   
• Leaning on your customer database, Sun would apply data science to inform which actions would drive the most ROI.
   
• Sun would hyperpersonalize every message you send to your customers--because you can and Victoria's Secret cannot so easily.
   
• And again, because you can and Victoria's Secret cannot, Sun would automate all of this.

Now, Sun just laid out his entire strategy for beating Victoria's Secret.

Would you hire Sun?

JC

--

Jon Colgan | [company]

Talk to me now: [phone number]

Talk to me later: [URL]

Punch me in the face, M-F, at:

[office address]

--Response--

Best sales email ever - I'll give you 10 minutes

Send me some days/times for next week

Guy T. Loves

Which one was the $120,000 email?

Email # 3 landed me an invitation from a category-leading company's full management team to pitch a $67,000 project they helped us custom-design for them--beginning in our first call following this email. For context, my company had been trying to get a meeting with these guys for almost three years. We ended up closing that deal and later on closing a second deal worth $53,000 with the same company.

One email...one really good, cold email...that is what got us in--and, ultimately, yielded $120,000 from one client.

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