How to increase your response rate when prospecting

The answer is very simple, personalization.

Think about the person you are currently sending an email too, and how frustrated that person is. Think about how many emails he or she receives everyday, from different sales reps, from different companies, selling different products.

So you need to stand out from the rest of the herd by personalizing the email. And the only way to do so, by doing a bit of research, which won't take more than 5-10 minutes per email.

What kind of information are you researching?

• Job title and description of prospect. This is incredibly powerful as it allows you to put yourself in the prospect's shoes, and picture what a day in that person's life was like. What do they do all day long? What are some of their KPI's? Which other teams do they work with? Who do they report to? How long have they been in the position/ company? What tools do they use everyday? Besides the business stuff, look at their interests, what posts they have been liking and commenting on, what posts have they been posting themselves, which university did they graduate from, past job experiences which coincidentally maybe one of your customers, mutual groups you are both under.
• Company itself. Total employees, revenue, offices globally, all that beautiful stuff. Any recent Mergers & Acquisitions? Take the extra mile and go through their annual reports if published. See where they want to go next year, and the budget for their technology spend. Look for ice-breakers when emailing C-suite to show that you've done your homework. It can even be last years or the last quarters results. Look at who else they do business with, are any of them your current customers or in the pipeline? Read their news on Google and their website, check their LinkedIn page to read their news, understand if they are hiring or not, have they recently raised funding, etc.
• Personalize a branded image of what your software/ service would like for the target customer, if they were to start using your solution tomorrow (Not required, but HIGHLY recommended).

Data Sources: Prospect's LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Google, Company Website, ZoomInfo, Company Annual Reports, Company Social Media, Competitor News and Social Media, Your own customer install base/ CRM for references

Okay now that you have 3-5 unique pieces of information on the prospect and company, it's time to start creating the email sequence for that specific prospect. This can be easily automated on tools like HubSpot or Outreach. If not, I'd suggest sending 2-3 follow-ups after the initial email, 3 business days apart each. Each email should be between 75-125 words, this guarantees a 50% more likely response rate on its own. It should look something like this:

Subject:

• "Congrats on the research point 1"
• "How is 'Customer City Name' now?"
• "Loved your post on.. research point 2I"

Be creative and not longer than 7 words.

Introduction

• Hope all is well. Personalize here according to the person, not the company. Compliment them about one of their accomplishments, actually read their posts and respond to it, Google their city and see what's happening there. This is not about you, or your service/ product, or even the company they work for. This is entirely 100% focused on the prospect himself.

Value Prop

• I noticed from your LinkedIn that you do 1, 2 and 3 everyday. Was wondering if you faced any issues with.. (what problems your solution solves)?
• We worked with customer (preferably from the same industry or same job function) to do 1, 2 and 3. So I thought there could be some synergies between us.

Call to Action

• Would you be open to a 15-minute call, and then you can decide if we need a follow-up or not?

Short, simple and chic and not pushy at all. And so should be the follow-ups, never follow-up without purpose.

Example of a follow-up:

Hello ____,

Hope you're off to a great week. Just dropping you a gentle reminder regarding the below.

I thought maybe this article/ video/ case-study might be relevant to you because of research point 3 & 4.

I just wanted to ask you a few questions about ____ to understand more on ___. If you prefer I could type them by email instead John?

Still put you meeting link.

Example of follow-up 2:

Hi ____,

Haven't heard back from you yet, thought I'd check in to make sure everything was okay?

I've been reaching out because research point 5. Would love to have a chance to hear from you and share a few ideas John, but if that's not possible, then I'd highly appreciate your response to know if I should continue to follow-up or not.

Thank you and all the best till then!

Meeting Link.

Feel free to use emoticons to add a human touch, they actually do help with responses. But not too many that you appear as a 5 year old, I'd say 1 ideally and 2 max.

Remember, your goal from cold emails is not to close a deal or instantly generate an opportunity. No, no, no. Your goal is simply to get that prospect on a quick 5 - 10 minute call to understand if there is a fit. If there is a fit, then you set up another discovery/ scoping call with yourself or your technical team, then a presentation/demo. Do not under any circumstance skip calls. Each call will unlock new information for you to relevantly present your solution.