How reps can use email to improve sales.
By Pete Mercer
For years, email has been the number one tool for business communication. In today’s technology landscape, there seems to be a new tool for communication released every quarter, but they fall short of the power or versatility of an email. Still, it takes a certain touch for an email campaign to be truly effective for your business. Sales reps need to understand how to craft compelling emails that will get the attention of their prospects and customers.
How can a tool that’s been around for all these years and is so commonplace be a viable option for today’s dynamic sales environments? Can something so simple still be a major player in the arsenal of a sales rep? Sales trainer and expert Sue Hershkowitz-Coore argues that the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.”
Repertoire Magazine recently sat down with Hershkowitz-Coore to discuss the importance and utility of email in today’s sales environment. As a sales trainer with more than 25 years of experience, Hershkowitz-Coore understands what it takes for sales reps to survive and thrive in today’s market.
How to build better email campaigns
The days of pushy sales tactics are long gone, replaced by a much more personalized and consultative sales approach. For Hershkowitz-Coore, that’s where the power of email comes in. “Email is the most effective sales tool. Now, it’s enhanced with Slack, Teams, texting, LinkedIn, and all sorts of social media. But the reality is that, without the ability to be strategic and smart with the written word, you are not going to get anywhere.”
Email is a great equalizer, ensuring that everyone is communicating through the same medium. Every company and every employee out there have an email address, even if they don’t have a LinkedIn. While it might seem like email is an outdated form of communication, Hershkowitz-Coore says that it’s here to stay.
“Nothing really happens without email. Let’s say I make a LinkedIn connection. We might start there, but we eventually get to an email because I have to send you a Zoom link. Everything happens around email and it’s not going anywhere.”
Everyone in a business environment knows how to send emails, but are the emails you send effective? Is your tone professional or casual? Are any relevant links included to provide more information? Is it informative or a waste of time? These are all the things that your sales team needs to consider while crafting their emails.
Hershkowitz-Coore said, “Companies get their campaigns correct when they are personalized, relevant, easy and authentic. The next step needs to be frictionless.” Sales reps are most effective when they are slowing down and adding value to the conversation, moving away from transactional relationships.
Any organization that is busy throwing stuff against the wall to see if it will stick will not be effective in their email communications. Transactional, inauthentic tactics just won’t cut it in this new sales environment. She said, “There are still many sales trainers out there who harken back to the day where they are trying to create urgency or trying to pretend they have a personal relationship with their customers, instead of building business relationships.”
How AI factors in
In recent months, ChatGPT has quickly become a trending topic regarding the emergence of artificial intelligence. We have already seen renderings of different pieces of art, celebrity parodies, and even additions to film and television through artificial intelligence. You can scroll through social media to see people sharing scripts of popular shows like Seinfeld or Friends that were created through AI. But how will that impact sales reps?
One way that sales reps can implement artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT is in creating email campaigns. AI can be an incredible tool, but the reality is that ChatGPT is drawing on things and ideas that already exist. It’s certainly powerful with what it can do, but it’s limited to pulling from existing content. For it to be really useful, you just need to steer it in the right direction.
“We need to be sure that we know how to prompt engineer ChatGPT,” Hershkowitz-Coore said. “A really good way to think of tools like ChatGPT is that it’s like having a really enthusiastic assistant who is inept. You have to check the output and you need to be able to ask the right questions.”
As for how it can be used in business and writing things like emails, Hershkowitz-Coore is excited about the potential of artificial intelligence. She said, “I think artificial intelligence is already changing the world and we can either run away from it, we can bury our heads in the sand, or we can move toward it and embrace it. I’m looking forward to getting people to embrace what’s possible with artificial intelligence.”
What it takes to be successful in sales
Because the sales environment is so different from what it used to be, it can be hard to know what it takes to be successful right now. The relationship between the customer and the sales rep has transformed from a transactional push and pull scenario to a much more personalized business relationship. It requires an entirely new approach from what’s been done in the past.
One of the things Hershkowitz-Coore said that sales reps need now is patience. Instead of rushing into a relationship with the sale in mind, sales reps need some breathing room for the relationship to grow. She said, “I think that you have to create safety for the other human being to take their time and talk to you.” When you aren’t pushing towards a deal, you will have a much easier time connecting with the customer to learn more about the problem they are facing and how you might be able to solve it. The customer will be much more open to what you have to say when you take the time to listen to them.
Sales reps also need to be less focused on the product or service. While what your company offers is important to the customer and critical to the success of the sale, the focus should be less on what the product or service accomplishes and more about how you can better serve the customer – how the person to whom we are selling will be more successful. “An old example is that nobody buys a drill because of the drill, they buy the drill for the hole that it makes. Successful salespeople go a step further than that. For them, it’s not about the hole that the drill makes, but about the painting or the photograph that will hang on the wall.”
Sidebar:
Email stats
According to The Radicati Group, Inc.’s most recent Email Statistics Report:
- Email continues to see strong growth with both consumer and business users. Email is an integral part of the overall Internet experience as an email account (i.e. email address) is required to sign up to any kind online activity, including social networking sites, instant messaging and any other form of presence on the Internet. Online commerce also relies on email for confirmations, notifications and all pertinent communications.
- The total number of business and consumer emails
sent and received per day will exceed 333 billion in 2022, and is forecast to grow to over 392 billion by
year-end 2026. - The number of worldwide email users will top 4.2 in 2022, and is expected to grow to over 4.7 billion by the end of 2026. Over half of the world population uses email in 2022