Send Email, Start A Dialogue, Get the Sale

According to Lenann McGookey Gardner, the strategic use of email can be a vital tool for the successful sales person. A place to start, Gardner says is right after you meet a referral source or prospect. Gardner knows from first-hand experience and from her own research: her credentials include a Harvard M.B.A., being a #1 sales rep worldwide at Xerox Corporation and currently having scores of successful clients from Seattle to Budapest. When we met, Gardner provided the following tips for using email.

First, get a professional email address. Don't even think about using HotMail, Juno or other free email/Internet access services that signal you're not serious. Your "name@aol.com" might be acceptable, but your "name@ your Website address" is better. When you use your Website address in your email, you are marketing two things at once - yourself and your Website. You're also saying you're savvy enough to have a Website.

But be sure you know your prospect. Some people still don't use email. Other prospects you must contact via email - you can't reach them any other way. Realize that a new prospect isn't likely to remember you until you've made contact with them at least three times -- ideally within the first month. An in-person meeting might be the first contact. Email could be the next two. Keep in mind that usually the objective of this part of email is to get an appointment. Most sales people must make the actual sale in person.

When you send the email, send something useful: link to a Web page, attach your own newsletter, quote from a news article or book, etc. Email must be as properly and professionally written as anything you would send out on your letter head. You don't need an inside address and you can eliminate "Dear" and your signature, but your e-mail must be grammatically correct. Punctuation, spelling and even capitalization still matter to some people, so don't run the risk of turning off a prospet. Proof read your email and make sure it reflects well on you. Don't spam people, but keep in touch with people who are already contacts.

"Email is great," Gardner says. "Just don't make it your only way of staying in touch with referral sources, prospects or clients. E-mail is just too easy to delete." A brochure, newspaper article or other printed piece you send by postal mail is something the prospect can, for example, throw in a briefcase and read on an airplane.

Save emails you send to prospects so you have a record of how you've been communicating with them and file their incoming emails to you in the same place. Gardner doesn't recommend any particular contact management software program. No software program on earth can compose e-mail for you, make a sales call or start a dialogue. To do that, you need sales skills (or training if you lack those skills).

Finally, Gardner adds, "If you don't know what your message is, e-mail and a Website won't help you." She recommends that every company carefully position their products and/or services. "Positioning is a systematic process of developing a powerful message unique to you," she says. For more on sales and positioning, visit Gardner's Website at www.youcansell.com, or start a dialogue with her via email, Lenann@youcansell.com.

This article first appeared as a column written by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Inside Tucson Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.

Click HERE to return to Articles page

Top | Home