99% of Salespeople Get Cold Email WRONG. Here's What the Top 1% Do Instead.

So 99% of SDRs and account executives, as far as I can tell, believe that the secret to cold emails is to sharpen your message, to sharpen how you explain the benefits and desired outcomes of your product. They're wrong. What you actually need to do is write cold emails in such a way that looks like a page from the diary of your target prospect. In other words, it's not about sharpening your message, it's about sharpening the problem statement and the story. Now, in just a few minutes, I'm going to show you three email examples, three cold email templates that do this really, really well. But first I'm going to tell you a quick story. Probably four years ago I had a rep on my team at Gong who is and was an amazingly effective account executive. He was really good at running sales cycles, okay? I would give any account to him and trust him to be able to close the deal. But he was struggling immensely when it came to building pipeline and he was behind the entire team. So him and I had a, it must have been a 90 minute coaching session where we went deep on what he was doing with his email templates, with his cadences and we started to rewrite some of them for him and coach him up on that. And at the end of the coaching session, one of the things he mentioned is I'm shocked at how little we're talking about Gong at all in any of these emails. He said, we don't say Gong. We don't even talk about the product, what it does, we don't talk about the benefits, nothing like that. And are you sure this is going to work? And I said, yeah, that's the point. The point is we want to agitate the pain and tell a story about the pain in a way that the buyer can see themselves in, right? Because that is their reality right now. They're not thinking about Gong, they're not thinking about Gong's benefits, and they might not even be thinking about the desire desired outcomes that Gong can deliver. Forget about the product, they are thinking about the problems that they have on their plate. And if you can write a cold email in such a way that captures that story, right, Looks like a page from their diary or journal, you will enrapture their attention. Okay, so here's a couple examples of email templates that do this really, really well. So the first one is quota signal, right? This is one of my companies where we sell basically sales, hiring services and software. We call it interviews as a service where we interview people on our clients behalf Anyway, this is what it looks like. We use this exact email, the one you're looking at right now, to book a ton of meetings. When we first launched that business, it says, hey, Kevin, looks like you're hiring across the board in your revenue organization. Congrats, Kevin. As the serial VP of sales or as a serial VP of sales, having grown your company by 765%, you know firsthand how difficult it is to hit aggressive head account targets without sacrificing your high bar for AE talent. It's a lose lose. You either hire fast, hit your targets, but let a few weak sellers sneak through, or hire slow, bring on strong account executives, but miss your hiring targets. Okay. We've helped over 100 vps of sales in the industry you're in decrease their miss rate on sales hires from 30% down to single digits. Is eliminating sales mis hiring for this fiscal year worth a shot? Now, there are a couple things to think about when it comes to this email. Did I talk about quota signal at all? No. Did I talk about how our product works? No. Did I even talk about the benefits? No. The reason this email template worked so well for us is because it describes the target buyer's problem better than they can describe it themselves. It put words to something they've been thinking and feeling better than they've been able to. That is the secret of secrets to cold outbound. Describe the problem your buyer is feeling better than they can describe it themselves. And this worked magnificently well. But just notice, it doesn't talk about quota signal. It talks about the BP of sales reality if they're facing a problem like that. So I'm going to give you another example. Right? Let's say I'm selling like Domo in this example, right? Business intelligence software, very competitive space. You can see the subject line is pretty visceral. Beat tableau, right? They really care about beating tableau because it's such a competitive space. And so this one says, hey, Rachel, looks like Domo and Tableau are in a fierce competitive battle. We're already starting to agitate pain. Rachel, as a seasoned business intelligence executive, you know firsthand that even though you have a better product, you can't rely on it alone to win competitive deals with tableau. Buyers will grind you down on price if your reps don't have bulletproof selling skills. To beat Tableau, you know, insanely great competitive. I should say you need insanely great competitive deal skills. I think we can help up for a chat about winning this horse race. Okay, a couple things to call out about this. Now, this one did start to edge into the territory a little bit too much, probably, of selling like the desired outcome and benefit. But you can get away with that because it captured pain so well. Right? Every deal in the business intelligence space is super competitive. Buyers pit the vendors against each other. And we don't talk about, in this case, P Club's product or value prop almost at all. Right. We hint at the desired outcome, but the bulk of this message is about, does this look like a page in the diary of the person we're selling to? Can we capture and articulate the pain that our buyer is experiencing better than they can? That is such a key. It's worth writing that down. If you can describe the problem your buyer's experiencing better than they can, they will automatically assume you have the best solution. Now, the last thing to call out about this template is check out the call to action. So it says, up for a chat about winning this horse race? If we go back to the first one, it says eliminating. Is eliminating sales hiring for this fiscal year worth a chat? Okay. Number one, it's a very easy call to action to respond to. Right? I'm not saying, hey, can you meet for 30 minutes tomorrow during your busy schedule? I'm just asking a yes or no question. And the frame of the question is about solving their problem rather than, hey, can I show you a demo? It's, hey, is it worth us chatting about solving this? Very easy and compelling call to action. So last template is kind of just the blank template. You'll notice that those two templates followed the same structure. And so this is what that structure looks like so that you can start to personalize this for your own world. Okay, so, hey, Josh looks like you. And then you insert a personalized, relevant observation. With your track record of unconventional growth, you don't have to use that. But, you know, depending on who you're selling to, you know firsthand how difficult it is to achieve X goal without sacrificing. Yes. Okay. That formula tends to work really well. You know how difficult it is to hit aggressive hiring targets without sacrificing your bar for talent. Okay, so what are your buyers trying to achieve, and what do they tend to have to sacrifice to get there? And can your product help with that? It's a lose lose. Right? So now you're expanding on this. You either accomplish X goal with Y negative effect or you accomplish Y with X negative effect. So now you're just kind of painting the portrait of a lose lose scenario. Right. That's a great technique for putting words on a problem. A buyer struggled to articulate themselves. Articulate? Is that what I said? And then you go into, we've helped X customers achieve positive business outcome. Right? We are talking about outcomes here, but it's very light. It's not the hero of the email. It's just kind of a teaser. We're not talking about the product. We're not talking about how it works. We're just talking about a desired outcome. I think we can do the same for you. Are you up for a chat? Okay, so like I said at the beginning, 99% of SDRs and AES, they get the whole personalization thing, they get the whole relevance thing. But then they think that the next key is, how can we sharpen our message, how can we sharpen how we explain the benefits of our product? And again, they're generally wrong. If that's the approach you're taking, you probably have an uphill battle. And your reply rates and booked meeting rates are going to be pretty low. Now, on the other hand, if your emails look like a page from your buyer's diary, if they capture the product or the problem better than your buyer can themselves, and if you're kind of agitating the pain in a compelling way, your buyer will automatically want to meet with you, okay? Because it addresses their current reality in a way that's very sharp, in a way that resonates. Go give this stuff a try, and I will see you in the next video.