3 Reasons Why Your Sales Email Strategy Needs Improvement | Ryan Dohrn Sales Training Tips & Advice

What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. This week we are talking email strategy. Now, I've been accused time and again that I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be, and I'm not. I promise you, friends, if I can make it simple, I'm going to keep it simple. I'm just looking to work smarter. I'm not necessarily work— necessarily looking to work harder, but I recognize I need to be smarter and work harder, that's what's propelled me forward. Email strategy though starts from the very, very beginning. So let's talk through my 3 main steps of email strategy. All right, the first is what does the email look like? So I recognize 3 words in the subject line, 3 sentences max. You've heard me talk about that. Inside of the email, especially prospecting emails, I typically like to name-drop customers in that first sentence that I already have that are very happy. The second sentence, I try to mention a point of relevancy that I've learned on LinkedIn, something I've seen on their company Facebook page. And then the third sentence, I try— it's my ask, and I try to keep that ask pretty simple. That's part of my email prospecting strategy. Step number 1, have some type of templating format for your different outreaches with a customer. All right, second thing we want to work on is perfect send times. Now, all kinds of email service providers will tell you there is no perfect send time. That is baloney, my friends. That's a technical term, by the way. Baloney, my friends. In the sales business, there is perfect times to send emails to clients. You just need to know the industry you're working in. Or if you don't know the industry you're working in well, you just need to think of yourself as a normal human. Now, some trainers— not good ones— some sales trainers would say, oh, email somebody first thing in the morning. You want to be the first email into their inbox. Here's why that's bad advice, friends. Are you in a good mood in the morning? Typically the answer is not really. People start their day, say, at 7:30, 8 o'clock. Between 8 and 9, they are in delete mode. They're typically not in happy mode. Then between 9 and 10 o'clock, they're prepping for their first set of meetings that typically happens at 10 and 11, and then they're typically done by 11 or 11:15. By that time, you finally have gotten to your emails. That's why one of the perfect send times in corporate America is about 11:15. Most people don't book meetings before lunch because they don't want to interrupt their lunch. Now, if I'm not getting good responses and I need to monitor that at 11:15 or whatever's good for your client, that time of day. Not whatever's good for you, whatever's good for your client. Let's switch to the afternoon. But wait, Ryan, people at noon are eating lunch at their desk. That's a great time to send email. No, it's not. Do you want to be that person? That person that interrupts somebody's lunch? I've never had great success at lunchtime. Now we know after lunch, people typically are cleaning up email, getting ready for meetings at 2 o'clock. So I don't prospect or send emails between 2 and 3. Starting about 3:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon is my next, in my opinion, acceptable time from a strategic perspective to emailing people. 3:30 to 4:30-ish. Not much past 4:30. Also recognize if somebody's a parent, needs to pick up the kiddos from school, maybe you change the send time there. But it's important to recognize, do you have some type of strategy, or are you like an Old West gunslinger that's just walking through the town and shooting tin cans, you know, off the fence posts as they come up? You really don't want to be like that. It just doesn't make sense. All right, so that's the second thing, is the perfect time. So first Perfect email structure. The second strategy then is the perfect send time. And then the third is to put yourself in those buyers' shoes. Put yourself in your buyers' shoes. So let's just say that you work, your customers are contractors. Well, that would tell you that that's probably gonna be pretty early in the morning to send emails or pretty late at night because they're in the field during the day. Just as an example, let's say, let's talk doctors. Doctors typically 5:00 AM or 9:00 PM. Just look at when people typically reply to you and make notes inside your CRM so that you know when to be more strategic with it. Now, friends, as a part of that little strategy where you're trying to identify, you know, people's patterns, it actually isn't that hard. I've got customers now that I know will reply at 2 o'clock. I've got a couple folks reply always at noon, couple folks that are like 5 AM. So as a part of that strategy is using your email technology to its fullest. So in Outlook and Gmail, they both have send later features. All right, so let's pretend for a second you're a 5 AM kind of person. You're up answering email at 5:30 in the morning. Good for you, by the way. Good for you. Not me. Well, you want to send that email at the time perfect for the customer. So you're going to use send later, have it hit at 11:15, just as an example, or had it hit at 9 PM if that is the circumstance. Recognize, friends, that email technology can help you in that. That's why tools like Mixmax, If No Reply, those type of cadence tools can be very helpful to you as well. Sales doesn't have to be tough, but those that are successful are always more strategic. So when you're more strategic in sales, you almost always move conversations faster. You usually move the buying cycle forward faster. Look for ways to be strategic in everything that you do, especially your email strategy. So let me end with this. Let me just ask you, do you have an email strategy? or you are like that Old West gunslinger. Be somebody that has a strategy. Those with a strategy are almost always more successful. Friends, love to come motivate your sales team. Hire me to come to your national sales conference. We'll give people tactical and practical information they can put to use right away. Reach out to me over at ryan@ryandohrn.com. Alright friends, we'll see you next week.