Sales Email Secrets For Success - sales training

Hey, what is going on, friends and fans? Billion-dollar sales coach Mr. Revenue Ryan Dohrn here, and thanks for joining us on this week's show. Thanks for all your comments that have been coming in, sending those emails to ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, here comes your sales quick tip of the week, friends. If you're leaving your email open 24/7, 365, and you're answering those emails in rapid-fire succession, you've got to be asking yourself Am I actually doing the right thing for me, your business, and actually for your customers? Now, I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't be prompt in your replies to your customers. Although what I am suggesting to you is that a lot of you, your inbox, your email, is actually what drives your day. Not an agenda, not priorities. It's as everything comes into your inbox, that's how your daily agenda is set. Now friends, I just want to be clear with you. I used to do this. I used to be one of those people when a customer would say to me, oh my gosh, Ryan, you're so quick to answer my emails. I sure appreciate it. I thought I was doing a really good thing for my customers. What I realized though is that I was setting a dangerous precedent. So when I wasn't able to reply, I was on vacation, in a meeting, driving to an appointment, a lot of times my clients were like, hey, where are you? I didn't hear from you. Normally you're so quick to reply. The busier you get, the less likely you can do that. And as the kids out there always tell us, hey old man, you need to get a life as well. So my advice to you in this quick tip this week is, sure, be prompt, but you don't always have to be instantaneous with every single reply. Because friends, it derails your day, and also it often sets an unnecessary kind of dangerous precedent and how you're always gonna behave with your customers. Can you actually keep that precedent up? I would say most of the time, not really, especially as your business grows. Never forget, friends, sales is tough. It's rough out there these days. If it was easy, everybody'd be doing it. I say it all the time, they're not. We are the chosen few. So get out there and sell something and make us all proud. All right, here comes your prospecting tip of the week. Friends, each year we gauge 25 subject lines for 25, 26 subject lines for '26, and we've already begun our tests here in 2026. Now, later on here in a couple seconds, I'm going to answer a listener question about brain loops, and that's related to subject lines as well. But just remember, if your subject line gives someone, a prospect, a client, all the information they need to make a yes or no decision, more than likely, if the answer is not yes, you're going to get deleted and moved on. So, what I like to do is keep my subject lines really short, somewhat intriguing, always ethical. Don't ever think I'm trying to bait and switch people, but I want you to be thinking, what will this subject line do? Will it cause someone to open the email, or is my subject line so complete that someone doesn't need to open the email in an effort to answer my email? If they can make a decision based upon the subject line and nothing else, they're probably not going to open your email. So friends, if you want to get a better open rate, maybe even a reply rate, use shorter subject lines that are intriguing, subject lines that would get someone to actually open the email. So for example, would you consider this as a subject line? It makes somebody's brain say, consider what? What do you want me to consider? Is this idea right for you? Well, it makes somebody like, what idea? What are you sharing with me? Now, if you listen to those two examples and you say to yourself, oh, those are so salesy. Duh, you're in sales, friends. Keep those subject lines short, and I think you're going to get further faster. All right, friends. Here comes your sales tech tip of the week. Friends, if you're not using email. Sequencing in your sales process, I think you're missing out on an unbelievable piece of technology. Now, sometimes inside of your CRM, you'll have email sequencing that actually is just built in. You might consider a tool like Mixmaxx, or maybe stepping even up further than that, using something like Apollo.ai. But sequencing, friends, can be as simple as using Mailchimp as well. So first, check out your CRM. It might just be built in. All right, so how do sequences work? They're easy to explain. In advance, you write five or six emails that you want to send to a particular set of customers, or one customer at a time, depending on how you want to roll it out. Then what you do is you add people's names to that list, and then they begin to receive emails at the daily interval that you set it up at. So if you've been following me for a while, I'm actually a really big fan of every 3 business days is what I like to send my prospecting emails. But if you've also followed me, you know I'm a big fan of being highly relevant. So you want to customize those sequences with the mail merge— that's kind of the old term— but the merging field where you can put in people's names a couple of times in the email, company names, and sometimes even references to the category or industry that they're in as well. Never forget, friends, sales technology will help you get further faster. All right, friends, here comes your retention idea of the week. What do you do on a regular basis to drive your ideas forward related to retention? One of the things you might have heard me talk about is I'm a big fan of using the national holiday calendar, normally the non-religious calendar, just to keep everybody safe and secure and feeling good about themselves. I like to use the national holiday calendar to spur some ideas. So for example, January 1st is easy. Happy New Year. Here's the books that I'm reading this year and wanted to share them with you, or, or something like that. In February, Valentine's Day. Do you send Valentines to all of your customers? It's not cheesy, friends. It's called having fun, and some of you need to find a little bit of fun. How about St. Patty's Day? That's awesome kind of way to just get your mind going. What could I send this month to keep my customers really retained for life? Friends, never forget, there's, there's always some confusion between customer service and retention. Let me be clear. Customer service, that's expected. Everybody talks about great customer service. Retention, friends, those are the things you do beyond customer service to keep your customers around for a lifetime. All right, friends, now it's time for your listener questions, one of my favorite parts of the show. And this question comes in from Renee up in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Hey, Renee, I got a lot of friends up in the MSP area. Ryan, when it relates to subject lines, very often you talk about brain loops. Could you explain that again? I'm just not following you, and I think it seems to be pretty important because you talk about it a lot. So Renee, happy to answer that question. And so a brain loop is when somebody's brain hears something and then their brain wants the loop to be completed. So let me give you an example. If I said, hey Renee, I need to talk to you about something, and you're like, sure, what is it? And I say, ah, never mind. It's okay. Never mind. And you're like, no, Ryan, what did you want to talk about? No, no, I'm good. Forget it. It's not a big deal. See, what your brain is doing is it's trying to complete the loop that was started. The exact same thing, friends, applies to subject lines. And I mentioned it just a smidge earlier here in the show. So if somebody was to say a subject line that says, your advice, question mark. It makes somebody's brain go, what do you want my advice on? Now, as a lot of you know, my favorite subject lines are dates. So, if I wanted to meet with somebody, say, on July the 30th, the subject line would be July 30th question mark. See, that drives a brain loop. So, someone that's receiving your email will see that subject line, July the 30th, and go, okay, did I miss something? Do I have a meeting? What's going on July the 30th? Then they open the email to see what is that. They they have to do it. They kind of have to complete that brain loop, and so I don't ever do anything unethical with subject lines. For example, about those pictures, ha ha, or free lunch, ha ha. I don't do anything like that. You know, free advertising. You know, nothing like that. But what I do want to do is I want to be strategic with the email subject lines that I use. Now, it's very important for you to use your CRM friends. And really keep track of the emails you're sending and the subject lines that you're using, because you don't want to use the same kind of catchy subject line over and over again on the same customer set. So just really be paying attention to that. So some of my favorite subject lines to drive a brain loop: Have you considered this? Heads up is one of my favorites. Would you consider this? Your advice. Your advice on this. Have you considered it? I mean, I could go on and on. Now, some of you, as I mentioned earlier in the show, as I mentioned, some of you will say, oh, those are so salesy. Well, yeah, of course they seem salesy because you're in sales. Just remember, I don't care if I like them or if you like them. I just want to know, do they work or not? So Renee up there in Minneapolis-St. Paul, thanks for sending in your question. If you've got a question that you'd like for me to answer, send it in, ryan@ryandohrn.com. If we don't answer your question here on the video show on YouTube or the podcast over on Spotify and iTunes, it didn't come into my inbox because I take great pride in responding to all the emails sent to ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, friends. Now one of my favorite times of the show, the Brainwork Tip of the Week. Friends, about 10 years ago, someone talked with me about creating time blocks to better manage my day. When I first started time blocking my day, I failed miserably. And many of you have tried time blocking, and maybe you have failed as well. Friends, here really is the secret of time blocking. All right, if I need to prospect, say for example, at 11 o'clock every day, I need to prospect at 4 o'clock every day, I need to retain at 11 o'clock, things like that, start with one time block And do that time block for just 25 minutes. Then what you wanna do is you wanna use the Pomodoro Technique to drive that 25-minute time block before you move on to something else. Now, if you haven't heard me talk about the Pomodoro Technique, we've talked about it quite a bit here on the show. What that is, is you focus on a task for 25 minutes, then you take a 5-minute break, and then you focus on another task for 25 minutes. And then you take a 5-minute break. You're going to do that 4 times, that cycle. Do that cycle 4 times, and then you need to take a much bigger break. So the brainwork part of this though, friends, is you want to start with 1 time block, get great at it for about 2 weeks, then add another time block. So over the course of 4 or 5 months, you're going to begin to be structuring your day with those time blocks. Now, You might be an overachiever and try to do all your day time blocked out. Friends, it typically doesn't work out. So, if you're trying to fix your brain, so to speak, what you might want to do is try creating time blocks. Put a time block of something you want to do on your calendar. Set a reminder so that it goes off. Don't ignore the reminder, right? And then get on that task for 25 minutes. Then take a five-minute break. Then go on to your next task, next task for 25 minutes, and then take a five-minute break. Do those tasks for four cycles, and friends, I think what you're going to find is as you get towards two o'clock in the afternoon or things like that, you're just not going to be as tired. Friends, never forget. I say it all the time: If sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. I mean, I think we're. Probably a little bit wacky for being in sales all the time. Friends, this is a great career. I promise you it'll feed your family for a lifetime. Hey friends, I hope you like this weekly format, a little bit shorter, a little bit more on point and targeted. Get down in the comments and let me know what you think. I sure appreciate all your feedback sent to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Hey, I've got a few openings in my calendar as the fall and wintertime rolls around, please invite me to your office. Please invite me to your national sales meeting. Love to get together and get your teams all pumped up for sales success. All right, more online over at ryandohrn.com. For those of you in my ad sales classes and business, head over to 360adsales.com. You can also find a lot of information over at sales-training-world.com as well. All right, friends, we'll see you next week. Get out there and sell something. Make us all proud.