The Best Subject Lines for Sales and Why They Work - Ryan Dohrn Sales Training Tips and Sales Advice

What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach, answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Keep those questions coming. We get— gosh, we probably get 60 to 80 questions a month, so we try to go through them and pick the ones that aren't repetitive and things like that, but keep them coming. Love to answer your listener questions. All right, next question comes from Tiffany in Chicago. Chicago, my Little adopted hometown, went to college there, lived there, a couple hours from where I grew up. All right, Tiffany from Chicago asked this question. Ryan, love you and respect you. Thank you, Tiffany. But— there's always a but, isn't there? But I find your subject lines that you've mentioned numerous times to be extremely— and by the way, that's in all caps and underlined— extremely salesy. I'm just concerned about looking pushy, looking non-human, and looking salesy. I don't think you can ever come back from that. Please give me your thoughts. Again, with all respect, Tiffany from Chicago. So Tiffany, first, you're never gonna hurt my feelings. If you don't notice, sometimes in the comments I get a bunch of haters. I just think it's funny, you know, if they're gonna go to their effort to hate on me, I'm like, hey, you must, you must be getting something out of this, right? Okay, so Tiffany, with all respect to you and to the thoughts that you're having, and thank you for your respect of my thoughts on it, I think what's happening is you're getting really up inside your head because there's psychology behind everything that I teach. So during COVID I think I've shared with a lot of you, during COVID I had a really unique opportunity to take an executive leadership psychology certification course from the esteemed Cornell University up in Ithaca, New York, and did it all online. It was very hard, it was very thorough, it was an excellent executive education class. And I took a lot from it. One of the things I took from it is how the brain actually reacts when you put something in front of an individual. So the reason that I suggest very short subject lines, a lot of times with a question mark, is because it engages the brain to ask that person, what now? What's that? Or I need more information. Now let me be clear, Tiffany, you know me pretty good. I've seen some of your questions come in and I appreciate you. I think that it's important for us to understand that a lot of times we put so much information in the subject line that somebody doesn't have to reply. We give them the option of saying yes or no before we open the email. So when I do a subject line like, have you considered this, or would you consider this, question mark, or consider this, question mark, or your advice, question mark, or your thoughts, question mark, all those things make a prospect or a customer's brain think, now what's that? So if the subject line was your advice on this question mark, it makes somebody's brain go, what do you want my advice on? It— they basically have to open the email, forces them. Um, if I say, you know, have you considered this question mark, it may— or would you consider this— it makes somebody's brain go, now would I consider what? Basically they are forced to open the email. Now what happens is Sometimes people think this is sort of a bait-and-switch scenario. I don't see it that way. I see it as a strategic way to engage somebody's brain in a positive activity. So you can engage people's brains, and this is one of the things I took from my classes. You can engage people's brains in positive ways. You can engage people's brains in negative ways. You can catch people in a virtuous cycle of behavior, or we can do a vicious or bad cycle of behavior. What I want to do is I want to engage them in a positive cycle. The cycle being they receive my email, the subject line intrigues them enough to open the email, they look at the email, and at that point they have to consider to delete it, reply to it, report it as spam, or whatever the circumstance is. The reason you probably feel like they're salesy is because you're in sales. I'm in sales. Just remember that it's well documented that greater than 90% of salespeople have never had any training like this, right? 90-some-odd percent. Crazy, right? Good for me and all of us in the training business. But the vast majority of salespeople have never been trained. So that would tell you then the vast majority of normal— normal individuals that are out there, in air quotes, normal individuals— they've never been trained in sales. So they don't know what it is to read something that's salesy. Now you might say, yeah, they can figure it out, people are smart. Of course, people can always figure anything out. So what I can tell you is this, that feeling— because I'm not asking you to do anything unethical, Tiffany, I never would— because I'm not asking you to do anything unethical, that little feeling like, oh, I don't know if I should do this, Ryan, it doesn't feel right to me. What that is, it's not a feeling of guilt or your conscience saying you shouldn't do it. It's actually the feeling you're getting right before you're about to try something that could potentially get you growth. You just have to be willing to take that little bit of a chance. So here, what would the test be? What would a chance be? I would say that if you sent 10 emails with the same subject line, you got absolutely nothing from it, absolutely nothing from it, then guess what? You know, I'm wrong and I'm wrong. It is, it is what it is. But let me read you something, Tiffany, that I think will matter from a client of mine, and her name is Rhonda. And Rhonda says this: Ryan, I was reluctant at first to try your very short subject lines and your 3 and 3 philosophy. As a matter of fact, I shared this concern with my boss. She said, Ryan is usually right. Thanks. Give it a try. And guess what? I sent 20 emails and I got 10 opens and 5 responses. One of the responses resulted in a $20,000 deal. So Rhonda, guess what? You're welcome, right? So I don't share things that don't work, Tiffany. I want you to give it a try. I think you will be just ridiculously successful. I know you're smart because you already reached out to me here. So have some faith, give it a try. And Tiffany, I want you to have the best success in Chicagoland you've ever experienced. So put your faith here in Uncle Ryan. I won't lead you astray. Friends, I'd love to answer all your listener questions. Send them over, ryan@ryandohrn.com. And in the comments below, hey, maybe you disagree. That'd be fun. Get in there and chat it up and we'll talk about it more. Keep your listener questions coming, friends. ryan@ryandohrn.com. I love to receive them. And I'd love to get them. Also, what I'd love to do is come to your office, get your team all pumped up for sales or marketing success. Reach out to me. You can always find more information over at ryandohrn.com. D-O-H-R-N. All right, friends, we'll see you next week. More sales tips straight ahead here in the channel.