Team leader: “have you spoken to Mr Prospect about that proposal we sent him?”
Sales person: “sure have, I emailed him this morning”. Boom! There you have it, right there. That bear-trap I mentioned earlier and it happens way too often.
If there was one thing I could get sales people to change it would be what we just witnessed there: selling by email.
My advice is: don’t do most of your relationship building and selling by email; pick up the phone and speak to them instead.
Of course, email has its place but you shouldn’t use it all the time and here are 10 reasons why: –
- It’s easy for people to ignore emails.
- They can take ages to answer the email, if at all – you’ve lost control.
- It’s much easier for them to say “no” in an email than on the phone.
- It’s very easy for people to misinterpret the words of an email.
- If it’s not the answer you want it’s difficult to turn it round.
- Selling by email significantly slows down the sales cycle.
- Building relationships is much easier by phone than by email.
- Some things are really hard to convey in written form unless you’re Shakespeare.
- It’s incredibly difficult to convey or read emotions in an email. A big part of any purchase is emotional.
- The client often prefers a phone call over a lengthy email exchange (and you’ll learn more)!
If you want to speed up the sales cycle, build stronger relationships and ultimately increase your revenues think before you send that prospect an email “should I pick the phone up instead”.
You’ll be glad you did.
I know I always ask but I’d REALLY appreciate you leaving a message on this post, please. Thoughts, experiences, opinions?
Could not agree more Mike, too easy to hide behind sending an email. Of course getting through to the right person on the phone is a skill, in itself. Andrew
You’ve hit the nail on the head there Andrew “hiding behind email”. Probably should have called the blog that. Thanks for the comment
So true Mike, unfortunately the art of communication seems to be a thing of the past.
Thanks for the comment Carl. The thing is, email is so easy to do: type in a message and press send. The only thing you haven’t actually completed the task; you’ve just handed control of it to somebody else who may not be as keen to close a deal as you are. Want to get a result? Pick up the phone then!
yes Mike so true, now tell us how to get our phone calls answered because that causes more frustration!
Challenge accepted Des. That will be the subject of next week’s blog (probably in video format actually – it will work better).
This makes perfect sense, recently we have had to contact every customer and prospect due to losing 2 of our 3 domain names thus our email addresses as well. The easy thing is to send an email to explain what has happened but I have had far more success when following up with a phone call. I just wish buyers didn’t use the “Send me an email” line… you know it is going to be ignored/unread until eventual deletion. It is far too easy to send an email and think that the job is done. Great blog Mike.
Thank you David. I think the key part of your comment for me was “It is far too easy to send an email and the think the job is done.” Soooo true David.