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The Power Of Sales Magnetism July 2009
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Follow-Up E-mails Can Kill A Sale
By Will Turner
You’ve met a prospect at a networking event. You had a nice conversation. It’s time to follow-up. You send a quick e-mail. But does your e-mail help or hurt your chances of making the sale?
Most salespeople start to salivate when they have a “live” prospect who they think is interested in their services. In their excitement, they usually make a couple of common mistakes that actually cause their prospects to go running for the hills. These mistakes are applying pressure and assuming.
Salespeople apply pressure when they start “pitching” their services and they assume when they presume that the prospect needs what they have. Let’s look at an example of an e-mail I received recently.
My personal comments on this e-mail are in parenthesis:
Will-
It was a pleasure meeting you last night I very much appreciated your presentation on Bull’s Eye Marketing. My favorite take-away was the concept of using “you” instead of “I/we” when discussing one’s services to a prospective client. (So far, so good.)
As you might have expected (No I didn’t have any expectations.), I would like to make you aware of my services (Uh oh, here it comes). I design, implement, and monitor investment and retirement strategies for small business owners. (So what?) Please consider meeting with me to discuss your current investments if you would like a fresh evaluation of your retirement goals and your path to achieving them. I know that you have unique needs as a business owner (What do you know about my needs?). You should be confident that your financial advisor understands those needs. (I should and you’re not him. Besides, he violated what he said he liked about my presentation in this paragraph. He focused on himself instead of me. “I” would… “I” design… “I” know… )
I passed along your name and website to our director of training. His name is Todd Peters, phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx. Give him a call, but be sure to have at least one corny joke queued up for when you speak to him. (Well…he wants to help me. That’s nice.)
Good luck in the 10K this weekend. Thanks again. (He remembered I’m running the race this weekend.)
John
In this particular e-mail, John did some things right, but he blew it in the second paragraph with the pressure and assumptions. How much more powerful would the e-mail be if the entire second paragraph was eliminated? How do you think my response would have been different? Instead of feeling dread that I would have to sit through a sales pitch from yet another financial advisor, I would feel like this guy is really different. He wants to help me. In turn, I would have to wonder, how can I reciprocate?
If John had used his follow-up e-mail simply to deepen our budding relationship, he would have made some real progress. Instead, he scared me away.
Will Turner is the Founder and President of Dancing Elephants Achievement Group, an international sales training and consulting company. Will is a sales expert with 25 years of sales, marketing and sales management experience. Will created the Sales Magnetism program and co-authored Six Secrets of Sales Magnets. He can be reached at or 804-254-4122.