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Sending cold emails? Don't follow up... Nurture instead.

Doing outbound sales? Then you need to replace the concept of "follow-ups" with "nurturing"...

Too many founders mistakenly lead off with a 'big' ask (eg a demo call), and then "follow-up" 2-5x via email.

Instead, build up to the 'big' ask with a series of valuable small asks.

  1. 4

    @louisswiss Interesting!
    Can you give us some examples, so that we can better understand what is the example Easy ask & value? Basically the second row?

    1. 2

      Sure!

      So you're looking for an email/message that...

      • provides value (or creates the expectation of value)
      • includes the least risky action possible
      • makes the expected reward seem as valuable as possible

      Could be something as simple as offering to record a custom 3min video teardown of their site.

      Could be a coffee.

      Really depends on your audience. As with everything in sales, there's no 1-size-fits-all answer!

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        Thanks :) Because I tried cold emailing and ... I was not successful, so I am looking for more case studies or some good examples to improve my process.

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          Yeah, that's the problem with cold emails.

          Case studies and examples don't really help that much.

          All you really need to do them well is to a) understand your customer (their pains, goals, dreams and fears), b) understand their objections, and c) make sure reward > risk in all of your emails!

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            Thanks. I thought I knew all of this, but probably I need to do some work. Thanks again and looking for more sales stuff :)

    2. 1

      This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  2. 2

    Isn't the point of cold emailing to get straight to the point, and identify the 3% that are ready to get into the conversation?

    "Easy ask and value" don't make sense, given the fact that they aren't your email list, and you're going to anger a lot of people. Shouldn't your time be spent better off finding the next prospect?

    If it's in the context of using social media such as Linkedin, that would make sense as you can social proof.

    1. 1

      Isn't the point of cold emailing to get straight to the point, and identify the 3% that are ready to get into the conversation?

      Nope!

      That's how big spammy companies and high growth startups do cold email. They don't care how many people they email and annoy. They're just looking for those few people who will buy right now because of the pressure to grow.

      "Easy ask and value" don't make sense, given the fact that they aren't your email list, and you're going to anger a lot of people.

      Yes it absolutely does make sense. It's silly to suggest people would rather receive a "not easy, not valuable" cold email than a high-pressure, high-ask email. Unless, again, you don't care about those people and are only thinking about how many sales you can make this week/month.

      Shouldn't your time be spent better off finding the next prospect?

      Probably not. Your time should be spent qualifying the prospect. Understanding how to create value for them. What they need and will respond to. Or simply if you can even help them in the first place!

      If it's in the context of using social media such as Linkedin, that would make sense as you can social proof.

      You can use social proof in cold emails too, and it works really well. Trust me, I literally wrote the book on it :)

  3. 2

    That’s very interesting and the “nurturing” seems to be the key word here - most of the sales emails I receive are doing the complete opposite. I would love to see more of that approach in practice, it’d definitely help destigmatize cold emailing.

  4. 2

    Hey @louisswiss,

    I really like the idea. Since every cold sell email either already in the spam or I'll mark as spam.

    This makes the email doesn't come off aggressive-sell in my opinion

    Thanks for sharing!

  5. 1

    Nice share. Back in my days of marketing for a sales training company I would sit and listen to 5 guys all hammering the phones, cold selling throughout the day, every day. Man listening to that rejection was intense.

    Value above all is key here. It's like lead magnets that are either tools or audits can really generate interest.

  6. 0

    Cold emails = Spam.

    1. 3

      In the nicest possible way, that comment says a lot more about your misunderstanding of (good) sales than it does about the value of cold emails.

      True, most cold emails are done terribly and could fairly be (subjectively or objectively) classified as spam.

      But not all of them.

      There's nothing inherently spammy about cold emails. It's just very easy to be spammy with your cold emails.

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