Nearly half of salespeople share a fear, not of lost leads or looming competitors — but of cold calling.
In “Getting Over Your Fear of Cold Calling Customers,” the Harvard Business Review recently reported that 48 percent of salespeople fear the prospect of reaching out to leads with no introduction.
Jay Pineda, a sales executive with Leyton, is not part of that 48 percent. He uses emails where he lacks referrals, but he doesn’t muddle the outreach with thick paragraphs and spam-flagging graphics. At best, he expects about eight seconds of attention from his email recipients — just enough time to drill down to the value he can bring them.
Most importantly,: make sure the email looks like it came from a person and not a machine, advised Pineda. As a sales leader, Pineda reports the kind of results that take all the fear away.
Leyton consults with companies to implement and optimize use of government tax and energy efficiency credits.
How often do you use cold outreach methods? Why and when do you turn to these methods?
I use cold outreach methods every day I prospect. Tailored email outreach has worked best for me in the last three years as prospects are lately more aware of how technology works. They likely can tell when a person is emailing them compared to an automated computer system. Doing this increases my odds that people will read the email and not auto-delete it.
500 tailored emails helped me close $100K in business within a month.”
Please share a time when cold outreach worked for you. What did you do and why was it successful?
I sent 500 tailored emails to prospects in a few of the cities — places where I have lived — where the message's goal was to build trust. This was with a product that more typically sells best with a referral. It helped me close $100K in business within a month.
If someone is going to employ cold outreach methods, what should they definitely do and what should they definitely avoid?
Make the cold email short, to the point, and create logical value of why they need it and why they should work with you — in three sentences or less. They should be able to read it in eight seconds or less due to prospects’ short attention spans, another result of modern technology.
Avoid writing long-winded emails or using marketing buzzwords. Also, avoid using graphics and pictures because that could cause the email to be auto-deleted. It gives the appearance of coming from a computer and not a person.
