Why Inside Sales Reps Shouldn’t Say Goodbye To Cold Emailing
I have heard several people in the sales world toying with the idea of getting rid of cold emailing techniques recently, and I couldn’t disagree more. The most common argument is that teleprospecting teams should be focused on having live conversations only, and not emailing back and forth with prospects before they have an initial conversation with them over the phone. The reason why I disagree with this theory so much is because in today’s sales and marketing world, email is one of the best methods of communication to catch your potential customer’s attention, at least initially. With the vast amount of people using Blackberrys, iPhones, and iPads to access their email these days, it seems silly to even consider ditching cold emailing. Business professionals aren’t always at their desks to pick up a phone call, however, they are almost always connected to the internet and email, so it’s crucial to pair cold calls with immediate follow up cold emails to ensure you are doing everything you can to reach your prospects.
I am not suggesting that you give up or decrease cold calling efforts by any means - the key is to figure out what the best balance is between cold calls and cold emails. Early on in my career I was told that each day, a teleprospector’s activities should be comprised of a healthy balance of 65-70% cold calls, and 30% cold emails, and to this day I still believe this is the best ratio to go by. I have experimented with different methodologies to prove this theory works. For instance, I have tried calling through many cold call lists without leaving a voicemail or sending an email on each dial (AKA “No Contacting”), where my focus was solely to get prospects live. I found this was not as effective because I was missing out on the prospects that left their desks for a minute, or who were out at a meeting. If you pair your cold call attempts with cold emails, you’re likely to get a better response because you are reaching out with more touches. If you are simply no contacting all day to get prospects live, those prospects that stepped away from their desks won’t even know you attempted to reach out at all.
If you still feel like you want your teleprospecting team to only focus on making dials and not sending emails, then I think the best suggestion is to at least use an email marketing tool to nurture the prospects they are reaching out to. The downside to this is that the emails won’t be as tailored to each prospect, which might work to your disadvantage. Cold emails are best used when your reps can tweak them so they specifically address the needs of the individuals they are reaching out to. For instance, if they are reaching out to a VP of Marketing, the messaging should obviously be different than if they were reaching out to a Director of Sales Operations. When using an email marketing tool, your messaging can’t be tailored quite as well, so it’s a bit of a gamble.
If you are thinking about tweaking your call plan methodology to get rid of cold emails completely, I would reconsider. I just feel that if you are constantly chasing a prospect everyday by calling them and hanging up if they don’t answer, you are wasting your time. What if they aren’t even the right person you should be speaking with about your product or service? What if they just entered into a contract with another company and wouldn’t even consider your company until at least 2 more years down the road? With a cold phone call and a cold email, you are much more likely to uncover this information sooner rather than later so you can focus your time on new prospects instead of chasing prospects that aren’t a fit. What’s your opinion? Is cold emailing dead?