Posted by LinkedSelling in Uncategorized
Are you doing any cold emailing?
How about LinkedIn messaging or InMails?
Regardless of the approach or tactic, if you are reaching out to potential clients with a cold message…
…don’t make this mistake that salespeople and businesses make ALL THE TIME.
Only sending one message.
If you only send one message, you’re missing a LOT of opportunities.
Simply by sending a follow up message a week or two later, you will typically double your response rate. Across many campaigns we’ve ran, it’s consistent. At least half of all favorable responses come from the second or third message in a campaign.
Yet very few people actually send more than one message. Think about it. You get approached by salespeople (or somebody wanting something from you) fairly often, right? But how many of them take the time to send you a follow-up email or message?
Very few.
On the receiving end, I almost look at it like a game. If a salesperson is diligent enough to send me a second message, I’ll likely respond at that point just to reward their persistence. But that’s not why most are responding.
So why does the second message work so well?
There are a number of reasons, but here are a few of the big ones:
1. They know you’re not going away.
Simply by being persistent, a prospect will think “ok, I have to respond to this guy or he’s going to keep emailing me.”
Add a phone call (voicemail) into the process and you’ll amplify this one tenfold.
2. They liked what you had to say the first time, but your email got buried.
Your prospects are busy, and their email is a place where things go to die. They might have seen your email, and planned on getting back to you…but simply forgot.
When they receive your second message (the follow-up), it will remind them that they meant to get back to you. They won’t want to forget again, so they will respond this time.
3. They feel bad for not responding to you.
This second message will also guilt some prospects into responding to you. This motivation might only apply to a small percentage, but every little bit adds up.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care why the second message has such awesome results. I just know that it does. Time in and time out.
If it’s worth reaching out to a prospect once, then it’s worth the time to effectively track this prospect and execute a multi-touch campaign to get the best results and highest response rate.
A commitment to following up with every prospect is the most critical component of cold outreach.