Sales Email Template: The Art of the Grand Entrance

Speaking in his “Prospecting in Ludicrous Mode” webinar, Sam Nelson of Outreach mentioned that “first impressions are key”, and like anything worth turning up to, making a grand entrance is necessary.

It’s a sentiment that I’ve utilised in the year I’ve been with Kluster, and now seems an apt time to share my take on “the art of the grand entrance” in sales development with my ultimate sales email template.

As nearly every market is now heavily saturated, good salesmanship has never been more appreciated, and you can use that in your favour to entice your prospects' attention with a winning sales email.

The prerequisites for my sales email template are the following tools:

1) Twitter
2) LinkedIn Sales Nav (not a necessity but certainly helps)

Step 1:

Build a list of target accounts (I’d recommend around 100). If you have access to Datafox then you can swiftly build lists based on your "ideal customer profile (ICP)" criteria.

Step 2:

Find 3-4 profiles per account. For us, these will typically be a CRO/CCO/VP Sales, Head of Sales Operations and COO. Ensure they're transferred to your CRM (we use ZoomInfo to export contacts into Salesforce).

Step 3:

Around 40% of LinkedIn accounts have a Twitter profile attached to them. If you're using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, then their Twitter profile should appear in the top right-hand side of the page.

Click on their Twitter profile and they’ll typically mention an interest in their bio. From my experience, for CROs this tends to be around sport (clues could even come from the accounts they follow).

Tailor your outreach around both this personal interest and their business need. An example of a successful recent campaign is as follows:

“Hey xxxx”

Take your beloved Spurs.

Imagine if on Day 1 of last season, we predicted that they’d finish in 3rd. Not only that, we told you the games you’d win and lose, and where on the pitch the key battles would be in each of those games. Finally, we told you what needs to be done to combat those losses.

Would that allow you to have finished closer to City? Almost certainly.

That’s our proposition. We can predict your revenue with more accuracy & foresight than ever before. The Kluster platform then steers you towards any pipeline shortfalls as well as how to combat them. Be that at a group, regional, individual level, or any other way you’d like to interrogate xxxx.

Your London office is just down the road from us, so I’d be happy to pop in when you’re next in London. Failing that, when works for an introductory call?

All the best,
Tom

P.S. One of our mutual connections on LI would vouch for just how a proposition like ours can affect positive commercial results.”

Now let’s break it down.

Firstly, notice that if I were to send this to 50 people in a day, there are only a few variables I’d need to alter (team name, manager’s name, company etc.)

Subject line: Spurs & Sales Visibility. There’s no way a Spurs-supporting VP of Sales isn’t at least opening that!

Opening line: Short, sharp and immediately arouses their attention.

Analogy: Appealing to their passion and simplifying the proposition into their own language.

Link: Bring it back to the value. Usefully, the value prop can be templated.

Call to action: Clearly in this case, the ask is a big one. However, I've found that particularly when selling into the C-suite, imagination is praised and rewarded. You've also given them the option of a call if they're not willing to meet initially.

Post scriptum: Provides them with assurance that their peers/counterparts have gained value from your solution.

And for those of you thinking, “isn’t that a bit creepy?” I’ve only been told once that they were “freaked out” … and now they're a customer.

People will love your imagination. Just make sure that they’re taking the meeting to hear about your proposition, rather than to try and hire you!

For more sales outreach inspiration, read Tom's tailored outreach techniques.

And once you get your prospect to agree to that all important demo, check out our guide to delivering a SaaS demo that converts.