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In this age of technology, many entrepreneurs rely on email as the primary method of communication with potential clients, current customers and prospects. However, when you’re working to get your foot in the door of a sales prospect, it can be tough to break through a cluttered email inbox. This is especially true if your target market includes C-level executives. This guest post, from Dexter Siglin – Enterprise and Community Development for xPeerient.com, the world’s first social IT exchange – shares his tips for how anyone can work closer with C-Level executives.
1) Assume you are Spam
Unless you are a friend or trusted colleague your emails have about a 5% chance to resonate and that’s IF it gets beyond an Administrative Assistant who screens it first. Bottom line – an email a day is a good way to keep the C-level away. Space them out if you have to use email. Also look for other channels to reach out such as LinkedIn – many executives are more likely to reply to a LinkedIn message than a regular email, as its often tied to their personal email address – not the company they work for. Using LinkedIn to get referred to an executive is also a much better route to success than repeated email messages.
2) You are not Stephen King
Think brevity…unless you are an award-winning author, no one wants to read your book. If you correspond frequently with C-levels you know that emails from them tend to be about 15 words or less. You should operate the same way. Unless its been asked for, keep your 10 paragraph email and attachments espousing your company’s ‘cloud capabilities’ to yourself. You will lose them at ‘Hello’.
3) Are you relevant? Probably not
The key is to ‘get to’ relevancy. Start by providing value in short, pithy bursts. If you have something to say or ask – keep it to one or two sentences with very clear action requested. C-levels are decision makers – give them a quick and easy way to make a decision on your call to action, and they are more likely to at least give an answer rather then hit ‘delete’. Quick example – asking an open ended question like, “When might you be available for a quick call to review?”, is more likely than not going to queue cricket noise. Instead try, “Are you open either Tuesday at 1pm, or Wednesday at 3pm?” They are busy – take the guess work out of how to respond to you whenever possible.
4) Network (not the I.P. one)
Make relevant connections from your social networks. As mentioned above, if you send a note as being referred by a mutual connection – you are exponentially more likely to get a response than sending a cold email. Social networks were invented to be leveraged – so leverage them. Just collecting names to build up your followers might look cool, but if you don’t learn how to make that network work for you, its useless. Like buying a Ferrari and watching it sit in your garage….a connection is a terrible thing to waste.
5) CRM Tools – Use them or lose them
True Story. Scene: CIO is meeting with a top 5 executive from a major vendor company one day at the CIO’s headquarters. As they are all getting comfortable in the board room, the CIO admin forwards a call from a person that works for the same vendor company the visiting vendor executive is from. Thinking the call must be related to the meeting, the CIO takes the call, and as it turns, its a cold sales call from a rep. Without missing a beat, the CIO hands the phone over to the visiting vendor executive…”I think this is for you.” No tool is designed better to keep people on the same page as CRM platforms….but only if people decide to use them.
