From the course: Inside Sales

Three ingredients to a perfect introduction

From the course: Inside Sales

Three ingredients to a perfect introduction

- Has the quality of your introduction earned you enough time to make anyone care? Your introduction accounts for over 80% of the importance of the entire call. When you're selling on a noisy, crowded and fast-paced market, you're often calling distracted and busy decision makers who have very short attention spans. Your prospect's gut response to you, good, bad or indifferent, could determine the entire course of the sale. That means the impression you make on the phone or email or LinkedIn must stand out. Using triple threat messaging could dramatically improve your response rate. There's been a lot of speculation about voicemail or email being dead or a thing of the past. I believe they're still alive but they can no longer stand on their own. That's why the triple threat is so important. It combines voicemail, email and LinkedIn to increase your response rate. You might also sprinkle video in there because reps who are using video find their connect rates are three times higher than those who don't. What defines you in a sales role is how you sound, how you write and what your social brand looks like. Let's dive into how these come together in your introduction. All of you know about voicemail by now but you don't know is that it needs to be short, around 25 seconds and concise. State who you are, why you're calling and what the benefits are for them. You know, it's that popular radio station everyone listens to, WIIFM, which stands for What's In It For Me and with a proactive call to action or plan to follow up. This is a good time to reference the exercise files. There's a handout that includes the attributes for strong voicemail and email that includes tone, word choice, pacing, organization. I have also included a triple threat introduction. Craft your email to compliment your voicemail. It must also be short, no more than two paragraphs and tap into the relevancy of their organization and finish with a call to action. Your email subject line must include your company name, the prospect's company name because this suggests a partnership. Remember to deliver your voicemail and email simultaneously. They must be submitted within seconds of each other. Response will really drop when the two are not combined or synchronized. Your LinkedIn should be part of the mix. Make sure you customize your intro and keep it under 300 characters. Now, it's time for you to draft your scripts for your triple threat and make a verbal written and social impact on your prospects to increase the chances for response.

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