Cold Sales Development Template – PGi

Every now and then we come across a SalesyEmail that actually has some decent ideas, but lacks the appropriate “follow-through”.  This week’s email from PGi is a perfect example.  Take a look!  When you’re done, check out our previous posts and comment!

Check out more of these emails on SalesyEmail.com and while you’re there, submit a few you’ve collected.

The Email

To: SalesyEmail
From: SDR

Good Afternoon SalesyEmail,

I hope you had a great week thus far!

I just wanted to follow up on my message below to see if you had a chance to review. At your earliest convenience can you please let me if you have 15 minutes to get together virtually to discuss next week?

Thank you so much and I look forward to hearing from you.

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: SDR

Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 11:40 AM
Subject: checking your availability

To: SalesyEmail

Hi SalesyEmail,

Do you use web conferencing solutions like GoToMeeting, WebEx or Join.Me for business purposes? Would you like a solution that’s much easier to use, more reliable, mobile and backed by a company that services 75% of the fortune 100?

I’m SDR, an Account Executive at PGi, one of the largest audio conferencing company’s in the world. We have an array of proprietary audio and web-conferencing solutions that were specifically designed for ease of use, cost effectiveness and increasing productivity.

Please advise when you have 15 minutes of availability in the near future so that I may pencil in some time to hear about your collaboration needs and show you how PGi’s award winning solutions can align with them.

*If this email has reached you in error can you please refer me to someone else within your organization who may be able to benefit from our services?*

You can go from this:

To this: 

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

SDR

Feedback

Kelly

• Good follow up message and use of forwarding the original message that was sent. Although the “can you please let me know” reads a bit harsh and a turn off. Had the right idea just needs better execution.
• Alerts me that this is a sales email before I even open it.
• Another good idea that just isn’t well executed. A simple “are you the right person, could you pass me along to the correct person, etc” Would be much more effective than a noted sentence at the end of the email that is confusing if it is even an ask or a statement.
• An example could have been worked in better in the initial messaging with a link to an example, not copied and pasted into the end of the email where there is no relevant context around it.

Kelsey

• I like that they opened this way…we try to do stuff like this too (ie, Happy Friday!). Seems more friendly and less salesy.
• The first paragraph in the original email makes me feel like I’m listening to a bad, sing-songy infomercial — just a little too salesy right out of the gate.
• Re: the example image — I feel like this isn’t what web conferencing platforms actually look like — GoToMeeting and Join.Me (mentioned as examples) actually have good UIs.
• There are small grammatical errors that are bothersome.  For instance saying “company’s” instead of “companies”.

Julia

• I like the followup a lot more than the original! It sounds like a person, and sounds genuinely interested in me. (Plus, it’s short.)
• I like the use of images, but many corporate servers don’t allow imaging due to trojan horses and the like. This could backfire pretty easily.

Revised Email

Subject:  Quick question…

Hi SalesyEmail,

Hope you’ve had a great week so far!  I’m SDR with PGi – we offer companies reliable, easy to use, and cost effective audio and web-conferencing solutions.  We’re one of the largest audio conferencing companies in the world and we’re backed by a company that services 75% of the fortune 100!

Not sure if you’re currently using tools like GoToMeeting or Join.me, but I’d love to learn about your experiences with these tools and see if we might be able to help increase productivity at %Company%.

I’m assuming that you’re the best person to connect with but if not, who would you recommend that I follow up with?

Thanks for your help!

SDR

Digging a Little Deeper:

This email exemplifies a pretty common problem that we see from time to time with companies like PGi – it’s hard to adequately (and quickly) describe what you do in an outbound email when your organization offers a pretty wide range of services.  As a result, the SDR generally ends up not sharing enough information about the company or sharing too much.  Add that to the fact that you STILL have to, in some form or fashion, express what makes you unique and you’re in over your head already.

PGi didn’t completely miss the mark as you can sort of see the direction they were heading in at various points in the email, but then it veers off.  Good ideas at times, just not executed well – like the idea to add in the pictures to compare their UI to a competitors.  We actually think that this is a terrific idea.  Where this starts to go wrong is when PGi uses purposely outdated, pixelated, unrealistic “screenshots” of the competitor’s UI.  They actually don’t do a very good job with the representation of their UI either, as it looks very much like stock imagery with what looks like headshots/models vs. actual users and conversations being had.

Referencing competitors in your email isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but make sure that you can effectively express what makes your company so great.  We normally try to refrain from even mentioning the competitors and simply focus what makes us unique.  GoToMeeting and Join.me actually have pretty decent UIs, so comparing it to the first pictures used is an extreme exaggeration and could probably backfire pretty heavily in a number of ways.

We decided to leave the pictures out of our revised email simply because of the inaccurate representation of both companies.  An easy alternative to this could be a link inside of the actual messaging that points to the website/example.

Also, Notice towards the end of the email where they ask for the correct contact – again, another good idea, just not presented in the best way.  This is an idea that RevBoss always uses as it gives us an opportunity right away to see if we’re even speaking to the correct person.  In most cases, if they aren’t, then they’re more than willing to point us in the right direction.

On another note, a tried and true practice of RevBoss’ that is extremely effective, is referencing the previous email in your follow up by simply forwarding it.  Kudos to the folks at PGi for using this.  Definitely one of the better parts of their email.

Comment and share!  See you next week 🙂