From Clicks To Clients: How To Use Outbound Cold Email Campaigns To Boost Your Sales With Ron Story Jr. [Episode 120]

From Clicks To Clients: How To Use Outbound Cold Email Campaigns To Boost Your Sales With Ron Story Jr.

We are going to talk about going outbound with cold email. We have an expert. His name is Mr. Ron Story Jr. He is at RonStoryJr.com. Outbound is an essential part of your prospecting campaign. Let’s talk about how to do this by email and how to do it right. Without further ado, let’s go speak to Ron.

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Ron, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

We’re going to talk about cold email as we go along, direct-to-market, high leverage, and all kinds of good stuff. Why don’t you tell everybody what you do so it sets the frame for this interview?

My name is Ron Story Jr. and I talk to strangers for a living. I do that by sending them emails for myself and for my clients to do three things. 1) Book sales appointments. 2) Help you get booked on speaking gigs. 3) Help you get booked on podcasts.

These are people that people don’t know. It’s not we’re sending it out necessarily to a warm list of people. It could be but for the most part, you specialize in, “You don’t know this person. Let’s build a relationship with this person through the medium of email.”

Yes. If we think back to when I first got into sales, I used to be a financial advisor. What we used to do is called cold calling, which means you get a list of people’s names and phone numbers that you don’t know, pick up the phone, call these strangers, and try to set financial advisory meetings with them. The problem with that is that 1 out of 100 people would talk to you. The other 97 are either screaming at you, hanging up on you, or treating you like you’re the scum of the earth.

Cold email removes all of that. I don’t deal with any of the rejections. I only deal with the people that reply positively and want to talk to me. Imagine being able to put your products and services in front of someone who may need what you have to offer. They didn’t know that you offered it. Everyone else will just ignore the email and go on about their day.

It’s more like an advertisement that somebody views and they say, “I’m not interested in this,” and they respond back by saying, “No, thank you,” or whatever. Somebody responds back and goes, “You caught my attention. Let’s further the relationship of some sort.” Is that accurate?

It is exactly that. Advertising is an outbound broadcast where people see the broadcast and then they respond. That’s called direct-response advertising, whether it’s a billboard, radio, ad, blog post, or at the bottom of the blog post, there’s a call to action. Email is the same thing. You’re putting an introduction to building a relationship with the person in front of them asking if they want that relationship.

You wouldn’t cold email someone selling pharmaceutical drugs because it’s a bit too personal to reach out and say, “Does your back itch at night? Does your left foot curl this way?” People would think you were weird if you reached out to them via email that way, but if you’re selling B2B services, it’s not uncommon to reach out to an accounting firm and say, “I help accounting firms generate more sales leads by doing X, Y, and Z. Is this something worth talking about?” What’s wrong with that? You have a direct problem that you’re solving and telling them, “I have this. I can solve this problem. If you ever run into it, give me a call. I got a solution.”

Let’s talk about this a little more in-depth because I get these emails. I’ve responded to some of them. I’ve hired people from it. I’ve engaged in services I’d never thought I would right out of the gate.

That’s how I got here. My assistant sent you an email.

In turn, we’ve done business already. Your other companies have done business already because you had a service that I didn’t expect and then all of a sudden, it was like, “This makes sense for me.” The relationship between the two of us is living proof that cold email works. I get a lot of emails that are good and then I get those ones that are totally irrelevant. They’ll come out of the blue and they go, “I noticed that your speaking career is X, Y, and Z. I’ve seen you on stage in the last 60 days.” Quite frankly, I haven’t spoken on stage in several months. Even worse, “I saw you speak at XYZ Conference,” and I wasn’t even there.

I’ve seen those come out. I’ve seen others come out that are on point. As you said, “We service this type of thing,” and then, I responded and said, “Not at this time. I have interest in this.” Let’s step back. If somebody’s saying, “You convinced me. Maybe this works. I’ve been persuaded a bit,” how do they start and what do they do?

Let’s set the frame first. Think of any type of relationship building. The most intimate type of relationship that we build is dating. If you were going to go and introduce yourself to someone that you were interested in, the last thing you would want to do is lie to them or set up a false pretense that could be found out later on down the road. That’s what the people were doing with what you’re talking about. “I saw you at this conference,” but once I realized that you didn’t know what you were talking about, I’m never talking to you again. You started the relationship off with a lot of mistrust.

Instead of trying to be all cute and hoping that you’re going to trick someone into a meeting with you, why not be honest with them? The same thing we would do if we saw someone in a coffee shop. We would go over and say, “How are you doing?” You then would wait for their response. Based on their response, then you would proceed.

You would go over and say, “My name is Ron. I saw you over here having coffee. I would love to take you to lunch sometime.” It’s very straight to the point. Not, “My name is Ron. I drive this car. I live here. I saw that you had this magic. Are you this person?” Do not use pickup lines in cold emails because that’s what those people were trying to do to you. It failed miserably.

The key formula is number one, tell me where you got my information from. That’s step one in writing a cold email. The first line of the email should tell them where you got their information from. Usually, what we would say is something like, “I was searching on LinkedIn and I saw your profile. I was searching online and I came by your website.” That’s honest.

Once you’ve told them where you got their information from, tell them why you’re reaching out to them. “I was searching on LinkedIn and I saw you were a podcast host,” right at the second line. I’m getting straight to the point of why I’m over here talking to you as if we’re in a coffee shop. In the third line, I should state the benefit to the person. “This is where I found your information. This is why I’m talking to you. Here’s how it benefits you. Would you like to talk further?” That’s the basic four-step approach, but the rules are don’t lie to me and don’t come to me with false pretense using a goofy pickup line. They don’t work.

The other thing is don’t try to be too nice. You don’t know me, so I know it’s false. You usually don’t compliment strangers. You introduce yourself to strangers. You may be a bit more complimentary down the road, but you don’t know them well enough to compliment them. It comes across as so ingenuous. It doesn’t come across as genuine. You’re faking it and I don’t like you already. Those are my four rules.

1) Where you got their information from. 2) Why you’re reaching out to them. 3) The benefit to that person. 4) A call to action. “Would you like to further the discussion? Would you like to further explore this?”

“Are you open to a ten-minute intro call?” I always tell people, “You’re talking to them in 2 sentences, offering them 10 minutes.” I’ve got to sum up what I do in my business in two sentences. The first sentence is what I do. The second sentence is about how it benefits you. In two sentences, I have to be able to communicate clearly and effectively what we do in our business. I was surprised at how many business owners can’t do that.

If I said, “Tell me what you do in one sentence and how it benefits me in the second one.” They start beatboxing. That’s what it sounds like because they haven’t said and thought it that thoroughly. Usually, it’s better if it’s in the words of your customers because those are the words that the audience is using. Imagine if I reached out to someone and I said, “I send cold emails to strangers that other people think is spam in their minds. Would you like me to do it for your business?”

Don’t do that. That’s me poorly describing what I do. If I describe it in the words of my customers, “Ron has automated appointment setting for us.” That’s what we do. We do automated appointment settings because our clients don’t do anything. All they do is give it to us and we take care of it. To them, it’s an automated appointment setting.

The changing of the words clearly communicates what the customer wants. My job is to answer the question that’s already in their head and not to try to reintroduce a new concept. I call that being an accelerator versus an innovator. My job is to accelerate what you’re already doing and not try to innovate and introduce something new.

What you do and how it benefits them in two sentences primarily. You got to get the message across quickly. Don’t be all a lounge lizard-type player in the process. Stay honest, truthful, and right to the point.

It’s basically a text message.

It’s a friendly text message. I’ve been getting these text messages that are like, “Diana, I haven’t talked to you in a while. How are you?” They’re always coming from the same area code. I know they’re one of those sites. I play with them once in a while. I’m like, “I’m not Diana.” They’re like, “I’m sorry. Who are you?” that type of thing. They’re trying to infiltrate and I’ll type back, “I’m married and happy.” It’s the feeling you get when you get one of those messages. What I get is like, “No, come on.” It’s an instant rapport breaker.

It’s not genuine. What I was saying is that the format is like a text message because if I have to scroll or pinch to open up your email on my phone, I’m not replying to it. I’m not going to read it because you didn’t care enough about me when you sent it to make it readable. Eighty percent of our emails are read on our phones. If I have to make the letters bigger or scroll to keep reading on, you don’t know what I want. As a stranger, I have to write in the best interest of the person I’m talking to. I can’t take for granted that you’re going to read five paragraphs. I have to respect your time. I have to get to the point.

I’ll give you another example of this. Everyone has given change to a homeless person on the street. The ones that you don’t mind helping are the ones who are straight up with you about what they’re going to do with the money because you’re like, “At least, he’s straight up. I respect that.” I was in Atlanta one day and we were walking down the street and we say, “Which way to the restaurants?” The guy was like, “I’ll show you.” He was in regular clothes and he walks with us all the way and took us to this particular restaurant. When we get there, he says, “I’m homeless. Can you buy me some food?”

I’m like, “We didn’t even want to go to this restaurant, but you took us to what you wanted to selfishly.” If he would’ve come straight to the point and said, “They’re right down there. I’m struggling. Can you give me some change?” I would’ve given him the money, felt good about it, and moved on with my life. Pitches can sound like someone trying to swindle us and you can’t afford to have that type of impression.

In selling, it’s called bait and switch. You lure someone in and then, all of a sudden, they’re in on the message. It’s like, “Sorry, that’s not what I represented myself to be, originally.” What I’m hearing is don’t bait and switch at all. It’s not a good premise in life, but certainly, in email.

Where does that work? It’s a short-term win. That guy won that day, but this was several years ago and it still impacts me and how I view every other person. Every other person who’s ever asked me or tried to help me with anything on the streets, I’m like, “No, I’m good.” Even if I needed their help, I’m like, “No, I don’t want it. Get away.”

That’s human nature if we get burnt a couple of times. If it looks like a duck or quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. We get to that point where we start putting defenses up when we don’t even naturally want to do so because it feels like it’s going to happen again. I’ve had that happen to me over and over in life as well as in different situations. It makes total sense.

We’re talking about email, what to do, what not to do, when you’re going out, and when you’re going to be emailing people. I have a question. You said something like the words of the customers. How does one know that? What you’re saying is when you put that in the email, the customers are probably going to tell you what to say. Am I accurate on that?

Exactly. You’ll hear how they describe what you do. One of the most eye-opening things that I learned is to ask customers, “Tell me what I do. How would you introduce me to someone?” and listen to how they introduced me. You would cringe if you heard how your customers would introduce you. You’ll understand why you hardly ever get referrals because you’re asking them to be an untrained marketer for your business. They’re describing you in all types of ways.

I remember someone that I had helped buy some life insurance years ago. I said, “How would you introduce me to one of your friends?” They said, “You’re the guy that knows all the life insurance tricks.” I’m like, “I don’t want you to introduce me that way because I only work with you with life insurance, but because of everyone else I was helping with other things. I want to be introduced as someone that can help them to reach their financial goals. If you were to introduce me, can you say that instead?” They were like, “Yes. That makes sense because life insurance was one of our goals.”

They weren’t offended that I told them how I wanted to be introduced. If they’re going to put you in a box, at least define the box you want to be put in. That’s the same thing. Listen to what your customers are saying and how they’re describing you. That’s probably how other people will describe you or describe your services also. Use those words to your advantage.

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That makes tons of sense. For those of you who are reading this and cringing at what Ron said, your buyers are describing you in a way you don’t want to be described, it’s not their fault. It’s yours. You might want to adjust how you’re playing the game with them because that’s what will happen. I’ve had that happen to me in my life too, where I’m like, “Will you tell me what you think of what I do?” They tell me and I’m like, “That’s not what I do.” Especially early on in my life, I’m like, “I got to adjust this messaging.”

I love what you said because the source of your clients will tell you what you do. Do you sanitize the language at all? If you keep hearing what you want to hear, but they’re saying it in a way that you wouldn’t have said it, do you use that in the outbound email the way they’re using it or do you sanitize the language and change it?

You use it the way that they said it. The reason is that’s their first thought, which is what people similar to them would think also. It’s their initial thought. Cold email is not about emotions and persuading people. It’s hard logic. It’s one of those things where it’s a binary decision. “Do you have this problem? Yes or No.” It’s not a, “Maybe you feel this way sometimes.”

It’s, “Do you have a broken leg?” You know whether you have a broken leg or not. If you don’t have a broken leg, you know immediately. I’m reaching out to people about broken leg problems because they can make binary decisions. I have to be able to describe it the way that they describe it. I can’t use my words because it shows that I’m not in touch with them if I’m using words that aren’t resonating with them. I would use their words.

We use different language patterns for generational gaps. I’m at the tail end of Baby Boomers. We speak differently than Gen Zers do or even some of the Millennials do. They use different words. The reality is depending on who we’re selling to, as the selling entity, we must adjust to what they understand. Otherwise, it’s going to sound like, “I want to go fencing.” They’re like, “Great. Let’s go to the buy a picket fence.” You’re like, “No, sword lessons.” It’ll come off like that.

I’ll give you an example of using the same idea where it’s a different word. If I’m talking to entrepreneurs and I said, “Would you like to get your message to more stages?” They’re like, “What are you talking about? What’s a stage?” If I’m talking to a professional public speaker, they’re like, “Let’s do it.” They don’t call them speaking gigs. They say, “I need to get on more stages.” They don’t say, “I need more speaking gigs.”

When I’m talking to an entrepreneur who speaks part-time, I would reach out to them and say, “Would you like to get more speaking gigs?” “I would love to get more paid speaking gigs.” It’s the same thing, it’s just two different audiences describing that because that industry has a different jargon because they’re professionals. I live in Medellín, Colombia. I’ve spoken English my whole life and they don’t care. I’m in their country. I have to speak Spanish. They even laugh at my goofy accent, but they respect that I tried. Speak the language of the people that you’re going to be working with.

I love what you said. “They respect that I tried.” That is what most people are interested in. You tried to communicate with them in the mode of communication that they most liked. You being in Colombia, they’re going to speak Spanish, it is the national language of the nation. If we go to France, we should learn a few words of French.

I’ve been to Paris a few times. Everyone says, “People are going to be so rude to you.” Not if you try to learn their language a little bit. At least, I’ve never had anyone be rude to me if I tried. My wife is from Poland and I can’t speak Polish very well. My Polish is terrible, but I try. When I do try, as you said, they might laugh a little bit at my accent or whatever, but they appreciate the fact that you’re trying to communicate with them in the mode in which they’re most comfortable. What you said is great advice. For email as well, let’s try to communicate in their mode of preferred communication.

If you’re going to work with this world of customers, why not understand their language? Why not show that you’ve listened to them? I got a great question for you, Doug. When was the last time someone said, “Doug, it was nice listening to you?”

If you're going to work with this world of customers, understand their language and show that you’ve listened to them. Click To Tweet

Very few. What most people say is, “It was nice talking to you.”

When they say that, it’s because you did all the listening. What I take away from that is that most people aren’t listened to. When you start using their language, they automatically feel heard in the first conversation because they understand that you’ve listened to someone with similar problems and you know it more intimately than the broad description of the problem.

I’m talking to speakers and I say, “I can get you on more stages.” They’re like, “How many other speakers do you work with?” Nobody else uses stages that way. They’re like, “He must work with other speakers because nobody else is using stages as a word.” That’s just one little keyword that I’ve learned from dealing with a lot of speakers.

When I’m dealing with coaches, we don’t use that word. It’s a different word. It’s speaking gigs or podcasts. You start describing the stages by the types of stages that are like virtual and all of these things. You don’t use stages generally in conversations with them. You have to be more specific when you’re dealing with coaches.

How do I know that? It’s because I’ve dealt with both people and what most people would see as the same, I see them as two separate groups. I see speakers as a totally different group of people that perform the same function as coaches, but they look at themselves differently. Living in St. Louis, it snows probably three months out of the year. In winter, we’ll get some snow from November to February. Do you think people who live in St. Louis which gets three months’ worth of snow, understand snow as intimately as people live in Alaska?

Absolutely not. I live in New Hampshire and they don’t understand the amount of snow we get.

One of my friends’ name is Kim. Kim The World Traveler is what she calls herself. She lives in Alaska. She’s like, “This snow now will be gone.” I’m like, “How do you know?” She’s like, “They came down and these are the bigger leaves and the bigger flakes just melt away. It’s when the sky is gray and it’s coming down with the little small flakes, those are going to be here.” I’m like, “When did you become a snowologist?”

The moral of the story is the more closely you can get to the audience that you’re working with, the more you find these little intricacies that separate them. It allows you to talk to them more intimately in those conversations, but it doesn’t happen when you talk to the new person. It’s based upon what you learned from talking to your people and then taking that language in your introduction to the new person.

When I tell people in Medellin that I’m from St. Louis, they said, “Los Cardenales.” They don’t know anything else about St. Louis, but St. Louis is in their grocery stores. They sell St. Louis-style ribs all over Colombia. The certain cut is the St. Louis cut. It’s in every grocery store, but they never bring up ribs because they didn’t tie it to the city. They tied the city to the baseball team. Based on what they learned from someone else or about St. Louis, they’re trying to be a bit nicer to me and showing that they respect where I’m from and they know something about it. That’s all that we’re asking you to do when you’re making these outreaches.

What do we do about headlines then? The headline is the first thing they’re going to see. It’s like you’re walking over to that person that you might want to be dating and your presentation or the first words out of your mouth is like your headline.

Everyone reads it on their phone. When you pull up your phone, you get a subject line and then two preview sentences. The subject line is the reason that the person clicks because it’s in bold. The next sentence is the subheading of an ad on Google. If we were to look at it like a Google ad, the subject line is like the big blue stuff that Google puts up there and then the next two lines are the subtext that Google let you put in. What should you say?

We’ve already established you should not use a pickup line. Don’t try to be cute because they’re going to think it’s a marketing email. Google will even penalize you for being too cute sometimes. What would I say? I would be straight-up honest with them. Question about such and such. Question about your podcast. Quick sales question. Quick coaching question. If that’s what you’re reaching out to them about like an accounting question. “I want to talk to you about your business.” That subject line should be relevant to what they do and what you want to talk to them about.

We know what the next line is which is where you found their information. That will get a person to open. We average about 60% to 70% open rates for well-targeted audiences to strangers, meaning that they’re opening the emails. How do you read an email? You have to click. Imagine a set of emails having a 60% to 70% clickthrough rate. You would be like, “My ad is kicking butt.”

If nobody’s responding to your ad, even though they opened it, you then have some copy problems. You’re not talking their language. Maybe you’re not solving the right problem or maybe you’re talking to the wrong audience with this problem. As you mentioned, that subject line and that first line get them to click and it should be as honest as possible.

“I have a question. What do you do?” That’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to ask them a question. You tell them where you got their information from. They will click that and read in to see what the question is, and then they’ll respond. You can expect anywhere from 3% to 7% response rates depending on how well-targeted you are, but 3% is normal.

What is well-targeted and how do you get the data for that? You said to speak in your customer’s language, but how do you get a well-targeted campaign?

The first thing is you have to define for yourself who you want to work with. For instance, I work with speakers and then I decide, “Software founders will be great people to be on podcasts. I want to reach out to software founders.” The first thing I would do is open up my phone and look through all 4,000 contacts in my phone and find out the people that I have in my network that are software founders. I would talk to them to see if I’m even solving the right problem. This is if I’m going after a new market, but if you’re going after your old market, apply this to your current customers.

If I’m going after a new market that I haven’t worked with, I would reach out to my warm market to engage with them to see if I’m even solving a problem or if I’m describing the problem the right way first. Once I’ve talked to 10 to 20 of them and they’ve given me some honest feedback and it makes sense for me to go forward with this, then I would find out what they have in common. I would look back and say, “They all work at accounting firms or law offices that are in big cities. They all work at law offices that have this number of people. They all focus on traffic law versus family law or whatever.”

I would find out what the commonalities are amongst those folks and then I would use LinkedIn. LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to segment people and find them in order to find how many of those opportunities exist. With speaking in the United States, there are 700,000 speakers or at least 700,000 people that have speakers in their title on LinkedIn. That’s a large market.

If I typed in podcast booking agent, there were about 100 of them and 60 of them work for the same company. That’s a very small targeted audience. You need to talk to people. We’re in the digital age where everyone is performing for each other, trying to get likes, claps, and followers, but you have to talk to people in real life to understand what they’re dealing with and then take that message to foster those new conversations.

When you are reaching out on LinkedIn, have you engaged in conversations with these people?

I’m just searching on LinkedIn to see how large the audience is. There are other companies out there that do lead generation. You can put a plugin in your browser and use LinkedIn as the search mechanism to go and find the person’s emails. That’s how you get the email accounts.

You do it off of LinkedIn. You just don’t go to a data house and buy cold data or do you do that?

No, because it’s not well-targeted. That may work for some people, but I would never do that. The reason is that people switch jobs all the time. When they switch jobs and switch careers, they don’t notify that data house.

The old email could be at XYZ.com, but they moved on to ABC.com and it’s going to go out to XYZ.

They may have the wrong job title now. They’re not in that same position anymore, but the minute that someone switches jobs, they automatically update their LinkedIn. When was the last time you changed your LinkedIn login email address? Probably, never. We never changed the LinkedIn login email addresses, even though we update LinkedIn based on our new job titles and things of that sort.

What these data companies have done is that before everybody cracked down on data, LinkedIn would give you your friend’s email addresses. Anybody who was your friend on LinkedIn, they would give you their email account. If you downloaded your friend list that came with their phone number or any data that they had on their profile. What some nerds like me did is that we started doing exchanges. We would say, “For every email account you upload to the database, we’ll let you take one out.”

You can only imagine if you have 1,000 people that have uploaded 1,000 names each. Now, we got a million-person database. You can only extrapolate that further and further until eventually, people had pretty much cracked LinkedIn. LinkedIn stopped giving out that data. Those companies didn’t go away because they weren’t breaking the law. They weren’t hacking or anything. They just had this exchange where you would upload credits and get credits out, and everybody did it. Now, they have a database of 100 million or 200 million people’s contact information.

A lot of people think that cold email is spam. Let me clear that up so that people don’t feel uneasy about this. Spam is like the do not call list. The Do Not Call List does not apply to businesses. It only applies to consumers. A consumer can subscribe to the do not call list, but a business can’t because they would never get any customers. New customers would never call the business. It’s the same thing that applies to email. Spam applies to sending out emails to individuals that are not business related. I can’t send you an email about Viagra because it’s offensive. I can’t send you a personal basis email. That’s considered spam. It goes one step further.

If we were to think about it on the business side, if you reach out to someone and they ask you to take them off their list and you don’t, then it’s spam on the business side. It becomes spam on the business side when you reach out to them and they say, “Please remove me from your list.” You say, “I don’t care. I’m going to keep sending you emails.” That’s spam and bad. It’s spam on the personal side anytime you email someone who did not subscribe to your list about a personal thing that’s not business related. You can look it up on the FTC website. They explain that very clearly. You can take comfort in knowing you can email every business once.

What about Europe and other countries?

GDPR is a big thing in Europe. I usually focus on companies in the United States. I have a client now that’s in Spain, but she wants to work with companies in the United States. Even though you may have clients in other countries, there’s probably enough opportunity if you’ve never done any cold email to take your product to the market in the U.S. using cold email where the data privacy laws are not as enforced.

The Do Not Call List is GDPR for the U.S. That’s why the U.S. doesn’t have GDPR because they have The Do Not Call List or CAN-SPAM Act that protects consumers. All that GDPR was doing was protecting consumers. We focus on the U.S.-based companies with our services and I advise people to try it out in the U.S., have your attorneys or whoever you work with to find out if it’s viable in the countries outside of the U.S., and you’ll be fine.

Ron, I appreciate you being here. I have one last question because I know people are thinking, “How am I going to get rejected? People are going to send me back nasty emails,” or whatever. What do you say to that?

As a busy professional, I don’t have time to reply back to people I don’t want to talk to. I just move on. Most logical busy professionals feel the same way. They move on if they’re not interested. For every one, “Take me off your list,” I probably get 30, “Ron, this is a great service, but I’m not interested.” They’re saying the same thing. They’re saying, “Take me off your list,” but they’re not being rude about it. That’s the worst that you’ll deal with is someone saying, “Take me off your list.” It’ll never be, “I’m going to report you to the police,” because who do they report you to? It’s impossible.

As long as you’re being straight up, they’ll be straight up with you. There’s not a lot of fear. It’s like going back to the coffee shop. We always see in the movies this sensationalization. You go over and introduce yourself to a young lady and she smacks you and throws water in your face. You’re like, “I’ve never seen that happen in my entire life.”

If it did happen, it probably wasn’t because he introduced himself. It was probably because he said something off-color or said something he shouldn’t have said to begin with like using those pickup lines that I talked about earlier. People will respond to you rudely that way. What we imagine in our heads usually isn’t what happens in reality. In the same way that we don’t see women throwing water and hot coffee on men because they said good morning, nobody’s going to curse you out and send the police to your house because you sent them an email trying to help them.

What we imagine in our heads isn't usually what happens in reality. Click To Tweet

If they do curse you out, you’re not going to want to deal with them as a client anyways.

They self-selected “bye-bye”.

There are no bad clients, folks. There are only bad decisions on your end, my end, and everyone else’s end who takes those clients. If they’re that rude and going to be difficult to work with right from the beginning, they’re most likely going to be difficult to work with.

I had a guy write me five paragraphs one time explaining why I shouldn’t do this and all that. I’m like, “You let me know you don’t make enough,” because the entrepreneur that I segment for, they’re too busy to write five paragraphs to a stranger. Do you know me? Why are you so invested in me?

You’re likable, Ron, and people want to express themselves. Ron, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks so much for sharing all this great information. A lot of people who are sitting there going, “This makes a lot of sense.” How do they know more about you? How do they get in touch with you?

If anyone would like to try this out, I’m willing to send 500 emails to you. I will reach out to 500 people in your target audience at no cost to you. All you have to do is to FiveContacts.com/Calendar and grab an introductory call with me. We’ll see if it makes sense to work together. It’ll cost you nothing. Leave your wallet on your desk or somewhere else. I’m not going to ask you to pay for anything. I’ll offer the service to you. If after we do that and you decide you want to keep working with us, bring your wallet into the second meeting. In the first 500 people, don’t worry about it. We’ll do it for you and get you some results.

Ron, thanks again for being here on the show. I appreciate you being straightforward and giving people truthful information on what to do with cold emails.

Thanks for having me.

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You can use cold emails to supplement your prospecting. The cool part about cold emailing is you will get a response automatically. You’ll get a response if it is yes or no. You don’t have to worry about the rejection component of this thing. You must do it legally and in compliance. That is the key. When you’re writing your email, as he said, the first thing that people going to know is, “Where did you get my email from or where did you get my information from?” Be truthful about that component.

Why are you reaching out to them? Keep it short. Make it to the point. Use their language or the language your customers would use. How is this going to benefit that person and what would you like  them to do? In other words, there’s a call to action. Don’t forget the call to action. A lot of times people forget a call to action. They send an email and there’s no call to action. If they’re interested, they’ll say yes. If they’re not, they’ll say no. You sent an email and it’s not the end of the world if they reject you.

Remember, rejection’s not always the end of the game. If you come back with something that makes sense for them, they may engage again. Email should be part of your arsenal going forward. If you haven’t thought about it, think about it if you will. Make sure that it’s part of the process going out because remember, the master prospector always will outsell the master closer. If you love the subject matter, please go give it a five-star review. If you or someone you know is an expert and you want them on the show, reach out to us at YouMatter@CEOSalesStrategies.com.

If you’re interested in getting yourself in the top 1% earners through selling or somebody you know is interested in that, have them reach out to me directly. Also, if you’re looking for some automated prospecting and follow-up software, have them reach out to me at Doug@CEOSalesStrategies.com. Until next time, go out and make it a great day. Sell a lot of stuff. Play win-win. Help somebody win. They’ll help you win. It’s the best type of selling for not only short-term but long-term relationships as well. Thanks for reading another episode. To your success.

Important Links

• Ron Story Jr.
• FiveContacts.com/Calendar
• YouMatter@CEOSalesStrategies.com
• Doug@CEOSalesStrategies.com
• https://www.PitchDB.com/
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ronstoryjr/
• https://www.Facebook.com/ronstoryjr/
• https://www.Twitter.com/ronstoryjr