I presented a webinar yesterday that demonstrated new ways to write prospecting emails. A couple hundred participants purchased the program, and it turned out to be well received. Sales professionals need prospecting help these days, and of course, some industries are struggling more than others. Many sales professionals are having trouble prospecting in today’s uncertain and fast-changing marketplace, because they are using ineffective and outdated messages that don’t resonate with prospects.
At any rate, I asked a question at one point during the program: “Why do we send prospecting emails? What’s the purpose of those emails?”
Interestingly, the participants had trouble coming up with the right answer. If you don’t know exactly WHY you are prospecting, you consequently don’t know whether your prospecting efforts are successful. When that’s the case, it’s hard to get motivated to prospect especially if you are rejection-averse.
In case you’re not 100 percent sure why we send prospecting messages, here’s the answer:
To get scheduled, live, interactive meetings.
That’s it. It’s no more complicated than that.
We send emails, call prospects on the phone and leave voicemails for the express purpose of landing scheduled, live, interactive meetings. It doesn’t matter whether those meetings take place on the phone, via Zoom or in person. The key is to get a scheduled, live, interactive meeting.
Isn’t that kind of liberating? Think about it – you don’t have to go from not knowing a prospect to closing a deal in one email or one call. Commercial real estate brokerage is a relationship-based, consultative profession. It’s not a transactional sales effort in that you don’t call someone, sign ’em up, take their credit card info and make the sale in 10 minutes or less. On the contrary, commercial real estate has a long sales cycle.
All you need is a scheduled, live, interactive conversation. Once a prospect agrees to that, they are implicitly giving you permission to ask discovery questions, build rapport and make a pitch.
So, when writing your emails or determining what you will say when you call a prospect on the phone, just focus on language that lands meetings. Nothing more. Nothing less. Once you get that scheduled, live, interactive meeting, then you work all your other brokerage magic.
