How Your Sales Team Can Write Emails That Win New Customers

As a sales manager, you have most likely been tasked with writing and sending sales emails, and you know how easy it is to get discouraged.

You spend all day crafting an email and sending it to hundreds (or even thousands) of customers. Then, you only get a handful of responses. And not many of those leads turn into sales.

If that situation sounds familiar, you may feel skeptical about the effectiveness of sales emails, wondering if your sales team’s efforts would be better spent on a different sales tactic (like cold calling).

However, sales emails can be effective if written correctly. By the time you are done reading this post, you will have learned how to effectively train your sales team on how to write a sales email that wins new customers for your business.

Train You Sales Team to Write Effective Sales Emails

1. Personalize the content.

A customer will be able to tell if a salesperson has sent him/her an email that has been copied and pasted. There will be no personalization, and as a result, she will immediately be turned off to your business.

On the other hand, when a member of your sales teams writes an email that has been personalized to include the customer’s name and something about how your product or service can help her specifically, your salesperson is much more likely to make a sale.

Remind Your Sales Team:  Include the customer’s name in the subject line too, if possible. That way, the customer will know that the email is for her and will be much more likely to open and read it.

2. Hook readers from the start.

Often, a salesperson will begin a sales email with something formal, like “To Whom It May Concern.” That is not an appropriate greeting when he is trying to build a relationship with a potential customer.

That is why it is important to start an email with a friendly greeting that includes the customer’s name. Then, focus on addressing the potential customer’s pain points and how your product/service will help her solve her problems.  Also include anything to help a potential customer overcome any objections she might have toward your solution.

3. Keep emails short and to the point

Imagine how a prospective customer must feel when he opens an email from someone on your sales team. Chances are, she is busy, and she will not read the entire thing – especially if it is lengthy.

So, encourage your team to write short sentences, and limit the email content to a few brief paragraphs if possible. The email should hit on all of the main points you want to highlight without talking so much about them that the customer stops reading.

Remember, your salesperson’s email should entice the potential customer – not tell her everything he knows. If it is necessary to go in-depth about anything, your salespeople can always do that later during a phone conversation with the customer.

4. Do not talk about the company too much.

It might be tempting to use email content as a way to talk about the business and the products/services your company offers. However, doing so will result in lackluster sales results.

Instead, your salespeople should focus on the customer’s wants and needs by asking themselves what is in it for her (the customer). She is only going to make a purchase if your sales team can show that they have done their background research on the customer and are capable of providing the solutions she needs most.

5. Write emails in a conversational tone.

If your salespeople write stuffy emails that include lots of business jargon, there is a good chance that potential customers will delete their emails. At the very least, your customers may feel like your salespeople are robotic and out of touch, and they will not be able to sell to them, as a result.

If you want your sales team to build a relationship with the customer, teach them to humanize themselves as salespeople by writing how they talk and to eliminate industry jargon and complex language from their emails. A salesperson’s goal should be for the customer to feel like he is a close friend who is sending her an email that will improve her life in some way.

6. Include a straightforward call-to-action.

At the end of a sales email, have your sales team include a call-to-action that tells their customers what they want them to do.

Have the call-to-action be direct and say exactly what you want the customer to do. By adding action verbs in your call-to-action, your potential customer will be more willing to do what your salespeople are asking.

For example, this would be an ineffective call-to-action for your salespeople to write:

Can we talk about this further on the phone?

This, on the other hand, is a good example of what your sales team should use for a call-to-action:

Let’s talk about this further on the phone. Call now to get started!

Obviously, these examples are just for illustrative purposes – you should work with your sales team to customize different call-to-actions based on potential interactions with your customers.

7. Track the results of sales emails.

When you are working with your sales team to write sales emails, write a couple variations of a similar email, run A/B tests, and analyze the results to see which version is most effective.

When you do this, you will gain valuable insight on how your salespeople will be able to best communicate with their customers. You will also be able to make data-backed decisions about the changes you and your team should make to improve the quality of their sales emails.

8. Choose the right day and time to send emails.

Research from GetResponse shows emails sent on Tuesday have the highest open rates, so consider having your team sales their emails on Tuesdays.

You may want to have your team avoid sending emails on Mondays, as those days are often dedicated to catching up on work from the previous week and anything that came in over the weekend. Also, try to have your salespeople avoid sending emails on weekends since many people do not check their work emails as much on Saturdays and Sundays.

The best thing you can do is test out different days and times to see what works best for your company so you can coach your sales team and tailor your email marketing strategy to fit your brand’s target audience.

9. Proofread every email you send.

A poorly written email that is littered with grammatical errors and misspelled words will hurt your company’s credibility in the eyes of your potential customers – there is no doubt about it.

To combat this issue, make sure your salespeople proofread all of their emails before they are sent. They can do this by:

• Reading the email aloud. Doing this will allow your salespeople to catch more errors than they would if they read the email silently.
• Using an editing app like Grammarly. Just make sure your sales team does not blindly follow all of the feedback they are given by any editing app. While these apps are adequate for light proofreading, they do not provide 100% correct advice all of the time.
• Ask a co-worker to look over their writing. If a member on your sales team is a skilled writer/editor, ask him to check your team’s emails. Having a second set of eyes look at a sales email is one of the best ways to ensure that it is error-free.

With these tips handy, you should be able to properly coach your team in order to improve the open rates and conversion rates of their emails. Keep in mind that you should continuously test different emails over time to see how your audience responds – even a minor change in a sales email could result in a massive improvement in your sales team’s success.