Thanks for sharing why you signed up.

It's important that everyone learns how to sell,

because at the end of the day, we are all sales people.
We might not be selling products, but you might be in a conversation and
selling an idea, and hoping that the other person adopts it.
When you're applying for jobs, you're selling yourself with your resume and
cover letter and during the interview.
When convincing a group of friends to go to dinner at a restaurant,
you're selling them that that restaurant is a better option than the rest.
Whatever you're selling,
this course is going to help you to improve your selling ability.
You'll learn the general sales process that every sales professional should
understand and be able to execute on.
Play video starting at ::44 and follow transcript0:44
Every sales person that is hired here at HubSpot is expected to have or
learn these skills.
That means you're preparing yourself with real sales skills that companies and
sales leaders want to see.
At the end of the course,
you'll see how you can even get involved at sales at HubSpot.
[MUSIC]

Determine Your Target Persona

Hey, it's Ellen again.
In this section, we're going to talk about how to find the right people and
right companies to sell to.
We'll refer to them as good fit prospects.
These are people or companies who are our target persona and
might potentially be our customer in the future.
Play video starting at ::20 and follow transcript0:20
It's important to have a target persona, because it helps you understand your
customers and your prospective customers better.
This will make it easier for you to tailor your messaging and
conversations, specifically to that person.
Play video starting at ::35 and follow transcript0:35
If you don't have a target persona, you might end up trying to sell to
all types of people, instead of focusing on those that you can actually help.
So before you do any selling, you have to know who you're selling to.
Play video starting at ::50 and follow transcript0:50
A good fit prospect boils down to two things.
First is the company.
The company's business model must be a good fit for
the solution you provide, and they should be able to benefit from your solution.
The second thing is the person.
The person you speak with must be willing to speak to you, and
open to learning about how you might be able to help them.
What sometimes happens, is the company might be a good fit for your product or
service, but the person you speak to might not want to work with you.
Play video starting at :1:22 and follow transcript1:22
That might mean they might not be the best fit.
Play video starting at :1:26 and follow transcript1:26
Let's pretend you work at a web design agency that helps small businesses by
redesigning and rebuilding their website to get more traffic and sales.
Play video starting at :1:35 and follow transcript1:35
You're trying to get new clients for your agency, so you might look at a business'
website and think yep, that page needs a facelift, and we can help with that.
Play video starting at :1:46 and follow transcript1:46
So you get in touch with the VP of marketing at that company.
Play video starting at :1:50 and follow transcript1:50
But it turns out, they aren't focused at all on improving their website, and
they don't want to work with your agency.
It's a good fit website and company, but a bad fit person.
Play video starting at :2:2 and follow transcript2:02
So, how do you determine what a good fit is?
You talk to people.
Play video starting at :2:8 and follow transcript2:08
You interview current customers and find out why they bought your product or
service.
Interview prospective customers, and ask what their challenges are.
What their job role is, what a typical day looks like.
Interview people who decided not to buy, and
ask why didn't they buy and what product or service they chose instead.
Play video starting at :2:29 and follow transcript2:29
By learning these things, you'll get a better understanding of who buys and
doesn't buy your product and why.
It's difficult to figure out if the person is a good fit,
without having a conversation.
We'll discuss how to have effective conversations to further qualify prospects
in a later section.
Play video starting at :2:49 and follow transcript2:49
Keeping this idea of a good fit prospect in mind, we'll focus the rest of
this section on finding companies and people who might be good fits.
[MUSIC]

How to Prospect on Google

Prospecting or sourcing is the act of looking for prospective customers.
This is what sales people generally have to do to build out
a list of companies and people to target and contact.
It takes a lot of time and effort,
but you have to start somewhere.
Prospecting is important to a salesperson
because you need to be able to keep a steady flow of customers coming in.
It's great if you close five new deals in a day.
But, do you have more potential customers to talk to afterward?
This ongoing stream of conversations with
potential customers is what we call a sales pipeline.
Depending on the size of the business and the marketing team,
some companies generate inbound prospects.
These are people who are looking to do business with you instead of you looking for them.
Sounds kind of like a dream, doesn't it?
In a later section, I'll explain how
HubSpot sales team rarely do manual prospecting on their own.
They have a database of inbound prospects who
have reached out to HubSpot and want to speak with us.
I'll explain how you can start doing this yourself.
The big question now is,
how do you find prospects in the meantime?
Google is an important tool for prospecting.
However, it can be a black hole if you don't know what you're looking for.
This is where knowing your target persona helps.
Sales teams are often focused on selling to
a specific region or a specific type of business.
For example, our web design agency might be
focused on helping software companies in Los Angeles with their web sites.
I would go to Google Maps and search for software companies in Los Angeles.
And I would get a list of,
you guessed it, software companies in Los Angeles.
This includes their Websites,
phone numbers and addresses.
From here, you can search these companies on
LinkedIn to find people you could potentially reach out to.
Tools that can help with this process include the Datanyze Chrome extension,
to help with company research and another tool called Email Hunter,
to help you find email addresses of people at a company.
In the previous exercise,
we had you develop a target persona.
For your next exercise,
we've given you a target persona and a company type to look for.
Your target persona is the head of marketing at a software company who has been at
the same company for
roughly three to five years and worked their way up from marketing associate.
There are between 28 and 45 years old and they live in a big city like Los Angeles.
They're very thoughtful with their decision
making and empathetic when speaking with others.
Your goal will be to find somebody that fits that profile at a software company.
They generally have head of,
director, VP or CMO in their job title.
Then, you'll add them to your CRM.
How to Prospect on Social Media aka Social
Selling
Social media prospecting, also known as social selling,
has become a popular term nowadays because
consumers are spending more and more time on social media.
In 2016, Facebook reported that people are spending,
on average, 50 minutes a day on Facebook alone.
In 2017, Flurry Analytics, Yahoo's Developer Network,
found that US mobile users spend up to five hours a day on
their phone and 51% of that time is spent in social media,
messaging and media and entertainment applications.
To do social selling effectively,
you'll need to reach people where they are and,
clearly, they're on social media.
The specific social media platform to focus on will depend on your target persona.
They might spend their time on LinkedIn, Twitter,
Instagram, Facebook or whatever the new social platform is.
You can find this out through your persona interviews.
Once you find out where they spend their time,
the important thing to remember is,
do not sell there.
Instead, engage in a conversation and think of it as just that, a conversation.
Be authentic in how you engage.
The best sales people are genuinely curious and they want to learn about other people.
While your ultimate goal is to close a deal and hit your quota,
remember that you one,
need to make sure the person is a good fit and two,
be sure that they are ready to buy.
That can be really tough to do in 140 characters on Twitter.
Instead, if there's a conversation on Twitter or in a LinkedIn group,
join the conversation, ask questions,
and be genuinely curious.
For example, say you are on LinkedIn and you've joined
a few groups that are relevant to your business and you see conversations going on.
Here are some examples of open-ended questions that allow people to
elaborate and give readers an opportunity to contribute to the conversation.
That's a really good point.
Can you give me an example of when you did that? Where did you learn that?
Have you ever tried that and failed or seen success?
Asking these questions is better than writing a pitch about your product.
You are earning the right to help and offer your opinion,
and eventually there might be a point where
you can not only offer your opinion and be helpful,
but also position your product or service.
You can even start your conversation through LinkedIn updates.
Here's an example of how Max Altschuler,
CEO of Sales Hacker,
uses updates to engage with his connections.
Max shares a bit of information about himself and what he's thinking about,
in this case books.
And then he asks his connections to chime in and contribute to the conversation.
While this might not be related to his business,
it starts the conversation.
He might then follow up with some people and ask why they
recommended certain books and continue the conversation from there.
You can also use your LinkedIn updates to
call out a specific group of people and ask a question.
This is called the pull your network tactic.
For example, business owners,
"What was the biggest mistake you made when you were just starting up?"
Business owners will pay attention to
the status and some might be eager to share their stories.
Engaging on social media works because everybody wants to talk about themselves.
The goal is to ask questions that allow people to share their opinions and experiences.
During this process, people might admit to
a pain point or challenge that they have in their business.
That's when you can provide advice and ask if they're interested,
"I have a couple of thoughts on something you can try. Do you want to connect?
Message me if you're interested."
The chances of this person getting in touch with you is high
if you engaged with them and earn the right to provide advice.
If it's a good fit,
this could turn into a conversation about how your business could help them.

How to Prospect at Networking Events

In BDB Sales there is generally more than one person involved in the buying process.
Which requires many conversations, and
requires a focus on building relationships.
Because of this, and because of the fact that we also want you to be a good person,
you should treat each person with respect when you're networking with them.
Play video starting at ::21 and follow transcript0:21
Some people in the past have made the mistake of disregarding somebody
because they're just a secretary or just the IT girl.
Play video starting at ::29 and follow transcript0:29
So what they've done is instead of just having a conversation with that person,
they directly ask to be connected to a more influential person at their company.
This is disrespectful and it doesn't make that other person feel good.
Play video starting at ::43 and follow transcript0:43
And you never know,
that IT person might directly report to the CTO that you do want to speak with.
That secretary might be the executive assistant to the VP of marketing.
There is zero chance of them introducing you to high level executives
if you disrespect them.
Respecting somebody means paying attention to your body language and
the tone of your voice.
Making eye contact while you're having a conversation and of course smiling.
Play video starting at :1:12 and follow transcript1:12
All of these things together let the other person know
that you're paying full attention to them.
Don't ever give off the feeling that there's somebody else
you'd rather be talking to.
Play video starting at :1:22 and follow transcript1:22
Again, just like social selling, networking is not about selling.
It's all about building relationships.
Play video starting at :1:30 and follow transcript1:30
Here are a few tips.
The first thing to accept Is that networking is unnatural for many people.
If it feels unnatural for you, don't worry, just take a deep breath and
talk to one person at a time.
It gets easier as you go to more events.
Play video starting at :1:47 and follow transcript1:47
Second, people are often told just to be confident.
This can be tough if networking feels unnatural.
Confidence comes in how you phrase your sentences.
For example, at the end of a conversation you could say something like,
I really enjoyed talking to you.
I'd love to follow up on what we talked about.
I'm going to add you to LinkedIn.
Does this sound okay?
Play video starting at :2:12 and follow transcript2:12
In this example, you are not asking to connect, you are making a statement
that you are going to connect with them and then you ask if that's okay.
Most people will say yes.
Play video starting at :2:22 and follow transcript2:22
And third, you should come up with open ended conversation starters in advance.
Here are some examples.
What are you hoping to get out of this event?
Play video starting at :2:33 and follow transcript2:33
Tell me about what you do for your company?
Play video starting at :2:37 and follow transcript2:37
So what does a typical day at work look like for you?
Play video starting at :2:42 and follow transcript2:42
What's on the horizon for your company?
Play video starting at :2:45 and follow transcript2:45
What do you see yourself doing in five years?
Play video starting at :2:49 and follow transcript2:49
Having questions ready will make it easier to start and continue conversations
instead of trying to have a conversation without a plan at all.
[MUSIC]
Inbound Marketing for Salespeople
Earlier I mentioned that salespeople at HubSpot
don't have to manually source prospects.
Instead, they have a data base of inbound prospects
who have shown interest in HubSpot's products and services.
These salespeople instead
focus on qualifying prospects to make sure they're spending time on the good fits,
which we'll get in to in part three of this course.
Play video starting at ::24 and follow transcript0:24
Passively generating these inbound prospects
helps you to maintain your sales pipeline without having to manually source them.
Play video starting at ::33 and follow transcript0:33
This is a technique HubSpot pioneered, called inbound marketing.
The process of attracting, converting,
and closing new business through content marketing and social media.
Play video starting at ::44 and follow transcript0:44
It's the opposite of an outbound approach, like TV ads, billboards, direct mail,
and cold calls, which try to reach everyone randomly throughout the day.
Play video starting at ::55 and follow transcript0:55
Now, if you cringed at the thought of content marketing,
remember as a salesperson, you're actually in the best position to create
important content that will get in front of your prospects.
This is because you constantly talk to perspective customers and
they're either interested or not interested in your business.
And both types of conversations can provide you with information
that you can use to create content that speaks to your target persona.
Play video starting at :1:25 and follow transcript1:25
For example, the HubSpot Blog writes content that helps small businesses
to improve their sales and marketing.
Play video starting at :1:32 and follow transcript1:32
We might write content about email marketing or social media because
this is what our marketing audience is interested at getting better at.
Some of them will realize that we have a software that can help their company
with their email marketing and social media strategies.
Play video starting at :1:49 and follow transcript1:49
Then they would reach out to request a free consultation or
contact us, where they would give us their name, their email and phone number.
Play video starting at :1:59 and follow transcript1:59
Now all of a sudden, we have people contacting us, so
we call them inbound prospects.
We didn't reach out to them, but they want to talk to us.
So how do you start creating content that will get you inbound prospects?
Hopefully, you have a LinkedIn profile.
If you don't, make one after the section.
It's great for your brand and
a lot of people you sell to will also have LinkedIn profiles.
So it's great for doing research on your prospects.
Once you have a LinkedIn profile set up, go to your dashboard and
click on Write an article.
Then write about something relevant to your industry.
If someone finds it interesting, they can comment, send you a message,
connect with you, or even share your post to their network.
If you aren't sure what to write about, remember that you're in a unique position,
because you talk to potential customers every single day.
It doesn't matter if you aren't an author, that you don't have a degree in writing,
or you aren't a blogger.
Play video starting at :3: and follow transcript3:00
Every good salesperson should be able to list the top 10 to 15 most common
questions that prospects have.
Play video starting at :3:8 and follow transcript3:08
And you'll likely have answers to all of these questions.
You have the knowledge, you have the ability to write content that's
hyper focused on topics your potential customers want to know more about.
Play video starting at :3:22 and follow transcript3:22
As a salesperson, you talk about the same things every day, so
it's easy to assume that what you know is simple.
And that everybody knows what you know.
That's often wrong.
Instead, take a step back and realize that not everyone has your expertise.
Then learn how to explain your expertise in a simple and clear way.
Play video starting at :3:44 and follow transcript3:44
Once you choose a question to answer and write your article, end the piece with
a relevant question to invite readers to engage in a conversation.
Play video starting at :3:54 and follow transcript3:54
Let's say you wrote a LinkedIn post about email marketing trends and
potential solutions.
You could end that post with a question like,
what do you think about this strategy?
Have you found something that works better?
As a salesperson, this will allow you to engage with potential customers and
position yourself to be a trusted advisor.
Play video starting at :4:16 and follow transcript4:16
You could even go to your blogging team with a list of questions
that you hear day after day from your potential customers.
And offer to write a blog post answering some of them.
Play video starting at :4:28 and follow transcript4:28
You're likely to be welcomed warmly or even asked to contribute more.
Play video starting at :4:33 and follow transcript4:33
Remember, it's all about being helpful.
These posts you write are ideally helpful for potential customers.
If you find that somebody has a question on Twitter that you've written a blog post
about already, you can easily share that blog post as a resource.
Play video starting at :4:49 and follow transcript4:49
You might write something in June and
end up finding a use case to share with a potential customer in December.
Play video starting at :4:56 and follow transcript4:56
You wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't write it six months ago.
So by writing content in using inbound marketing, you're setting yourself up for
the long term.
[MUSIC]

Meet Rob Malta

[MUSIC]
Hi everyone.
I'm Rob Malta, a Senior Sales Professional at HubSpot.
I joined as the seventh sales person on a new team created to sales
our sales product in 2015.
In 2017, I joined HubSpot's small business segment, and now help small
businesses grow their revenue with our sales and marketing products.
I'm an adviser for start-ups and
a Resident Entrepreneur at White Board Youth Ventures where I mentor students
on web design and marketing to help them launch their first companies.
Before my sales career, I was a consultant at Price Waterhouse Coopers.
In this section, you're going to do three things.
First, you'll take the list of prospects that you source with Ellen and filter for
the highest quality prospects.
Then you're going to create an email strategy to book meetings with them.
Finally, I'll share with you how you can automate your emailing activities
with Tools.
Let's get started.
[MUSIC]

How to Filter for High Quality Prospects

In the previous section, you learned how to find prospects through Google or
Twitter or writing on LinkedIn.
The next step is to vet them and
make sure we're working with a list of high quality prospects.
This goes back to the idea of finding a good fit prospect.
To recap, when we're thinking about the ideal type of customer you want,
it comes down to two things, one, the company and
two, the person at the company you talk to.
It isn't a good fit unless you have both a good fit company and a good fit person.
If you're at a mature company,
you're often told what the criteria is for a good fit.
If you're at a newer company, you may have to determine what a good fit is on
your own and iterate on it as you speak to more prospects and customers.
Play video starting at ::42 and follow transcript0:42
Let's dive in to how you can do research to filter for
a potentially good fit customer.
Play video starting at ::48 and follow transcript0:48
When researching people, look at their job title,
their length of time at the company, and their responsibilities.
These things are generally found on LinkedIn.
Play video starting at ::58 and follow transcript0:58
When researching companies, pay attention to their industry, the size of their
business, both the number of employees and the amount of revenue if possible.
The age of the business, their website, and their location.
Play video starting at :1:12 and follow transcript1:12
Let's say you work at a web design agency.
Your company is focused on building websites for
software companies with about 10 to 50 employees.
Your target persona is generally someone in marketing leadership,
maybe a marketing director, maybe a VP of marketing.
At a company with 10 to 50 employees,
you might even be able to talk to the founder, the owner or the CEO.
So as you go through our prospects for good fit people, look for
people in marketing leadership.
Their job titles might include head of, director, VP, or CMO.
Play video starting at :1:47 and follow transcript1:47
If you can't find a marketing leader, you look for the co-founder, owner or
CEO instead.
Play video starting at :1:54 and follow transcript1:54
These people are likely to be involved in the final decision of whether or
not they will hire us to build their website.
We call these people decision makers.
Play video starting at :2:2 and follow transcript2:02
Remember, depending on what you're selling,
the decision maker may not always be the CEO or CMO or VP.
Play video starting at :2:10 and follow transcript2:10
In some cases, it might be a team lead or even the end user of the tools.
You would also want to look at the company website and review their about page to
learn more about the company and the company's history.
Since you're a web design agency, you want to pay attention to the design and
the layout of the website.
Does it look nice or recently updated?
Is it easy to use?
If the answer is yes, they probably don't need your web design services and
you should focus on businesses that have outdated websites instead.
Play video starting at :2:39 and follow transcript2:39
Let's pretend you found the VP of a company and
their website looks like it could use some updating.
This company would be considered a high quality prospect.
Play video starting at :2:50 and follow transcript2:50
To learn more about a company,
such as their revenue, their funding, the technologies they're currently using,
or even more, you can use Datanyze to speed up the research process.
Websites like ZoomInfo, and AngelList are also super helpful for
finding information about your contacts.
Play video starting at :3:8 and follow transcript3:08
Once you have two to three prospects that you believe are good fits,
you'll do deep research into them.
That means reviewing their LinkedIn, their other social media profiles,
Google searching their name to find news about them, their industry,
any information about competitors, even blog posts they've written, and so on.
Play video starting at :3:27 and follow transcript3:27
Your goal is to understand what they're thinking about and
where their interests lie.
All the information you collect will inform your talking points and
how you actually reach out to them.
Play video starting at :3:38 and follow transcript3:38
We're going to go over that in an upcoming section.
In the next activity, you'll review your list of prospects and
find two to three to focus on.
Don't worry if you aren't completely confident in your target persona.
Play video starting at :3:50 and follow transcript3:50
You'll learn more about your persona once you start actually contacting people and
having these conversations.
In the meantime, stick to the example we have of web design agency.
Research the prospects you have and keep notes about them in your CRM.
[MUSIC]

Book a Meeting with High Quality Prospects

You have a list of two to three good fit prospects at good fit companies,
and you've done your research on them.
The research probably took a lot of time. That's normal.
You'll be able to research people more quickly as you continue to do more of it.
Now, you'll come up with a strategy to book a meeting with these people.
There are two approaches for reaching out.
The first is the top-down approach.
With this approach, you start with the decision maker,
often a higher level employee,
and move down from there.
If you can get in touch with them,
and they're interested in your products or services,
they might point you the right person to discuss further.
Then, they'll get loop back in later on for the final decision.
The second approach is bottom-up.
With this approach, you start by reaching out to an individual contributor or a manager,
and they will either number one,
begin using your product and tell their team about it.
Or two, they'll point you to a decision maker to speak with.
Which approach you go with depends on your company and your industry.
You won't know which approach is better for your business until you
try both and find out what gets you more meetings booked.
We'll focus on the top-down approach in this course.
With a top-down for your web design agency,
you'll want to talk to the decision maker from the start.
In an ideal world,
you would get in touch with the CMO,
and they're aware that the company's website isn't good, and wants to rebuild it.
But the marketing team doesn't have the time.
However, the CMO sees the value in what your business provides.
And if they're interested, they'll point you to another person,
like the VP of marketing to continue the discussion.
That's the ideal scenario.
Now, once you find the marketing leader to get in touch with,
find their email and phone number.
For many businesses, the best approach is to reach out by email first.
However, some businesses like Brick and
Mortars might respond better or more quickly to a phone call.
Again, you'll find out what works best for your company as you try both methods.
In the next section,
you'll learn how to formulate emails and call script to actually book meetings.

A Formula to Write Bulletproof Emails

The first thing that keep in mind about writing emails is to keep them short
and sweet.
I'll say it one more time, keep your email short and sweet.
People get a lot of emails whether it's newsletters, other people selling things,
receipts, subscriptions, bills.
You want to cut through all that noise.
A good email is easier to read on a mobile phone and
clearly states what you can do for the other person.
The general structure of the first email outreach is something like this.
First, a quick introduction of why you're reaching out and where you're from.
The first line should make it clear that you've done your research and
already have an idea of what they do.
Second, explain why you're reaching out and why you want to talk to them.
This could be as simple as saying, hey, I'm Rob from XYZ web design.
And I'm reaching out,
because I saw that your website isn't as up to date as your competitors.
Play video starting at ::49 and follow transcript0:49
Third, give them a taste of what you can solve for and
what they'll get out of the meeting.
You might say, hey, I think we might be able to help you with building beautiful
websites that would get you more customers.
I'd love to talk to you about it if you are interested.
My goal would be to answer any questions that you have.
And if you are interested, at the very least,
I would hope to provide you with some direction to put you on the right path.
Play video starting at :1:14 and follow transcript1:14
Finally, ask for a short meeting which is as simple as saying, we'd love to learn
more about your business for ten minutes and see if it's a potential fit.
Play video starting at :1:24 and follow transcript1:24
I'll share examples of good emails in a later section.
Right now, we're going to focus on the third part of the email.
This is what we call a value proposition.
Your value proposition is your biggest benefit you will provide their business.
How you can help them.
People are not interested in giving you money,
their interested in what you can do and solve for them.
In the next video,
we'll talk more about how to come up with your value proposition.
[MUSIC]

What’s Your Value Proposition?

A value proposition, value prop for short,
is the biggest benefit you can provide to a person or company.
People make three big mistakes around value props.
One, they make it about them,
their company, or their product.
Two, they assume that their idea of their value
prop is the same as what their customers believe.
And three, they mistake the value prop for what they do,
or a feature of their product.
For example, web design is not value it's what you do.
The value is a newly designed website,
how the customer will interact with it,
and how it will improve your rankings in Google,
and get you more site traffic and customers.
A value prop answers three questions.
One, who are you selling to?
Two, what problems does this business or person have?
Three, can you help them with their problem?
If so, how?
Before you have customers,
you need to think critically about the problems you solve and who you solve them for.
As you source prospects,
you should have been asking yourself,
would this person benefit from my product and service?
How? I mentioned earlier that one of
the biggest mistakes salespeople make is leading with a self-serving value prop,
that essentially says, hey I'd love to talk
to you about my amazing software and how it's going to help you.
Don't focus on your product.
Instead, adopt the mindset that the other person doesn't care about you,
and they don't want to give you any money,
but they should talk to you because you can help them solve their problems.
Make the value prop focus on them.
Keep in mind that a value prop is developed and iterated on over time.
As you contact people,
you might find that your assumption of who to sell to is a little bit off.
It turned out that people from a different industry need your product or service,
or your product actually solves a different problem that they have.
Keep track of all the reasons people buy from you in a spreadsheet.
You should include their industry,
their type of company,
their product, what you sold them, and why they bought.
This way, at the end of each month,
you can review these notes and start to see patterns and
what types of companies are buying your product and why.
That will help you re-frame your value proposition.
You might find that you have various types of customers,
and there is a specific value prop for each one.

Create an Sequence of Emails for Automated

Follow Up
There are tools available like
HubSpot Sequences that allow you to create a sequence of emails,
and enroll people into the sequence.
This automates the follow up process,
so you can write all your emails in one go,
and automatically have each of them sent out after a certain amount of time.
This saves time, and also serves another longer term purpose which I'll get to.
First, let's talk about a general e-mail sequence that you can create now.
Let's say you're creating a simple email sequence to
reach out to marketing leaders at software companies.
You can start with an email sequence that's three
emails long with a phone call in between the first two emails.
Let's continue to use the example of your web design company.
The first email template would leave room for you to add custom content.
It might look something like this.
Hi Kathy, I'm Rob from XYZ Web Design,
and I'm reaching out because I notice that your website wasn't ranking for
some very low competition keywords that are popular in your area.
Below are some typical problems we've solved from other software companies.
One company's website wasn't generating enough sales,
so we optimized their website and increased revenue by 51 percent in a month.
Another website wasn't getting enough traffic,
so we optimized the website to rank in Google and increased
their organic traffic by 43 percent in three months.
Three, another company was focused on the product,
and planned on building the website later,
but that meant they couldn't collect leads in the meantime,
so we built one from scratch for them which let them
collect emails while they built their product,
and still have an audience email about their launch.
I would love to get on a call soon and learn a little bit
more about your business and goals to see if I can help.
If we decide it's not a good fit,
at the very least,
I'd be able to point you in the right direction.
You can book a time with me here.
Looking forward to chatting.
Best, Rob.
While the majority of the email is templated,
that first section is what keeps the reader hooked to keep reading.
You would write a custom intro that shows,
one, you've done your research on them and the company.
Two, you know what they're interested in,
either personally or professionally,
and can relate to it.
I might say something like,
I help companies turn their websites into revenue generating channels.
I took a look at your website today.
I saw that it isn't as up to date as your competitors.
You might be losing some potential customers here, I'd love to help.
Notice also at the end that I provide a link.
That's a meetings link.
You can create one through the HubSpot sales tool.
If someone clicks that link,
they'll see your calendar, your availability,
and will be able to book a time with you directly without you both
emailing back and forth to find a time that works.
Then you'd follow up with the first phone call the next day and use this script.
Hey Kathy, it's Rob from XYZ Web Design. How are you?
Hey, I know I'm catching out of the blue here.
I'm calling because I came across your website and I
noticed that you were losing out on potential traffic from search.
Do you have a second to chat? It's short and sweet.
If you get their voicemail,
you should leave a voicemail and use a similar script.
Hey Kathy, it's Rob from XYZ Web Design.
I know I'm catching you out of the blue here.
I'm calling because I came across your website and
noticed that you were losing out on potential traffic from search.
If you have five minutes to chat,
I would love to help you out.
Here's my phone number to call me back.
Then the second email we got the next day and
contain a case study or some information related to their industry.
Ideally, something your company has written.
Hey Kathy, wanted to follow up on my email and phone call.
I know you're busy, so I'll keep this short.
I'd love to help you turn your website into something that will get you more customers.
I just helped another client go from not getting
any customers from their website to getting ten leads each month.
I've attached the case study in case you're interested in learning more.
Is this something you'd be interested in doing for your business?
Best, Rob.
The third email in the sequence is what we call a
breakup email which lets the person know you won't be following up with them anymore.
Here's an example. Hey Cathy,
I don't want to keep following up if improving
your website isn't a priority for you right now.
I appreciate you fielding my first couple of emails.
Feel free to keep my info on hand if you'd like
to reach out in the future or if you have any questions.
In the meantime, I know you don't want to talk,
but here are some free resources that I thought might help you.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Best, Rob.
It's interesting because the breakup email
has been one of the most successful emails for me in terms of what gets meetings booked.
Once you create a series of email templates,
you can create a sequence and schedule
each email to go out after a certain amount of time.
Then you enroll a prospect into your sequence,
so they'll receive these emails automatically.
The sequence ends if your prospect responds to
an email or receives the final email without responding.
Earlier, I mentioned that setting up
an email sequence for automated follow up can save time.
But there is a second benefit to it.
If you're using HubSpot Sales with HubSpot CRM,
all the emails you send are tracked.
This means you'll get a notification when
someone opens your email and clicks on a link in that email.
So imagine you enrolled someone in the sequence above,
and they never responded.
Or maybe you booked a meeting,
but they weren't interested.
Six months later, you get
a notification that they just open your emails from six months ago.
That's a sign for you to follow up with them.
Sending those sequences of emails not only books you meetings now,
but will plant the seed for potential conversations in the future.
I've closed a lot of deals based off that tactic.
Sometimes, it's not that they don't want help.
Maybe they have a lot to do or they just forgot to respond.
I just send an email like this.
Hey Kathy, we spoke a couple of months ago about redesigning your website.
I wanted to follow up and see if now would be a better time to chat.
Maybe there's something I can help with.
Let me know if you'd like to set up a call.
Best, Rob.
That's why I love using sequences.
I can use one sequence,
customize the first email, and schedule out the rest.
Before you get too excited about automating your email follow ups.
There's one important point to remember.
Do not fall into the automation trap.
It's easy to think, great,
a tool that helps me do less work and email more people in less time.
A huge mistake people make is creating a sequence,
and then rolling 50 people at once with no personalization.
That's not the purpose of sequences.
It's not helpful, and only adds to the noise in people's inboxes.
Here are some tips to avoid that.
First, customize your emails for the person you're contacting.
Focus on how you can help their business.
Provide helpful resources, send emails during off hours such as early in the morning,
or between 5:00 and 7:00 pm.
Alternate the time of your follow ups.
For example, don't send each follow up email at 5:30 pm,
it gives away the fact that the emails are automated.
Keep your paragraphs to one to two sentences to optimize for mobile reading,
don't include more than one or two photos and links,
do not include file attachments.
Practice these tips, and you'll start booking meetings soon.
In the next section, we're going to learn how to run
an effective exploratory call to
qualify whether or not the person is a good fit to work with.