You Can’t Make A Sale Via Cold Email
- Dan Greenberg
- May 7
- 5 min read
The goal of a cold email is not to sell.
The goal of a cold email is to inspire introspection.
The goal of that introspection is interaction.
The goal of that interaction is to start a conversation.
The goal of a conversation is to find a problem.
The goal of finding a problem is to book a meeting.
The goal of a meeting is to do business discovery.
The goal of discovery is to set up a mutual action plan.
The goal of a mutual action plan is to organize the process.
The goal of a sales process is to guide the buyer through their decision.
Most sellers make the mistake of selling right away. That is what causes buyer resistance and rejection, and that effect can play out in an early meeting or in an email in much the same way. When you send emails or make cold calls remember that your job is not to sell, it is simply to inspire consideration and get a reply. So how should we think about doing this?
Let’s start with the subject line. Subject lines should be emotionally charged and compact. They should be about 3–4 words, and they should let the buyer know that you speak their language. The subject line should focus on the pain points that your specific recipient is likely to talk about on a day-to-day basis. Put yourself in the position of your buyer, being responsible for the things your buyer is responsible for and think about the words you would use to describe your issues if you were in their shoes. There is somewhat recent data that suggests that statements perform a bit better than questions, I believe this is due to overuse of the latter, but it is worth A/B testing the two. The point, however, is to write your subject line, and your email, for that matter, as if it were an internal email to a business partner rather than a sales approach. Use names of mutual people you know; people in their department that you have emailed. Use terms that are familiar to your buyer. One the other hand, don’t use gimmicks. ALL CAPS, lots of punctuation!!!! and other gimmicks will trigger the reader to think of the email as a sales approach, and that will not help your chances.
As for the content of the email itself, it should be short, entertaining, and engaging. Be respectful, informal, and familiar. Your job is to remind them that they have, in fact, heard of you, even if it is just from prior cold emails you have sent. Your job is to remind them that there is a level of familiarity between them and you. Use their terms to describe their problems. Research their company so that you can use their department’s name and even names of people they work with. Write the email as if you are talking to a peer but remain respectful. This type of content is reusable, and repositionable and can go a long way to driving recognition, and association.
Make sure that your email does not ramble. If you attempt to make a single point and ask your prospect to do one single thing you may be successful, but as soon as you try to make more than one point, or ask for more than one thing, the task will seem daunting, and you will almost certainly be unsuccessful. A good cold email, or for that matter, any message to a client, has four parts:
Establish credibility while introducing yourself. You can do this in one sentence. Focus on the things your company does, or the clients you work with that prove to your prospect that you belong in the conversation.
Describe their problem better than they can, themselves. Buyers will trust you, if you can do this. Use social proof to introduce the idea that you work with other individuals in similar roles who experience similar problems. This should also be able to be done in one sentence; maybe two.
Paint a picture of the outcome. Forget your features, products, and solutions; leave them out of the email completely. Help the reader visualize a state of being where their problem no longer exists, using social proof. As in, “We have worked with clients who have gotten to X”, NOT “X solution can help you get to X”. This can also be done in one to two sentences.
Make an ask. Your call to action should be very easy to comply with and should not present barriers to the client. Simply asking for them to let you know if they are interested in learning more is enough. Any sale is a series of dozens of mini sales along the way. Get the first buy-in and then work to build on it. Make a singular and specific ask that is not demanding, and state what the reader will get out of that next step so that the tradeoff is clear. You can do this using one sentence as well.
Let’s talk a bit more about calls to action. Sometimes a call to action can simply be for the client to watch a 30 second video or take a quick look at an infographic or a one-sheet. Your emails can always be followed up with additional emails with more commercially beneficial asks. For the purposes of early-stage emails, educational content, positioned well in an email, can be very beneficial as part of a sequence or cadence. This is because the ask is very low lift for the buyer and easy to comply with. These types of asks are often very helpful because they establish baseline compliance which establishes a bit of buy-in to the process and helps you build more momentum towards more consequential, and commercially viable buy-in.
Typical response rates to cold / early-stage emails are very low, but you don’t need me to tell you this, you are likely experiencing it. It likely takes somewhere in the range of 100–150 well thought out emails to get a meeting. But if your emails are not well thought out, it will take many more than that. Make sure that you are always relevant and succinct, as well as entertaining whenever possible. Short and to the point wins the day, because prospects don’t want to read emails, but they also don’t want to miss something that could be THE answer, so tell them quickly and up front.
Avoid common phrases like “Hope all is well”, “Sorry to bother you”, “Haven’t heard from you in a while”, and “Not sure if you saw my last email”…Oh, let’s not stop there, there are more commonly used phrases to avoid, like “We help X do X”, “Just touching base”; get rid of all of them. These are trite and signal that you are sending a sales email like all the rest. Instead, start with credibility, state the problem, help them envision the outcome, and then make a direct and easy to fulfil ask related to next steps. Keep it all brief, and these things will show your prospect that you have done your research, and that you can add value.
Christian Krause posts a lot of valuable and highly engaging advice about sales on LinkedIn. I highly recommend following him. He likes to make two points that are highly relevant to what we are discussing. 1. Keep your email to 50 words or less. 2. Use 6th grade language; no filler words. Basically, be brief; be direct.
Most importantly, however, remember your goal. Leave your features, products, and solutions completely out of the email. You are not going to make a sale via email, so stop trying. Work on establishing familiarity and association and then procuring agreement and validation on the issue, before moving to social proof and securing micro commitments in subsequent emails. Your products and solutions have no place in any of that. Sell yourself, and your expertise, and the value of the next interaction. That should be the point of the email, and the singular and direct ask of your future buyer.
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