When talking to clients, our sales team keeps hearing “I have to discuss this with the boss/board/co-founder/you name him”. Unless you’re a one-man business, it’s highly probable that you too will have to sell your superiors or partners on the new lead generation method.
This poses a major challenge. Even though you may be already hyped about a certain idea, you still need to persuade skeptics to come over to your side.
I’ll help you develop a business case that will make convincing the board or your business partner to cold emails a breeze.
Why cold emails?
During RightHello’s early stages, as a small startup founder, I had to convince many CEOs and directors myself to use this form of lead acquisition. When I was meeting clients, I was explaining how do cold emails work and what results can they yield. I also remember what made me sold on cold emails and what I now pay attention to as a director when talking to my employees. I have experience and understand both parties involved, so let me share a number of short tips that will help you convince the board.
Beware! You won’t find any tips here on how to suck up to your boss, become his pupil, and increase sales five-fold. What you will find though is a list of arguments showing that cold emailing is an efficient method for acquiring leads/establishing contact.
That said, before you’ll learn how to convince the board to a cold email campaign, I wanted to share some of my personal experience. Here’s a short introduction and I promise we’re moving on to the meat.
I don’t like to call up people…
… and try to persuade them, explain over and over again what is it that I’m calling about, and eventually ask for a meeting. It was just a couple of years back that I still didn’t have a good grasp of sales, it was magic to me. I mostly associated it with visiting one office after another, being constantly on the phone and trying to get through the switchboard. I was looking for a way to efficiently establish a business relationship with the right person without having to be on the phone all the time.
Cold emails proved to be the best way to achieve that. You can get the same result – reaching out to and establishing contact with decision makers and eventually acquiring a lead – without the phone agony (cold calling) and the battle of switchboards. Moreover, you can fully automate and scale the process. Emails have helped me grow my company and now we use them to help others.
Perks of cold emails:
- They’re way more effective than cold calls (you don’t like taking sales calls either, right?)
- It’s a path less traveled in comparison to Google or Facebook marketing products (everyone’s been investing in AdWords and Facebook Ads which makes them less efficient than they used to be)
- It has a high return on investment rate (if you’ll select the right target group, develop personalized and original email content, and plan the distribution properly, you’ll see the return)
- And many others pros cold mailing has over cold calling
How do you convince the boss?
Not everyone’s naturally persuasive so before you run your pitch, make sure to have a set of arguments at hand. Don’t expect your superior to be nodding to some cliches and not ask questions and agree to everything you suggest right away.
- First, the director expects tough bullet points – hard data and facts. When talking to my employees, I don’t like hearing arguments like “this will help us”. I want to know exactly how this is going to help and how the individual and the business will benefit from this.
- Second, there are multiple reasons why your boss may have a negative outlook on everything that’s new from the get-go. Especially, if the implementation of your idea will require a portion of the budget. As a director, I want to know precisely what kind of returns are we talking about.
The following guide contains only solid arguments. It shows black on white the facts regarding cold email campaigns – we present them based on the experience gained at RightHello and the campaign stats we’ve collected for our customers worldwide. I believe the guide will prove to be helpful in reaching your goals.
#1 Cold emailing will help the entire company, not just yourself
Try to get into your boss’ shoes. Introduce the idea emphasizing its benefits, try to make it seem like a universal ailment to all the company’s pains. It’s simple – your boss wants the company to make more money. It can do so if it’ll start selling more. It can sell more if it’ll acquire more quality leads. And how do you get those? Well, by running a cold email campaign indeed.
#2 Numbers don’t lie
When trying to convince your boss to cold emailing, hit him with hard numbers. An example?
1 million dollars was the amount of potential income Atlas Solutions, one of our US-based clients, saw in its pipeline thanks to leads won via our joint cold email campaigns.
Want to see the stats for particular industries, including the target countries? Sign up for our newsletter and download the spreadsheet for potential campaign income/results.
When talking to the board, try not to show bare stats and charts. Instead, make them a part of broader pros and explain how do the numbers translate into business results. If you have a CRM system in place, it will make your life easier. Launch it and point your boss to the factors that can be improved thanks to a cold email campaign. Make it clear as to what can be changed for the better by the implementation of your idea.
#3 Find examples of successful campaigns
Provide examples of other companies and their stats to support your point. Where do you get them from? You can start with our case studies. They showcase some of our clients who have generated up to 4000% ROI thanks to cold emails. Obviously, the return isn’t always this good but still, campaign efficiency is way higher than with other channels. Marketing research clearly supports the statement:
- 24% of people who visit a site as a result of an email campaign make a purchase. The same factor for social media is only 0.59%, and for the search engine results just 2.49% – as per Monetate.
- McKinsey experts say email is 40 times more efficient in lead acquisition than Facebook or Twitter.
- According to Campaign Monitor, the likelihood of clicking an email is 6 times greater than clicking a tweet.
- MarketingSherp’s research shows that 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content via email. Only 17% of respondents indicate social media as the favorite channel.
#4 Low risk, high return
It’s what your boss wants to hear when trying to make a decision. The risk is the cost you incur and the possibility of not getting the desired results. When it comes to cold emails, the chances of a total disaster are slim. The biggest challenge is selecting the right target group. Then comes appealing content. And how do you minimize the risk? By working with someone who’s already experienced and knows what gets the job done. The lower the risk, the easier it’ll be for your boss to go for the solution you’re suggesting. Make it clear that the advantages resulting from cold emails outweigh any dangers.
How will cold emails help your boss?
Answer this question for yourself and make it a center point of your presentation. It’s only natural that people’s own problems come first, so focus on what you want to achieve and how this will help your boss. Having a good grasp of the issue will make it easier for you to convince the board.
Even if your boss thinks that there’s no need to fix what’s not broken, I guarantee he won’t resist the argument for boosting sales.
And now give it all you got to make the cold email plan work. Feel free to let me know in case you’ll need more information. I’m available at piotr@righthello.com
