Jon is the owner of the company, Charm Offensive, where they focus on direct mail and email campaigns. He is simply the best at getting the attention of busy people.
Here are the highlights of my conversation with Jon:
Jon Buchan’s coolest sales experience as a customer
Strategies for cold emails that make you stand out:
- Take advantage of the fact that they don’t know your name.
Think about what they would see in their email box. The subject line and the first line are important. Figure out how you can make them smile in the very first line and how can you make them think you’re interesting. Make sure you’re able to get them-them to read the subject line, the first line, and the second line. Make them smile and curious at that time. Focus on writing something captivating that gets them to hit reply with a positive message.
- Keep the pitch brief.
Make it into almost like a storytelling them what your business is about and your ambitions. Make it brief and funny. Have at least a funny element to every few sentences that’s at least smirk-worthy. Making them smile or laugh gives them a good opinion of you before they’ve even met you.
Don’t sell too much. Don’t sell every feature and benefit. Stop convincing that your offering is the best. You’re only selling them on the idea that having a call or meeting with you is not an awful use of their time. Otherwise, you will only look like every other email in their inbox because you’re blending in with the others.
- Focus on impact rather than persuasion.
Have an honest first line to grab their attention. Focus on impact to stand out from all the other crap in the person’s inbox rather than persuasion. Without impact, you can’t persuade people anyway.
- People are just people, they like to be entertained.
Jon puts a silly image on his image. People say it can’t work but he proves them wrong each time. People are just people. They’re human. You’ve got to take chances.
- Send a direct mail then follow it up with an email.
Follow this up with an email (in a few days to a week) and reference that in the subject line (be sure to include something unusual) and this will increase your open rates to over 80%.
Direct emails grab their attention for the next five minutes (if it’s good and if you’ve got something distinct).
- Include a call-to-action
Give them at least three different options. Listen in to find out how Jon does this. It’s hilarious!
- If you can’t be funny, be clever. If you can’t be clever keep it short.
Jon’s Major Takeaway:
Look at what you’re sending and see if it’s entertaining and different from what everybody else is sending. Stand out and be daring. Test things out and don’t assume that because of their senior people, they’re the most boring people in the world and you have to be super serious. Amazingly, everyone is human even the really senior people. You’ll be surprised what happens just by being distinctive.
Episode Resources:
Join the Charm Offensive Facebook group and The Sales Evangelizers.
Check out @LiveStreamKatya, the LiveStream Strategist
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini
The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi
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