Day: June 10, 2019

We use email templates for marketing campaigns. What is less appreciated is using email templates for running sales campaigns.

Unlike marketing campaigns, sales campaigns focus on more immediate revenue generation activities- tasks that relate to specific funnel stages.

Why do you need templates?

Sales people are busy and there is a lot of demand on their time. They win business when they are in front of their customer- face to face or on phone.

But, there is a lot of paperwork in sales. The need for paperwork stems from:

1. Cold prospecting- or introduction.
   • Have you ever faced this? You call a prospect and he says, “can you send me a mail saying exactly what you do?” If you sat around and sent out a mail only hours later, he may even forget you called, or the context of the conversation.
   • Having a template for an “intro-mail” is a no-brainer. It saves time. Imagine getting off the phone and firing off the email at the click of a button. It does not have to be complex. It may contain bare facts about your company, how your product relates to his needs and what you will do next.
   • You will obviously tweak the text a little bit before sending it to personalize it.
2. Meetings notes: minutes
   • You have a meeting. Either on the phone or face to face. If you are sending the minutes, let it be professional. Nicely formatted and the names of meetings attendees recorded in the email.
3. An email for every occasion:
   • Thank you for a meeting..
   • Thank you for an order.
   • Gentle reminder for follow up on a visit.
   • Update on a commitment.
   • Relevant company news.
   • Sending literature.
   • Response to a demo request.
4. Email for proposals.
   • Product/ category wise preliminary proposal: cover salient specs, budgetary ideas and success stories.
   • Product/ category wise firm proposal: cover detailed specs, clear budget and other standard terms of business.

How many of these can you automate? To save your time and that of your team? And help win business faster?

We are on our way- we started years back, we are still building. And we keep adding features, tweaking or revamping UI and we keep adding customers.

It sounds great but it is not so simple, obviously.

We have worked hard for years, made changes to workflows, UI, cut features, added features, changes pricing, run promotions. We have shown the product to thousands. And a few thousands have used and continue to use the product.

And we keep getting better. There are many answers to the web on “how to build a great product”. I personally like many of them. But, the one quality you need – other than the obvious and usual ones like getting to a product market fit, hustle, investing in scale, selecting the right feedback…

And, that quality is patience. Coupled with belief.

Not just yours; but your customers’ too!

You must have faith in your sense of direction. And your customers, especially some of the early adopters must share it too.

You must be patient. There will be problems that will take days to solve. Implementation issues will clog delivery of that new feature that the customers have been shouting for. Perfectly working integrations will suddenly stop working.

No documentation, no roadmap, no stories of “been there and done that”. You need to have patience and you need customers, who have bought into the vision and are willing to wait.

Remember it is a journey. Enjoy the ride.