Energize Your E-mail: Make it Error-free and Efficient
By Robert Carey
November, 2009

Fifteen years after e-mail became central to business communications, the written word is more critical to selling than ever before. But too many salespeople are unable to write effectively. Here’s how to avoid your own communications breakdown.

When suppliers send an e-mail pitch to George Montgomery of AA Advertising (asi/100330) in Richmond, British Columbia, or Jennifer Brown of 360 Promotions in Austin, TX, they’ve reached two distributor executives who are willing to give them a moment to pique their interest. Unfortunately, the opportunity is often squandered in mere seconds.

“The quality of the writing in these e-mails runs the gamut, but often it runs towards the poor side,” says Montgomery. “If I’ve had a positive experience in the past with a firm, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. But if you’re trying to win my business and your e-mails have spelling and grammar mistakes, such inattention to detail certainly does not reflect well on you. That e-mail gets deleted.”

Brown appreciates that purchase orders, artwork and other files can be e-mailed and thinks it’s A-OK for communication to be heavily electronic. On the other hand, “When I get an e-mail from a rep and my name is not in the salutation, or there are mistakes or if the tone is not to my liking, I delete it,” she says. “The electronic medium does not free businesspeople from displaying professionalism and respect.”

In that vein, Montgomery, while receptive to e-mail solicitations, won’t use e-mail to introduce himself to a prospect – nor does he want his sales reps doing that. A formal letter, followed days later by a phone call, is his firm’s standard operating procedure. And even when he does communicate via e-mail, his style is about as formal as he uses in a paper letter, with a salutation and the recipient’s name at the beginning, then with regards at the end. “I don’t shoot off two-line e-mails outside the company, and I don’t use the abbreviations you see in many e-mails and texts,” he says. He always takes a few seconds to use spell-check before clicking send, too.

Casual Creep
It’s a telling sign when a distributor’s efforts to communicate respectfully and without error can actually help that firm stand out, even though such effort was routine before the Internet arrived. Bobby Lehew, director of operations for Oklahoma City-based company-store distributor ROBYN (asi/309656), notes that the use of e-mail, text messages, Facebook and other applications among friends and family has caused a creeping casualness, which you often don’t realize has bled into your professional life over time. “And many others have gotten lazier in their written communication because they think that everyone does it, and that it’s now accepted,” he says.

However, this downward slide poses a significant problem for distributors: “Many of our industry’s buyers are marketing and communication professionals,” Lehew says. “The poor communication they get from us hurts the perception that we can be a knowledgeable and trusted partner to them.”

With communication being something like the heartbeat of a sales division, it would seem that distributors would have training programs in place to help reps bring their written skills up to the same level as their conversation skills. This is not the case, though. “It’s one of those things that you’d think would be obvious, but like at many other small companies, we just don’t get around to it,” says Lehew. And Montgomery acknowledges that his firm does not provide formal training in writing skills, either.

Go to the Library
Fred Parker, president of Bluegrass Promotional Marketing (asi/141964) in Charlotte, NC, also admits that his firm’s 25 reps don’t receive writing instruction. This is despite his assessment that “Some reps can write a great letter or e-mail, while others – even some top sales producers – can’t translate their persuasive talents into the realm of writing.”

To compensate for this, plus the fact that Parker “can’t micromanage all the written items our reps send out each day,” Bluegrass created a library of templates that offers sample introductory letters, follow-up letters, quote letters, thank-you letters and other written items that are commonly used during the sales process. “We devoted a lot of time and money to develop an Intranet site with tons of sales and marketing information for them, plus this library of templates,” Parker says. “With everything that’s there, we can move our reps in the right direction regardless of the situation they come upon in a sales relationship. This makes it much easier for them to come across in their writing the way we want them to.”

The Bluegrass templates are worded so they work as either paper or electronic missives; most are set up to print properly on company letterhead as well. And beyond the templates, the most common personally created items that come from the firm’s reps are handwritten thank-you notes, for which “We have company-branded stationery that reps can customize and print from remote locations,” says Parker. “I think the handwritten thank-you letter will always stand out with clients more than anything else.”

Brown agrees. “It’s so easy to lean on e-mail to do too much of your work. But don’t get so carried away with the electronic that you don’t put a piece of yourself in front of them occasionally,” she says. “A handwritten note – at any point in the sales process, not just as a thank-you – reminds clients that they are doing business with a person.”

And if a rep feels less than proficient in using the written word, he or she can always handle the matter themselves. “This is a personal-development issue,” Lehew says. “Reps who want to make a nice, long career in this industry should search out classes on professional etiquette and writing; there are plenty of them online. Even if you don’t stay at your company, what you learn will help you anywhere you go.”

Learn Your Lesson
The first lesson in effective writing has nothing to do with the words you will use. Instead, it has everything to do with whether the medium you choose to communicate through is the right one for the task at hand.

Audrey Nelson, a Boulder, CO-based communication trainer and author of a new book, Code Switching: How to Talk So Men Will Listen, says, “The rise of e-mail and texting has changed the possibilities for contact, but many reps don’t know what each medium can and cannot do well.” In short: Face time and phone time are for selling, so “Don’t rely on electronic communication for the critical moments in the sales process,” she says.

Tom Redmond, president of sales-consulting firm Redmond Group in Red Bank, NJ, adds that e-mail has made it easier for reps to give into what’s known as “call reluctance,” where they don’t pick up the phone enough due to one of many psychological barriers; rejection is just one of those (see our cover story on overcoming that big fear). But in citing a study showing that the number of contacts a rep makes is the top indicator of sales performance, he proves Nelson’s point about using the right medium at the right time.

“Yours is one of 100 identical-looking e-mails in an inbox, which gives you much less of a chance to be recognized,” Redmond says. “So I don’t think it is a good idea to use e-mail to introduce yourself.”

In contrast, Redmond writes paper letters to non-referred prospects, while he calls those prospects who are referred to him. He’s forced to leave a voice message about three-quarters of the time, but doing this gives him an opportunity to come across with personality that they remember. After making live contact, he uses e-mail to send a proposal – which he also prints out and mails in order to stay top-of-mind. The kicker: He attaches a handwritten note to the hard copy for maximum impact.

Then again, there are people like Montgomery and Brown who will take time to consider a pitch among the many dozens of e-mails they receive. But there’s a caveat: “If I don’t recognize the sender’s address, the subject line is critical,” says Montgomery. “It has to be something that grabs my interest for me to even consider opening it. It had better be targeted to my interest, a new product or a new development for our niche. And it needs to be grammatically correct for me to at least open it and read it.”

Personality Plus
For clients and prospects with whom a rep already has a relationship, the second lesson in effective writing is aimed at keeping those contacts from fading away. In other words, when the written word is the correct medium to use, the personality of the rep must come through – as should the rep’s respect for the client.

These goals come about in several ways. With e-mail or texts if the client doesn’t mind getting text messages from you, shorter is better. “I am a big fan of short sentences, which limits the chance that you will use punctuation in the wrong way or make some other mistake,” says Nelson. “Make your points in an uncomplicated way.” However, this does not mean that reps should use informal abbreviations such as “BTW” or “LOL.”

Also, paragraphs should be no more than two sentences; ideas get lost in a big body of words. “You should not make more than three sales points in an e-mail, or the recipient won’t absorb and appreciate all of them,” Nelson says.

She also likes to add physical space between each paragraph. Spacing forces pacing: “It gives the recipient’s mind a better chance to digest each point.”
On the other hand, brevity should not crowd out personality and respect. Reps usually want to show that they are task-oriented and responsive, but Nelson warns that “Neutral, matter-of-fact e-mails are perceived negatively; it’s just the way the mind works with written communication.”

So there should be at least two or three positive overtures in every e-mail, such as: I enjoyed our conversation on the phone last week; thanks for getting back to me so quickly; I value your opinion; thanks so much for your time; I hope you enjoy the nice weather that’s coming to your area this weekend. “If you send a totally factual and data-driven e-mail with no attempt to connect person-to-person, it leaves the recipient wondering if there’s a negative tone in there or not.” The worst part: Such uncertainty actually induces more anxiety in a recipient than an e-mail containing bad news.

Lastly, before sending the message, make sure nothing is cryptic. This means every sentence should be a restatement of an idea, so that the recipient does not have to refer to previous e-mails for understanding. This also means that you should sweat over any comment that’s intended to be clever or witty – these can come across as sarcastic, or even worse, to a recipient who has no tone of voice or body language to help them understand. Consider this, says Lehew: “Executives know that whatever they write has to be read a few times, preferably by another person, to make sure it cannot be misconstrued and land them in hot water. Reps should do the same.”

Robert Carey is a freelance writer based in NY.

Tips for Social Media

When it comes to using the community-building media applications such as blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, the key word is “community.” In other words, if you write only about you or your company, the only people who read it will be you and your company.

“Electronic activity can make you feel like you are accomplishing something that’s good for sales,” says Bobby Lehew, director of operations for ROBYN (asi/309656). “But if you don’t know how to do it right, not only might you be accomplishing nothing useful, you actually could be turning people off.”

Jennifer Brown, owner of 360 Promotions, has her own blog (housed on www.LetsBrandTogether.com) as well as a Twitter following of nearly 3,000 people. She stresses that building relationships first is imperative to using the social medium for business success. “Good networking is e-converse before e-commerce,” she says. “Your blog and your tweets should be about useful topics, or at least be a source of links to information that you think is useful to others. You have to show people you are helping them without looking for anything in return.”

If you do post interesting things regularly, “People will be willing to read an occasional tweet that is about a special your firm offers, or something about yourself,” she says. “If you don’t add to the industry conversation and give back more than you take, you are only going to be seen as a self-promoter.”