Most salespeople have probably sent one or two not-so-great email in their lives. It’s natural. They’re pressed for time, distracted, or simply at the time just don’t know any better.
Fortunately, most people learn from their mistakes. Reading up on best practises, chatter in the market or low/no open rates are usually an indicator to switch up your tactics.
Unfortunately, some people never learn — or maybe we’ve just caught them at an unfortunate moment.
Here are 5 of the worst sales email we’ve ever seen and what social selling can do to help.
“What’s Your Success Rate”
Other than a general stiltedness and redundancy to the language, this email is impossibly general. The sender doesn’t specify where or when the recipient had “expressed an interest in getting more business and clients,” or how the sender even knows the recipient.
If the sender had done their research, they could delivered a more value-centric message by touching on the recipient’s specific pain points.
Nursing Professional Database
This email sequence just generally seems like mass spam. There is zero personalization, and the sender clearly didn’t realize the recipient had no connection or interest in the healthcare industry.
If the sender had been given a more targeted database, they might have more luck in receiving responses. Also, by asking “who do you recommend I talk to,” is basically a dead giveaway you haven’t done your research.
Selling Social Selling To A Social Selling Company
There are no spelling mistakes and the grammar is correct, but it was immediately clear to the receipt of this terrible email the sender had failed to, at the very least Google, him.
Not only did the sender fail to realize he was selling social selling training to a social selling training company, he reached out (obviously unknowingly) to one of our senior facilitators! The recipient literally teaches social selling and LinkedIn training for a living. Huge fail.
[Insert Wrong First Name Here]
This is a LinkedIn InMail a member of our team received earlier this week. First, the Senior Recruitment Consultant got the recipient’s name wrong. Second, the sender’s punctuation is off. Third, the layout of the InMail is horrible. Why not take the 3 extra minutes and properly list your bullet points? The message is clearly misaddressed, and mass sent.
HATEMAIL?
We recognize this isn’t exactly an email… but why so vague? This snail mail could possibly be a brilliant SDR tactic, or just plain creepy/rude. What do you think?
And if you’re interested in actually crafting messaging that leads to opportunities, check out this post on how to send LinkedIn InMails that actually lead to sales opportunities, or this post on writing emails that resonate with your buyer.
This list is by no means exhaustive; if you have terrible-to-the-point-of-funny emails, feel free to send them over.
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