Take more PTO, shorten your prospecting emails, and get faster approval

Why you need time off to sell better, how to shorten your prospecting emails to get attract more responses, AND how to move through the approval process faster.

Get ready for another fast and furious Full Funnel with RajNATION (Startup Hypeman) and Tyler Lessard (Sales Feed / Vidyard).


Full Funnel Resources:

Building a Culture that Champions Mental Health: https://www.blueboard.com/blog/buildi...

Tech Talks - Lavender email writing walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV5wr...

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Transcript

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You're not taking enough PTO, your cold emails are way, way, way too complicated, and I need approval from my CFO, which may push his deal into next year. These three points and no layups this week on full funnel Hey, everybody, I'm Raj Nation, he's Tyler Lessard, and this is full funnel on sales feed the weekly show that puts the F-U in both full and, well, funnel. Full funnel is where we break down three hot topics happening in the world of sales, all to help you go out, show out and fill up your funnel. Let's dive right in... top funnel! The holiday season is here, which means Starbucks turning over from pumpkin spice lattes to peppermint mochas. But it also means the holiday season arriving and perhaps you as a seller wanting to take some PTO, some paid time off. But if you're behind on your quota, requesting PTO from your employer can feel like you're doing that in poor form. How do you actually take time off, if you're behind on your number? Your time off that was part of your contract as an employee was not contingent on your performance. It's essentially one of your rights as an employee of your company, so don't feel like it's something that you have to only be overperforming on as a seller to be able to even request time off or that. Oh no, I'm taking too much time off, and it's going to look bad because I haven't hit my number yet . If that's the environment that you're selling under, you might be in the wrong environment. In that culture at the company perhaps isn't one that supports you and the entire team in improving your overall well-being. If you feel good, chances are you're going to sell better. Well, I mean, I couldn't agree more with that because, well, we often think that taking time off is going to negatively impact our performance and productivity. I think we all inherently know that the opposite can often be true. I mean, the whole point of taking vacation is to give us time to recharge our batteries, to spend time doing the things we're most passionate about and to reconnect with friends and family. It can really, really help us, well, go out, show out and fill up your funnel... Mid Funnel! breaking news The number of emails being sent by sales reps has more than doubled since pre-pandemic times. On the flip side, response rates are down more than 40% since the pre-pandemic time. What does that all mean? We are sending more emails than ever and not getting the responses we are looking for. So how is it that you, as a sales rep, can stand out in that inbox and create that perfect sales email that actually gets them to engage and get the response you're looking for? Well, the dove into that, we are going to go to our very own feed on the street. The one and only Will Aitken coming at you live from the inbox. Thanks so much, Tyler. You hit the nail on the head. Prospects are now receiving more sales emails than ever, and response rates are just plummeting. The rise of sales engagement platforms and email automation has meant the quantity has shot up while quality has gone right down. What this means is you really need to make sure you're hitting the mark of your emails if you want to cut through the noise. Here are some of my favorite data back tips to write a great sales email. first up is the subject line. You want to make sure this is between three and five words punchy, short, relevant, ideally catchy, so they actually click the open button. As for the body of the email, you want to make sure it's not too long can be read without having to scroll on a mobile phone, for example, and has plenty of white space, so it doesn't intimidate the person who's open the email into not reading it. I like to bring my emails down to three main sections or three paragraphs. first one is the relevance and personalization. So this is why I'm reaching out what I know about you. The reason why you should keep reading the second email is often about the problem that my company help solve or a story of how I've helped another customer. And the third paragraph is the call to action or the ask. A lot of people use this ask as an opportunity to ask for a meeting or time. I don't think that's a good idea and too much of an ask for the first touchpoint. Instead, I like to ask for interest. For example, does this sound interesting to you? If they respond, you can always ask for a meeting later. The goal is to start a conversation, not book a meeting on the first email. If you're still lacking confidence in writing sales emails, then I highly recommend checking out the review I did of a tool called Lavender. Lavender is an email writing system that gives you tips on how to improve your emails as you're actually writing them. Really cool tool, had a lot of fun reviewing it. Tyler, would you be interested in booking 30 minutes with me next week to discuss? kind regards, Will... bottom funnel! Welcome to everybodies soon to be favorite segment Role Play! In this role play. I'm the seller. Tyler is the buyer and I'm finding out on a discovery call that there is more people involved than just him. Role play on. So, Tyler, everything from our discussion today sounds great. I'm seeing a fit on our side. I'm thinking that you're probably feeling something like that as well. Is this something you're working alone on or are there other decision makers involved as well? Yeah, I know this is going great. I will need to get approval from our CFO at a minimum on this. OK, great. No problem about that. What are some of the things that your CFO typically considers when reviewing these kinds of decisions? one is the term of a contract, so is it something that's going to be monthly, yearly, multiyear? Obviously, the amount as well as the payment terms, those are all definitely fair requests and considerations. I'm curious, does your CFO like being surprised when it comes to big purchase decisions? Safe to say no. To be honest, even if it's my birthday, I don't really like surprises either, so I can imagine if it's going to signing a contract surprises are probably a bad idea. So why don't we do this? Let's just get an email to your CFO, and I'm happy to write it, and we can just let your CFO know that this is coming down the pipeline, potentially, and it's going to hit his desk, you know, maybe the next three or four weeks, but we just want to give him a heads up. Yeah, that's a great idea. And I appreciate you sending over an email I can forward makes it simple for me, and you can be very explicit on our need. So yeah, please send that over. That would be great. Awesome role play over. So if we roll back the tape on that role play, there's a couple key things that I did to help move this deal along and make Tyler feel comfortable in the process. Namely, I tried to learn what were his CFO considerations because I can't assume anything and I have to know what that person is prioritizing and what their schedule looks like. I made it easy for Tyler to get this in front of his CFO and get it in front of a CFO early. So that way no one's feeling stress at any point in the process. And I let down the barrier by just asking, do they like being surprised at purchase decisions? It creates a little humor, and it makes it easy to advance the deal forward. Tyler, I mean, we didn't practice that beforehand. So I am curious, how did you feel on the receiving end? No, I was super impressed, Raj, like you said, we hadn't practiced that. That was a first take and one take on that. And I loved particularly how you got ahead of that review process and the surprise notion with the CFO. That is what will help bring this deal into this quarter rather than push it to next. Because I always go through these cycles as a buyer where I put something in front of our CFO and inevitably, no matter how small it is, it's going to be a three to four week process to get them, to review it, to get them up to speed and to close it out. So getting ahead of it, super smart and knowing the terms and things are going to be looking for once again. Well done, Raj. I think I might be buying babe, you hear that? We're eating dinner tonight! the close!... we've reached the end of our funnel. Let's recap. In top funnel, we talked about the importance of taking time off as a seller. Even if you're behind on your year, remember your mental health matters and working yourself to the bone will never get you ahead of your number. For more on prioritizing your mental health as an employee and also as a company building a culture that champions mental health, check out the resource from the Blueboard blog linked in our episode description. In middle of Funnel, we talked about how challenging it can actually be to write a great sales email. For more on that, check out the first ever episode of sales feed's own, Sales Tech Talks, where eight bit Will Aitken and dives into the lavender tool to see if it can write a better email than he can . And in bottom funnel, we role played out the approval from my CFO objection when that comes up, it doesn't have to be an objection. It's actually helpful information that can help you advance a deal and get ahead of issues well before they become any actual issue. Our funnel is full. We hope you can get back out there now and fill up yours. He's Tyler Lessard. I am Raj Nation. You've been watching full funnel exclusively on sales feed. Remember to like, comment and subscribe before you head out. We will see you next week. But until then, remember use caution when opening your overhead bins as objects may have shifted during flight. We'll see you next time, everyone.