Most important realisation for me personally: keep emailing.
As an introverted dev trying to sell I often assume silence means they don't care and they hate me. I've learnt this is almost always wrong - the recipient is typically just busy or indecisive. Stay polite/respectful/human but keep at them and don't let the void kill you.
Still figuring out the details but getting over that was quite a profound feeling and has turned out pretty useful in life generally
100% true. I used to send emails with lots of fluff about what I was doing, building etc. Nobody cares. Its basically the equivalent of walking up to a stranger on the street and pitching them your business. They are basically going to ignore you and walk away...
That's why the brief emails like you mention and asking a question convert so well. Put the focus on them.
You want the sale? Pick up the damn phone. It is sooo easy to be an asshole over email. Brush it off, never reply.
You want a follow up? Get the person on the phone. Lots of nerds hate the phone - the great sales people work it like nothing else. Always smile during the call, it shapes your voice.
Here's something I learned: don't be wishy washy. Avoid pandering to the person you're emailing - it takes up words and sounds pathetic.
I've done this in the past and been the recipient. It just goes bad.
Busy people work on short terse communication, unless they are actively in a conversation with you. And, in general, they will appreciate the first few emails you send them being of the same - condensed and full of content.
Never worry about being rude by not saying please every other word.
On another note, I mildly dislike this one:
Show your target respect by responding to everything immediately. Just because the VC you're emailing might not get back to you immediately, doesn't mean that you have the same privilege. Ron Conway famously makes immediately email responses a pre-condition for investment.
I'm a busy guy, I get a LOT of work email each day. And yet the people we work for seem to see slow response as an indication of laziness :S Even though it takes them a week to respond. Yes, you're important to me, you are potentially worth a lot of money to me and I really want to keep you happy. But give me a fracking chance!
Here are some (hard-earned) lessons I've learned about sales:
Keep it simple, relevant, and keep the conversation going by ending everything with a question that leads down the funnel.
If you're doing that then you have to investigate where down the funnel you might be failing. If they're opening your email but not engaging, then the body of the email:
1. Doesn't give a clear CTA
2. Makes the reader feel they're not your demographic
3. Just feels spammy
4. Is overly verbose.
Another tip is NEVER try and close right away. I usually begin with a leading question about them/their service, then hint about what I'm doing and ask how they're currently doing something similar, and then propose alternatives.
Unless your product is something they don't already have but need, you're competing with activation energy to switch. That's hard. I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
In the end remember:
1. That business is a relationship, and a relationship is built on trust.
Its not that people hate receiving mail, they just hate mail that tries to make a quick buck out of them.
You should really email your customers and prospects. But don't just send them a boring borchure. Approach them in a personal way. Ask them what is bugging them at the moment? Offer to help. Give them some love in the form of an email.
I've been emailing people from HN for about a month. Everyone responds. They all just keep the conversation going as if we were old friends. Some even go out of their way to help me build my startup.
How do I do it? I really care about them. Every time I contact somebody, it is because I think they are someone worth knowing. Not for networking connections, but as a person.
Treat your customers in the same way. Talk to them. Be friendly. I know this is hard for some people to do. It used to be so hard for me to do it. But I realized that people want to deal with those who relate to them. In fact, thats my biggest marketing weapon: I focus on making a connection with people. To really interest myself in their dealings. The sales just happen by themselves after that.
Note: This does sound like a lot of self-help books. I know. And it doesn't work with everybody, because not everybody likes you. But it works with a lot of people. I'd rather be mistaken for a friendly fool, than for an arrogant know-it-all.
Do a quick exercise. Click on the usernames in this thread. Find someone who posts their email on their profile. Send them a message with the title: "Just saying hello from HN". Inside, say hello, and ask them what they have been up to. Everyone will answer. Everyone.
I do this for a living and craft somewhere between 1000 and 2000 emails a week. Here are some additional tips:
- be authentic. I never email anyone without believing 100% that my message can help solve a problem I already know they are struggling with.
- be personal. Do some research and find something that shows you are putting in the work to make sure you are authentic. It makes all the difference.
- be honest. Should go without saying.
- offer something expecting nothing in return. For example, if you are selling SEO services send them a list of where their site ranks for 5 keywords you think apply to their business. Then send 2 or 3 simple things they can do on their own to solve the problem
- keep it short. 140 words is enough. Keep rewriting until it is that short.
- ask one question and make it yes or no.
Lots of other nuance but those are good pillars to build on.
> You meet more of a person saying "hi" to their face than you do after months of reading their posts online.
Yes, but that don't stop you from reaching out and saying "hi".
I am (mainly) a front-end developper, and I occasionally send emails to the developper of product or websites that I love and simply offer to help them out. I don't work for free, but what I am doing isn't working. It's sharing knowledge.
I would email "Hi there! I love your product! I noticed that your X isn't working correctly... did you try Y solution? I had the same problem a while back." Sometime, this email is ignored. Sometime, a developper end up reading it. Sometime, it's some guy who is passionate about his product but has no idea what code even is.
Yes, the internet is turning into a mall. That doesn't stop you from becoming friend with the managers of the store next to yours.
i get a ton of email from people who want stuff. i try to reply but it's a barrage.
Some stuff that makes it easier:
- understand that I am likely to read your email on an iPhone. keep it brief, don't write an essay.
- if i reply and say something like "interesting, please send an executive summary" or "i'd love to see a demo" then do that or offer something equivalent/better. i do not want to meet you to see your demo, etc etc etc.
- don't ask for extremely unlikely things and expect a reply
- it takes me a week or two to get to low-priority stuff. don't email me and ask for a detailed response within an hour. if you do have a deadline, tell me so, so i can prioritize appropriately. i'm looking at you, journalists.
- if you are pitching a startup, don't pitch investors who have clear and obvious conflicts.
- if you are offering an advisory role, be up front about offering equity or something.
that said, i try my best. that guy who had acquisition questions a few months ago on Ask HN? i got him to someone who got the deal done.
If you really care about getting something done, then you're going to need to stay on it. The best way to do it without being annoying is:
1. To be extremely polite and articulate each time you follow-up as it will not only make people more receptive to in your inquiry, but will help them have a better understanding of what it is you actually need;
2. Try to secure a "when can I expect to hear from you?" ballpark figure from the parties involved; that way they can set the expectation for when you should hear back from them and you can politely hold them to it;
3. Give people a reasonable amount of leeway - if the person you're contacting is extremely busy, it might take them weeks to follow up on a simple email. I contacted a CEO of a company which represents a model customer for my own startup service in late March to get some feedback from him; I didn't actually end up speaking to him until yesterday. That's just how it goes with busy people some times - just stay organized, keep a list of all of the people you've contacted and when, and periodically remind them when enough time has passed.
The updates around that time were the hardest ones send out
The people who don't want to have those hard discussions are the ones that have their startup die. People who don't reply to emails are often people who are having negative feelings they don't want to deal with.
Maybe they don't have answers and are afraid to give a status report that includes an admission that they simply don't know. Maybe they don't want to be the harbinger of bad news and are waiting until things get better.
Neither of those is a constructive response. Neither of those fixes the problem.
Avoidance tactics are usually about emotional reactions. They usually aren't actually tactical choices for effectively addressing a problem.
There are exceptions. There are times when silence is golden or when it is the least worst option. I doubt that ever applies to dealing with an ongoing relationship with your investors.
(I'm not someone with startup experience. I just know something about people.)
I used to run a marketplace business and much of my role was getting in touch with partners to get them on our service. Obviously the value we added was key but I started A/B testing email to see if it made much of a difference. I found that the shorter the email, the quicker the reply I'd receive. I worked it up to about a 50% improvement in the end. Honestly I just learned that people want you to get to the point, lay out the key facts and make it clear what you want.
If you know the person look at saving any niceties for after you've made your point. It doesn't look so false if you save any of this for after you've made your request and and you're actually interested in how their job is going.
When you email people, they are not interested in your passion or anything else. They have a problem. They want someone helpful to fix their problem without trying to sell them anything. That's it. Don't be too chummy, don't be too cold. Just be straightforward and helpful - like a guy fixing a computer.
If you are too friendly, you often lose the sale.
Also, being a human behind it is not a selling point. It's not a differentiator. It's just the expected thing. Your product is your selling point, don't try to sell anything else.
People want to know immediately what the price is - but people who are communicating with you are a LOT more likely to buy from you (assuming you know how to communicate with them).
Ironically TL;dr. Not sure I got much out of it. Some of my best practices when talking to developers at my company:
-Do not leave voice mails. Go see them in person if you can.
-If your signature is longer than your short email and/or contains graphics, rethink your signature.
-Turn off HTML in your email client.
-Expect in-line responses.
The biggest irony of all of this is that I see so many technical recruiters who have massively long signatures with a bunch of graphics.
> You can make a pretty good guess that if they don't answer you, they either don't want to talk to you (in which case you should leave them alone), or they have some kind of weird power complex and get off on you begging (in which case you should run far away and find ANY OTHER WAY to get what you need from SOMEBODY ELSE).
... or, as the article says, they're just busy and/or have poor inbox management. It even has real examples of repeated follow-up emails working.
On HN, people hate cold emails. In real life, I've found that most people will respond or ignore. Like a tiny minority will act like you killed their mother, but that's life.
I know you know this, if you're in sales, but I, like many other engineers who read this forum was overly cautious when I first started speaking to people because I anticipated that 99/100 would be upset at having to talk to me.
The truth was that 99/100 were willing to speak to me and listening to HN and Reddit set me back farther than I expected until I unlearned that lesson.
So I'm saying this for the benefit of all those other engineers like me.
I found it to be a really great reminder for just that reason. When someone has shown a lot of interest in my product and then just disappear, it's up to me to find a way to re-engage with them. Often it's not lack of interest, they've just become so busy that it fell to the bottom to the priority list. Getting a phone call/email from me usually brings it back to the top.
People take the time to email me directly. Even if it isn't something worth my time ("Hey I see you're doing a startup! How about you quit that and join mine?"), I'm still going to respond with "No." Or a canned response.
Consider it a personal philosophy — if someone takes the time to email me, I'm going to respond. It might not seem to give much value, but it actually makes me and my personal brand look better. Do you want to appear like a douche by not even deigning to respond?
As an introverted dev trying to sell I often assume silence means they don't care and they hate me. I've learnt this is almost always wrong - the recipient is typically just busy or indecisive. Stay polite/respectful/human but keep at them and don't let the void kill you.
Still figuring out the details but getting over that was quite a profound feeling and has turned out pretty useful in life generally
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