Quick Question for 1 in 4 Response

Was with a guy today I’ve a lot of time for that has just become, after takeover fall-out, the Head of Sales for a £¼bn business.  One of his new teams, is a brand new part of the structure.  An idea transfered from his new American colleagues, it’s heralded by the grand sounding title of the Conversion Task Unit.  The concept is that these are the ‘sales police’ that help people unclog bottlenecks in their pipeline.

One idea they’ve already implemented with some degree of success, is the ‘quick question’ email.  It’s all about getting to talk to a prospect that seems to have avoided you for longer than is comfortable.  It runs like this:

Subject Line 

Put as your subject line “Quick question”.  People are more likely to read this, than if you just mentioned your company name anywhere.

Message

As for the main body, “Sorry to bother you, as it’s been 3 weeks since we last spoke I was just checking whether you are still in the market for [whatever you sell] or whether I shouldn’t be bothering you.  If you are still looking, then please by all means suggest a suitable time for us to talk once more.”….is the general gist.

Results

And through this stab-in-the-dark, during the first two months of using it, they realised they got a 25% response rate.  And they were rightly delighted to get the 1 in 4 respondents moving ahead on or falling from their pipelines.