I’m continuing my series on sales tips that have worked well for me over the years. Yesterday, I wrote about how to cold-email. Today I’ll talk about who should get your cold-email. Hint: it should be (someone like) Steve Ballmer.
For my company LaunchBit, I sell ads, but often I don’t know who the decision maker is at a given company. Sometimes, even after looking through LinkedIn, there can be so many potential decision makers. What to do?
Aim high
If you don’t know who your decision maker is, email high up in an organization. I’m talking really high. Like the CXO level (SVP and VP levels are OK, too). This can be REALLY DAUNTING, especially if you are emailing a CXO at a large company. For a previous company, I used to email a lot of CXOs at Fortune 1000 companies, and the first several emails made me quite nervous. I was afraid to say the wrong thing. I was afraid I would hear a mean response. I was afraid I would hear nothing at all. But after a while, each email started to mean less and less.
When you email these people, the goal is not to get a meeting with them. The goal is to get an introduction to your decision maker. For example, for LaunchBit, I might cold-email the VP of HR at a company, and my call-to-action will be: “Who is the best person to speak with for 20 min about this?” Even though the VP of HR may know nothing about marketing or ad buys, my hope is that he/she can simply cc the person I want to reach. Then, this person, my decision-maker, is basically obligated to speak with me because a higher-up added him/her to the email thread.
Higher-up people are more responsive
Aiming high has other benefits, too. Not only is it easier for them to delegate down, but there is also a reason people in high positions are where they are. Even though they may be busier, do you think you get to be VP of HR if you’re not responsive to emails?
You are the CEO. Act like one.
Still sound daunting? Even though you may feel small, you should remember that you’re the CEO of your startup. You should be dealing with others at the same level.
In my next post, I’ll talk about how you can find Steve Ballmer and others’ email addresses.
Who do you email when you don’t know who your decision maker is?