Disclaimer: This post is non-discriminative; other sectors are also able to use these tips to automate their sales as well.
As anyone knows, it is difficult to transition into automation. You’ll have to have some technical knowledge to figure out how to automate your sales and try it out 10 times to gather training data for your bot. When your bot has figured out the role patterns, you can automate it.
However, it is something that will save you costs and efforts later. 990 emails could be successful yet hassle-free.
Let’s say that we are all in the business of selling ice cream. We want F&B companies (or conglomerates) to buy our franchising rights.
As with Sales Prospecting, this is the way to automate your sales replies:
1. Find companies of interest.
We are going to reach out to companies which also sell food, such as Unilever, QAF Limited (sells Gardenia bread), Super Group Limited.
In this guide, we will be using the example of Unilever, which sells some ice cream products like Cornetto and Magnum.
2. Find the person of interest in the company using Professional Social Network X-Ray
Here it is below:
From the results, we can see that Luke Thomas is the Singaporean representative for Unilever.
3. Find the email of the person-of-contact
We can either use the free services such as Clearbit Connect (100 search credits per month) or Find That Email (50 search credits per month).
We will be using Clearbit Connect to find Luke. Clearbit Connect is a Google Chrome extension that tags to your email. We will need to install the extension and log into our email to see the following column on the right side of our email.
Sometimes Clearbit Connect may have un-updated titles, so it may be useful to cross-check the email back to Professional Social Network and see if their name matches.
4. Draft emails
Now that you have the emails, you’ll have to draft your emails to them.
An example could be:
“Subject: Try and Franchise Our New Ice Cream?
Message: Hi!
I’m (name), (position) from (company). Would Unilever be interested in acquiring our ice cream flavor for a good price? After you’ve had the first taste of our signature vanilla flavor, we hope to commence proposals regarding franchising for our ice cream.
Thank you!”
As you can see, we are taking a tell-not-sell approach to convince the company to buy our products.
5. Draft follow-up emails
Most cold-emails would not yield results. You may need to send about 3 follow-ups for the email-recipients to reply.
First email:
“Hi!
I’m (name), from (company). Not sure if you’ve received my email, but I would love to have Unilever to try the vanilla ice-cream. We could discuss business further after you try our ice cream.
Let me know when would be a suitable time for a call or a Google Hangouts session.
Thank you!”
Second email:
“Hi!
Sorry, we have not heard from you in a while. Is everything okay back at Unilever?
I wanted to follow up on my previous email on having Unilever try our ice cream and discussing the fit of Unilever and (company). And I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.
Let me know!”
Third email:
“Hi!
Following up from my previous email on offering Unilever a franchising opportunity, what are your thoughts on that?
Will love to hear back from you on this!”
6. Build the spreadsheet
When you’ve acquired the contacts, remember to record your contacts list on a spreadsheet.
We’re using Google Sheets in this example, but of course, Microsoft Excel, Numbers (by Apple) and other substitutes would also work.
Having columns for the name, company, and contact would be a great start. If you require more columns like industry and whether agreements were signed, do feel free to add those columns in your spreadsheets.
7 . Use Yesware to track email campaigns by contacts
You may use Yesware to track your email campaign.
If you haven’t signed up for Yesware, you may use the free trial. The Yesware column will appear on the right.
When you draft your emails, you must remember to activate Yesware before you send out the emails.
You may also create campaigns by clicking on “Campaigns”, and add the recipients.
Source: Yesware
Source: Yesware
Each campaign allows you to keep track of the people and companies you’ve contacted. You may choose dates and times for the emails to be sent out.
If any aspect of this DIY automation process is too cumbersome:
Do approach Nubela at [email protected] for help.
We have a database of businesses and CEOs in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and can help you fulfil your needs for business development data.
All the best with your sales automation!