In this episode we talk about dealing with rejections during a cold email campaign. You will learn that being rejected is inevitable due to the nature of cold email itself, but that there are smart ways to ease your struggle with it, embrace it and flip it to your own benefit. Tune in!
HERE’S WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:
– The most typical rejections you get and why they shouldn’t stop you from cold emailing
– Do you really need to be a cold hearted salesperson to be able to keep sending cold email?
– The key thing to focus on in order to have a successful campaign even at the rejection rate of 50%
– What are you hugely missing out on if you deal poorly with rejections and don’t stick with it long enough?
– The “hard” way to approach rejection and how it helps you better understand your prospects
– The “easy” way to approach rejection and how it helps you maintain the positive outlook
– What happens if you never see a negative response – the advantages of the hard over the easy way
– Should you at all reply to rejection emails and how to differ between objection and rejection?
– A great example of a good spin on rejection that turns it into a manageable objection
– The power of asking questions and why you always need to be ready to engage in conversation with your prospect
There you have it – a step-by-step guide to dealing with rejections and approaching them as a valuable input that helps you improve your copywriting and know your market better.
Put these tips into action today and let us know how it went. Happy cold emailing!
Transcript:
– [Jeremy] Hey, what’s up, this is Jeremy from QuickMail.io.
– [Jack] And this is Jack from EmailsThatSell. Episode three.
– [Jeremy] Yes, episode three, how to deal with rejection. And before we start, in order to get a good understanding of what we mean by rejection, can you give us some typical example that we got in cold emails?
– [Jack] The common ones are take me off your list, unsubscribe, and not interested.
– [Jeremy] Do you have any harsher one?
– [Jack] Sure, so we all get the go to hell messages, or even the slightly scarier, I’m gonna report you to the FCC, and even people just ranting about it on Twitter, we all get them.
– [Jeremy] But if I get negative, really harsh responses like that, does that mean I should stop cold email?
– [Jack] First off, it’s not if you get a reply like that, it’s a when you get a reply like that, and no, it doesn’t mean you should stop sending cold email. In fact, all my company does is send these outbound campaigns, and even though the email’s written by professional copywriters and the campaigns are performing really well, you can still have 50% of your replies be negative and still get the results you’re looking for.
– [Jeremy] Well, 50% seems huge. How can I minimize those negative replies?
– [Jack] You know, I wouldn’t focus on that. Instead, I’d focus on starting more conversations with your cold emails, because, and after all, there’s only one way that you can get zero negative replies, and that’s to never send emails.
– [Jeremy] Yeah, but let’s say I’m the type of person who struggles with rejection, does that mean I just can’t do cold email until I become that cold-hearted salesperson?
– [Jack] Again, not at all, in fact I think probably the less cold-hearted you are, the better you’re gonna do with cold email just because that helps understand where your prospects are coming from. The important thing, though, is self-awareness is gonna help you, because if you know you struggle with rejection, there’s ways to sort of go around it, and we’ll share a few in a couple minutes. But, spoiler alert, no matter where you’re at with dealing with rejection, you’re gonna get used to it if you stick with it long enough.
– [Jeremy] What are the consequences of just ignoring them? Should I really focus on that?
– [Jack] So, if you don’t focus on getting better with rejections, two things might happen. The first and most important is you might call it quits too early. If you got five negative replies your first day, you might end the campaign that could have brought you 10 positive replies the very next day. And second, if you don’t work on how you deal with rejection, it could sort of mess with your head a bit. Sort of sap you from the mental stamina it takes to keep sending followups, and it’s just kind of a hard way to go through your week.
– [Jeremy] How can I make it easier to deal with these rejections?
– [Jack] So, sort of two schools of thought. The first is sort of the hard way, and that’s kind of like, take it on the head approach. And the second, and my personal favorite, is kind of the easy way, the tai chi way of dealing with rejection, if you will.
– [Jeremy] So, let’s take every one separately. So, what is the hard way?
– [Jack] The hard way just basically says toughen up, because the good news is it gets easier with practice. A couple tips here if you wanted to take the hard approach and just develop a thick skin towards rejection, is first just realize you don’t know what the person’s going through when they reply with the nasty response. They could have been getting fired that day and it has nothing to do with you. So first, don’t take it personally. Second, if you truly got something that can help somebody or a company, you’d be doing them a disservice by not telling them about it. So, if whatever you have to talk about is gonna help somebody’s life, then you owe it to them to at least tell it to them.
– [Jeremy] All right, let’s hear your favorite one. What’s the easiest way?
– [Jack] Easiest way is basically not even dealing with rejection in the first place. And you do that for, it’s surprisingly easy. So, for six bucks an hour you can have someone check this outbound inbox for you, and only send you the positive replies. That way you never even see a negative response. Or if you don’t wanna hire someone, just make a Gmail filter that removes emails that have common hate words in it so that you really never get a nasty email. And last is use automation to send your emails for the first week, and don’t check your inbox until seven days, that way you’ll have a much higher chance of seeing both positive and negative replies in that inbox so that you can determine if it’s worth continuing based on the positive replies, not the negatives.
– [Jeremy] I’m obviously biased towards automation, as a subject. Is there any advantage of taking it the hard way over the easy way? What would happen if I never see any negative reply?
– [Jack] If you never saw a negative reply, you actually would be missing out on something. Because there’s good feedback in negative emails, even nasty ones will potentially help you write better emails next go-round. There’s also a big difference between a rejection email that’s like, stop contacting me, or an objection email that maybe is an opportunity for you to clarify something to one day move them towards either a sale or a good conversation.
– [Jeremy] Should I bother replying to them?
– [Jack] So, if it’s a pure rejection email, you could try and spin the conversation. So maybe, like, asking for feedback, or trying to take it to a productive conversation, but honestly, it might not be worth your time. It’s gonna take a lot more time an energy to get someone interested who’s replied negatively than it would be to spend your time with leads that are coming in with positive responses. So, to figure out if you should worry about responding to every rejection email you get, just sort of think about your market size. If there’s only 100 people in it, yeah, then maybe it makes sense to reach out to each one individually, but if there’s thousands, then I think your time would be better spent with the positive replies.
– [Jeremy] In fact, I am in a small market. So, do you have any good example of how to spin a rejection?
– [Jack] I do, so, first of all, if someone replies with a little bit more than the typical I’m not interested reply. So for example, if they say, hey, I’m not interested because I happen to be in Europe so this isn’t a good fit for me, please don’t contact me. Well, if you happen to have, let’s say, a couple clients in Europe, then a really logical response to that email is, sort of saying, hey, no problem, but just so that you know, we’ve got six companies in Europe that are doing X, Y, Z, and you can still benefit from this. And that sort of just takes the objection, turns it on its head, and if they’re interested then the ball’s in their court, they can sort of get back to you, and you’ve got the conversation going, hopefully.
– [Jeremy] Awesome. Is there anything else that you can tell me that would make it easier for me to deal with rejections?
– [Jack] Well, I would just say that, don’t wait until you feel 100% confident in dealing with rejections. Truth is, you’re probably never going to be ready, so then you’re ready today, if that makes sense. And Jeremy, I know this morning you mentioned something about how you use your business to get better at dealing with rejections, do you wanna tell us about that before we end the show?
– [Jeremy] I do that all the time. I do two things, actually. Whenever I talk to a prospect, the first thing is, I never hang up. It’s always the other side that has to do it. That way I have more time to actually go ahead and keep asking questions until I get this rejection. And that allows me to really dig deep and get some of the best gen that you will never get otherwise. So, that’s a great way to get comfortable with rejection.
– [Jack] So yeah, embrace rejection then, episode three.
– [Jeremy] There you go, you have it.
– [Jack] Cool, awesome, Jeremy.
– [Jeremy] Thanks, Jack.
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