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Hey, as we wrap our partnership with Gong, the last topic on their minds is what should your CTA or call to action be in an email to a prospect?
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Bill and I give you our opinions on this episode of Opinions vs. Reality with our friends Devin and Sheena.
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Do you know what to ask your prospects for to get the next meeting?
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We ll tell you on this episode of Opinions vs. Reality.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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And I m not going to say the longest-running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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What I m going to say is what our guest told us last week.
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You re going to hear from him.
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He said, we are as old as the Old Testament.
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I love it.
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That was one of the greatest compliments I ve ever heard.
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That was a very apt way to describe how long we ve been doing this podcast.
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Anyway, welcome today.
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We ve got some guests with us and hopefully you ve been with us the last three episodes where we have been playing a game called opinion versus reality.
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And basically what it is, is we get a chance to be embarrassed on our own show.
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That s what it is.
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And we have guests with us today who you ve heard, Devin and Sheena from Gong, and you can find out more about Gong at gong.io.
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Devin and Sheena, welcome back.
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How s it going?
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Good.
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So fun to be here again.
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This is a great, this is a fun game.
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We might have to extend this game.
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This is a very, I think you can call it like a trivia game or I could see this on TV, like opinions, verse, reality.
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And then like, you know, the fake applause from the stands.
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It s got Netflix series written all over it, I can tell you.
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So what we ve been doing, if you haven t heard, if you didn t hear the last episode, let s play a clip from the question that Sheena and Devin asked us to weigh in on, and you can just see kind of how it works.
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So today we re going to talk about an interesting topic.
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I think it s probably near and dear to a lot of sales folks hearts because they ve heard this all the time.
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It s that moment when you are talking to a customer and you hear the objection, I need to think about it.
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I m sure for you as a listener, like your gut just dropped right now and you felt sick to your stomach.
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I ve heard that so frequently that, like Brian said, it kind of makes my stomach turn, my skin crawl.
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Whenever a salesperson gets that, it probably reduces the likelihood of them closing the sale.
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My opinion is quite similar.
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It s a gut punch.
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And then I think it s always a bad thing.
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I think it s never good if someone says they need to think it over.
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Dad, why don t you jump in?
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And what did the data actually tell us?
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It was very surprising.
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So the way this works is, we said, Devin and Sheena have a question for us that is about sales, about the sales process.
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And it s all data supported.
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So there is definitely a right and wrong answer.
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It s not opinion.
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It s reality.
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But Brian and I get a chance to take the question first, take our first swing at it, and let them know what our opinion is on the question.
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So did I miss anything, Devin?
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I think you did it, Justice.
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Part four, episode four, nailed the intro.
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And I just want to be clear.
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I was saying the podcast.
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is as old as the Old Testament.
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It was not a dig at your age, Bill or Brian.
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Okay.
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I didn t really put that together when I said the joke, but I was like, that could be taken incorrectly.
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So just to be clear.
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No, we love it.
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No, it s a, uh, it s a, it s a compliment.
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It s just really fun to tell people we ve been podcasting for 15 years and they go, really?
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And then they go, how come I haven t ever heard of it?
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We ve got a marketing problem, but anyway.
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So why don t we get started today?
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We re gonna run through this and Devin Why don t you start giving us the question that we are to embarrass ourselves with?
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All right.
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So for this one as most of these by now if you ve heard the previous episodes, they usually come from firsthand experience me not knowing the right thing to do or thinking I was doing the right or wrong thing and not being sure and so this one was very specifically sitting at my laptop writing a cold prospecting email and
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getting through the research, right?
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Made it made a why you why now I ve done, you know, the value prop, and I m at the last sentence.
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And I go back and forth.
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I m like, you know, Sheena, do you have 30 minutes on Friday?
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And then two forwards, I bet, you know, delete, delete, delete, delete.
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Are you interested in meeting on Friday?
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I don t know, maybe she s not even free on Friday.
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Does it even make sense to talk about X, Y, Z, right?
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So these different types of CTAs, calls to action, I had no idea which one was better or if there was a better one.
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And so that was a question I wanted to answer for all of the sales pros out there from sales development reps to closers and leaders, because I know we re all asking for time, we re all asking for things via sales emails.
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And so that s what we looked into.
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So we wanted to know what is the best call to action for cold emails.
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So I ll make it easy for you.
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We analyzed 300,000 emails, cold emails before an opportunity, and we put them into three buckets.
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We have the specific CTA.
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This asks for a meeting using a specific day and time.
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So for example, are you available to meet on Tuesday at 4 p.m. ?
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Option two, you have the open-ended CTA.
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It asks for a meeting, but it s open-ended.
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So something like, do you have time next week to meet?
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And then you have option number three, the interest CTA.
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It asks for interest, not a meeting.
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So for example, are you interested in learning more about
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revenue intelligence, or XYZ, whatever that thing is for you.
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So what we looked at wasn t reply rates, because that is not success when you re booking when you re cold prospecting, no one cares about reply rates unless it gets you to a meeting.
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So we specifically said, success is a meeting booked within 10 days.
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That was our success parameter.
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Okay.
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So when the table is set, I m going to ask Bill and Brian, which one do you think was most effective?
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The specific CTA, the open-ended CTA, or the interest CTA?
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And the open-ended CTA, what was that?
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What was the language around that again?
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Do you have time next week to meet?
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So it s asking for a meeting, but not Tuesday at 4.
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It s like a general, are you open to meeting, but very specifically asking for a meeting.
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OK.
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Commitment there.
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Bill, you want me to go first?
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You want to go?
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Thinking through this?
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I ll go.
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So I m going to, and as we do at the Vance Link podcast, especially on the opinion episodes, we add our own opinions to the choices.
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So I m going to, I m going to choose choice four.
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But it s a thing that Bill and I teach, so we got to kind of hold true to it.
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We call it the junior high love note.
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The junior high love note is, hey, I think you re really cute.
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Would you like to go together?
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Check one, yes or no.
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So I am going to say that the best CTA is
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Choice three, which is the are you interested, with a definitive forced choice of check one for yes or two for no, or let me know either one, yes, I m interested to talk more, or two, no thanks, all good for now.
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That s how it works.
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That s a yes or no question.
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That s a yes or no question, but not asking for time.
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I m not a huge fan of asking for time, personally.
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Early on, early on down the road, it s mandatory to ask for time.
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in our world.
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So that s my answer.
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Three with an asterisk.
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Well, I don t know.
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This is a good one.
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I like the junior high love note thing.
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I think I m going to pick number two.
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I always feel like on these questions, I don t write cold emails like this.
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And I don t even encourage my clients to.
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I m more interested in getting the inbound call.
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So I ve kind of been away from this for a little bit, and maybe it s changed.
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But I feel like.
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You know, would you like to speak next week?
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As long as it s worded properly.
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I d say that s probably my favorite.
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I like them all, though.
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No offense.
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I like them all.
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I like the, are you interested, too.
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But I don t know.
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I ll go with number two.
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I m sticking with it.
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Number two.
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Tease us a little bit, Devin.
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Tell us what we re answering.
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I want to point out, Bill s answer is why we re doing this.
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Because salespeople go, I like that one.
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Salesman goes, I like that one.
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I like them all.
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Yeah.
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But we never go back and measure them, do we?
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This is why this is such a great exercise.
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OK, Dev, tease us.
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And that s what Gong Labs ends up doing, which is understanding there s what sellers think is best and what we like.
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And then the research comes out.
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You see the reactions from executive buyers.
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And then you see what they actually agree with.
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And I ll tell you what, it s usually there s some distance there.
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They re not quite the overlap.
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So Sheena, we always like to ask you, as a buyer,
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Right?
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You just got the cold email.
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It s, it s, and I m talking the classy on point, unignorable.
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And then the CTA, are you, someone s asking you for time, open-ended time or interest, which one resonates with you?
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Or do you like, Hey, if the email is good, I don t really care.
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For me, I m all about efficiency and what s going to save me time.
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And because of that, if you piqued my interest in your email and then you gave me the time slots, OK, boom, we re done.
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There s no more back and forth.
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I pick Monday at 4.
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Let s do it.
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So I will go with the first choice.
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Got them all covered.
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You re a split room here.
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Someone s winning, right?
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Yeah, I was going to say, it s also funny, Devin, how we not only do we not get data about what works and what doesn t, we tend to see everything through our own eyes.
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Well, if it were me, I would want to get away from all the fluff.
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And it s like, it either fits or not.
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Like Sheena, I m kind of the same way.
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It s like, well, if I have a chance to make an appointment and it s interesting, yeah.
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But we can t say the world reacts the way we want it to all the time.
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And certainly, just through our eyes doesn t mean it s right for everybody.
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So that s another reason we re doing this.
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Yeah.
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Well, Bill always asks to tease the answer.
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And I always tell him, well, one of you is right.
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So good news, one of you is correct.
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And I ll tease more is the winning answer is two times as effective as the next best answer.
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Whoa, that s thick.
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So it s 2x more effective.
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I ll leave you I ll leave you with that.
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And I ll tell you one more thing.
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We also then looked at emails that are in deals.
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So once a sales cycle is live and active, does the CTA change?
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And I ll tell you that it flips completely.
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It is complete 180.
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What works in cold emails is complete opposite of what works once you re in a sales.
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I am
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You are like Mr. Evil.
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I mean, seriously.
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You are like Mr. Evil.
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Teasing us like that.
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I just picture all the Advanced Link podcast people.
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They re like thumbing through their apps right now.
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Like, I got to get to reveal.
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I got to get to reveal.
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Yeah.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, just trying to get a hit over there.
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10%?
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I could take it or leave it.
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2x?
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Double?
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Because that s true, though.
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Wouldn t you want to start using something that has double the success rate, like today, for sure?
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OK, so you can find out more about the answer if you ll go to Reveal, the Revenue Intelligence podcast hosted by none other than Devin Reed and Sheeta Badani that comes out every week, correct?
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Every Monday.
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Every Monday, just like ours.
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And so go there and hear the answer.
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And I can t wait to hear the answer as well.
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Me too.
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See you next time.
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Thanks a lot for your help during this, too, guys.
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It s really been awesome.
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And we should probably do it again sometime this fall.
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I think it s been really helpful for our listeners.
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And we d love to hear from our listeners on the Advanced Selling Podcast LinkedIn tribe.
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If you have some thoughts about whether you like this or not, maybe some other ideas, we d love to hear it.
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Love it.
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Absolutely.
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See you next time.
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All right.
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OK.
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Bye.
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Thanks.
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See ya.