FREE SALES PROSPECTING LETTER TEMPLATE

Regardless of your business, all good sales prospecting emails should incorporate an attention-grabbing headline, pain points, and a call to action. 

Keep reading to learn more about the key elements every good sales email should have and general best practices you should follow. 

Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines/Headlines

You don't know how many emails your prospect gets a day or how many of those they ignore. You do know that you don't want your sales email to be one of them. Avoid reader disinterest with an eye-catching subject line to grab your prospect's attention. 

This line is your line of entry into your client's mind and potential business. You'll want to keep it short and to the point, yet intriguing so that they click on it. 

As a best practice, include their name and make it personal.

Pin-Point a Pain

Advertisers and customers don't want to place an ad with you or buy from you just to give you money; they have some reason of their own. 

For example, reasons potential advertisers wish to secure an ad spot with another company range from reaching new audiences, selling products, boosting site traffic, gaining social media followers, and more.  

Depending on the prospects' business, you want to state a pain point with them and sympathize. Addressing this challenge will make you more appealing and personable, making the option more likely to do business with you than some other company that doesn't understand their needs.

Call-to-Action

Your CTA is probably the most fundamental element of a prospecting email because it's the part that gets the potential client to return your email, either for further information or to solidify an ad spot. Therefore, you should not take this element lightly. 

Please put some thought into it instead to craft something enticing and desirable. It would be best to steer clear from cheesy sales language, like "don't wait, advertise with us today!" or something of the like. Any language reminiscent of an overly eager sales pitch will dilute the email's purpose and ward prospects off. 

Instead, hint at the solution you have to your previously mentioned pain in the email's body. Keep the CTA simple, such as a link to your media kit, phone number, or offer to set up a call to discuss your advertisement options further. 

Keeping the CTA light makes you seem more approachable and helpful than it would if you urge the client to buy or try and force your product on them.

Even though you have your email template set up, you'll need more than that to continue successfully finding and retaining clients and customers. That said, you'll want to keep up with some best practices for sales prospecting that go beyond an initial email.  

Be the solution the client needs, not the other way around

Say you want to hire a new employee or open a pop-up shop for your online storefront. Of course, you need revenue to do so, and ads can get you the money you need. 

However, you don't want to force that goal on the prospective client. Instead, you'll want to personalize your sales prospecting letter to the client's needs. 

For example, instead of stating that you want them to advertise with you because you're a great business, explain why you're a good fit for them. Sell your business to the prospect's ideals. For example, if a prospective client is a small business in your area, tell them how advertising with you can help them reach more state residents with your site advertisement. 

You can even go so far as to ask them what they want to get out of their advertisement and what you can provide to help them reach their goals. In doing so, you reassure the client that you wish to their business for their money and genuinely help them out in the process. 

Always reach out before you need something

If you sell a standard ad package for $100 and you need $1,000 to, say, purchase a new work computer, it would take ten new advertisers to meet your goal. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, you'll need to reach out to more than the necessary ten. 

Keeping your goals in mind, always reach out to plenty more than you need. Doing so ensures you're more likely to reach your destination, adds cushion to your revenue plans, and will help you gain more clients. 

Create and maintain a sales prospecting tracking file

Whether you use Excel, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce, or another sales CRM database, you'll want to use one to keep track of clients you have business with and potential clients. 

Organizing all of your sales prospecting-related information in one place will minimize possible mishaps such as the following: sending the same email to an individual soon after the original, messing up names in recipient email lines, confusing one client for another, and losing track of your revenue to name a few.  

Keep a clear record of contact names, numbers, dates, and any other information you have about your sales prospecting methods.

You only get one chance at a first impression, especially in sales. Prospecting can feel incredibly daunting… unless you have a proven playbook.

Let’s skip past the mountain of unreturned emails and phone calls and use a template proven to start new relationships.

This sales prospecting letter  template includes everything you need to start landing sales consistently.