Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling (Jeb Blount)

by Jeb Blount

Identify yourself. Never take for granted that your prospect has your information saved on their phone. In most cases they don't, and when you send a text message they won't know who you are. As a best practice, include your name and company at the top of the message. Message matters. What you say and how you say it carries impact. Be very careful that your tone is not misinterpreted in a negative way. Use complete sentences to avoid sounding abrupt, harsh, sarcastic, or flippant. Be direct—be brief. Say exactly what you mean in clear, precise, well-written sentences using good grammar and spelling. Remember that this is a professional message. Keep the text to one to four short sentences or less than 250 characters when possible. Avoid rambling, run-on sentences. Do not use emoticons (little smiley faces)—be professional. Avoid abbreviations. Avoid using abbreviations on text messages to prospects. Abbreviations like LOL, OMG, WTF, and others don't come off as professional, and the person on the other end might not understand what you mean. Likewise, you should avoid acronyms and slang. Use transparent links. People are extremely suspicious of shortened hyperlinks. Just like with e-mail, when you send URLs to prospects that link to articles or other resources, send the entire URL so they know where they are clicking. Before clicking “send”—pause and read it again. Make this your rule when it comes to text messages (and, frankly, all written communication). Know your numbe...