How decision makers filter sales emails

Long, complex emails don’t make me think you're smart. They tell me you don't understand basic buyer behavior. Your prospects aren’t reading your sales emails. They’re skimming. They’re standing in line at Starbucks, cleaning out their inbox. They’re looking for a reason to delete, not to reply. If your email doesn’t pass the 1, 10, 100 test - it’s getting ignored I teach this framework to every sales team I work with. It’s simple and it works. Here’s how to apply it: 1 = One clear call to action Do not ask for a meeting, feedback, interest, and availability in the same message. You get one ask. Make it count. 10 = The first 10 words must earn attention This is your subject line + preview text. It’s the only thing your prospect sees before deciding to open or delete. If those 10 words don’t create curiosity or show relevance, it’s over. 100 = Keep your total word count under 100 The average exec scans an email for 3–4 seconds. If they can't get context immediately, your email is an auto-delete. Make it short. Make it relevant. Make it easy to reply. The 1, 10, 100 Rule isn’t about oversimplifying your message. It’s about respecting how buyer's interact with cold email so you can deliver more value and earn more engagement. 📌 Remember RELEVANCE is essential. Don't think a well-formatted email replaces the need to say something that matters to the reader. ✨ Enjoyed this post? Make sure to hit FOLLOW for daily posts about B2B sales, leadership, entrepreneurship and mindset.

"Delete that attachment and send it again." A CIO messaged my champion last week. What happened? The prospect's IT security blocked my email with 6 attachments. Too many files. Too many links. Too risky to their system. My champion had to request another copy. I had to resend everything individually. The buying process stalled for a week. This happens more than you think: 83% of companies now block emails with multiple attachments. 71% of security systems flag "suspicious" download links. 67% of IT departments restrict access to third-party platforms. Your beautiful sales content never even reaches the decision-makers. A fellow rep shared his nightmare scenario: After 3 months of working a deal, he discovered the economic buyer had never seen a single piece of collateral. Why? Everything was trapped in email quarantine. Your prospects aren't ignoring you. They literally can't see what you're sending. I've completely transformed my approach: Instead of: - Emailing attachments (that get blocked) - Sending links to various platforms (that get flagged) - Hoping content makes it through firewalls (it won't) I create a single, secure space that: - Bypasses email security filters - Works on any corporate network - Requires no downloads or risky clicks - Tracks exactly who has viewed what My close rate has increased. My sales cycle shortened. The hard truth: It doesn't matter how good your content is if no one can access it. Stop gambling with corporate security policies. Start creating spaces that actually reach decision-makers. Agree?

Best use of AI lately = filtering out pitches in my inbox. However, in doing this I've uncovered a silent growth killer: The "Just Like Everyone Else" bucket Marketing has long been about getting attention. Compelling action. But the more we get our hands on the same books, the same talks, the same podcasts, the same swipe files, and now, the same chatgpt written content means we're all trying to execute harder and faster on the same stuff. Teams can't compel action or attention because it's a purple cow in a sea of purple cows (yes, Seth Godin reference). This even played out in my own conversations this week. We were talking internally last week about reaching out ahead of HubSpot's INBOUND conference. Someone said: "I’ll just enroll people in an email sequence to ask for a meeting." My response? “Cool — and you’ll land in the Just Like Everyone Else bucket." Cause here's the macro lesson 👇🏻 🛑 Sales emails don’t just get judged by the content you send They get judged in context of the 50+ other ones someone like me receives that same day🛑 So what can this "pitch inbox" teach us about the "just like everybody else" strategy and why our brains (and AI filters) want us to ignore it? I analyzed the over 100 emails in my Pitch Inbox (shoutout to Superhuman for their AI filters one of which is "pitch") Here's what they all have in common: 1. Same tricks, different logos. 2. “Quick question” subject lines 3. INBOUND name drops 4. Loom video links 5. “Just checking in” follow-ups 6. BS Hype metrics: “30M+ users”, “87 meetings”, “$800K scaled in 3 months” bogus stuff 7. Faux-personalization is still mass outreach. You don't know me stop trying. Couple of thoughts here: Sales and marketing is about capturing and attention and standing out - which used to be a megaphone in a sea of contacts. But now it's like everyone has their own megaphone. The Pitch folder is a signal. 2. We’re training email AI to ignore what doesn’t add value. THIS IS HUGE. It's happening in other tools too - Apple, Gmail, Outlook.... Pattern detection is happening automatically. If you’re not actively trying to break the pattern, you’re "just like everyone else" - which is the opposite of what good marketing and sales are supposed to do. Curious thoughts about the pitch inbox and how to avoid doing marketing and sales "Just Like Everyone Else" these days.

Here's my second suggested resolution for SDRs/BDRs and AE's prospecting, based on my experience from receiving 15 to 30 cold outreaches daily as well as leading Marketing for Blue Triangle and years of managing SDRs in B2B SaaS. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION #2: Resolve to make every outreach message relevant Relevance trumps personalization. Numerous AI tools have launched that promise to help you personalize emails at scale. But if your message isn't relevant to prospects, no amount of personalization will score a meeting. Your message must answer three prospect questions to achieve relevance: ✨ Which of my current or future challenges can you help me solve? This isn't about what you or your solution does. It's about what you can do to help me. And if you don't immediately establish you solve a problem I need solving (preferably worded in a way I would word it vs. marketing speak), then I'm hitting delete. ✨ How can you solve it better than my current solution or other solutions being pitched? Now it's about your solution. I don't need a paragraph, I need a sentence that provides enough context to convince me I should learn more about your solution. There's popular thinking that cold outreach emails can be just a few sentences, but I get way too many emails like this one pictured below that provide zero context for how you can solve my challenge. I'm not investing time to uncover that, I'm hitting delete. ✨ Am I a decision maker or involved in this kind of purchase decision? I'm shocked at how many outreach messages I receive targeting agencies (we aren't one), pitching services I have little to no involvement in (office cleaning services, accounting, fundraising), and pitching lists for people we don't target (physicians, accountants, HR folks). It seems the focus in outreach is on quantity vs. quality. But poorly targeted messages clog up inboxes and cause well-targeted messages to be missed. Invest more time upfront on selecting only the best-fit prospects for your outreach efforts and save prospects the effort of cleaning up your sloppy targeting. The key to adopting this resolution? Be willing to slow down to improve results. We've tested this extensively and found that while carefully crafted personalized messages produce incredible open rates (40%), lack of relevance failed to get meetings. We then employed AI and data to make messages more relevant and tailored messaging to different roles, and saw open rates drop to 10% but response and meeting rates increased exponentially.

91% of B2B decision-makers open cold messages, yet only 4.2% respond. Let me break this down after analyzing 500+ cold outreach campaigns across different industries: The problem isn't getting your message seen - it's getting it responded to. Here's what I discovered about why most cold messages fail: 1. 82% focus entirely on the sender's offerings 2. 76% use generic templates without personalization 3. 91% don't address specific pain points 4. 68% ask for too much commitment upfront 5. 88% lack any meaningful research about the prospect IT'S OBVIOUS. Most businesses are doing cold outreach completely wrong, burning through potential opportunities daily. ___ At PipeBagger, we've tracked response rates across thousands of messages and found a consistent pattern: Messages that convert at 22%+ always include: 1. Specific mention of prospect's recent achievements 2. Clear connection to their current business challenges 3. Value proposition aligned with their growth stage 4. Micro-commitments instead of big asks 5. Proof points relevant to their industry The traditional "spray and pray" approach is dead. Yet companies keep pushing the same generic templates expecting different results. ___ The market has changed. Decision-makers are more sophisticated. They can smell a template from miles away. But here's the opportunity: While everyone else is sending the same tired messages, you can stand out by actually understanding your prospect's world. It's not about volume anymore. It's about precision. #B2BSales #ColdOutreach #ColdEmailing #SocialSelling

Do you really know your buyers’ perspective?  Why they might engage with you? Here are 8 considerations (this is just my personal experience, someone else’s may be different) from a CEO who’s company has purchased over 50 software tools in the past 4+ years.  It’s crazy, but yeah a LOT of tools (we track them very closely). 1/ I don’t answer the phone 2/ I don’t listen to voicemails, so there are no call backs 3/ I read every email that comes in, and even if I’m not interested, if the email is relevant and personalized, I might respond letting you know we’re not interested, sometimes with a ‘reach back out in X months’.  But I have a high bar for email quality.  But I do read the emails. 4/ If the email isn’t great but still hits on a problem or pain that we’re actively considering, I will probably just forward it along internally. 5/ If a company has reached out in the recent past and I responded, I probably won’t respond the second time if nothing has changed, regardless of the quality of the message, unless it’s beyond the time of ‘reach back out in X months’. 6/ If we’re in a position to evaluate the product my first step would be to forward this to the manager internally who owns this part of the business 7/ Marketers: 90% of the purchases we have made were initiated by us - nobody pushed us into the buyer journey, we took the first few steps (yes this is important).  Awareness matters. 8/ The CEO is rarely the decision maker. The very best sales organizations are really good at driving top of funnel awareness and you won't have to just grind outbound for every opportunity.  Top of funnel awareness and how that is accomplished is IMO going to be one of the largest shifts in buyer/seller interaction over the next 5 years.  New mediums, etc. We’re tracking seller sentiment on inbound lead flow at the organizational level - it’s the worst sentiment scores of everything we track.  Guess sellers want more leads haha Make sure to dig into how a potential organization is driving funnel, and get really specific.  Here are profiles of 12,000 orgs we’re tracking (including salary, etc): https://lnkd.in/eKdND-q2 ✌️