Email tips for SDR prospecting

Most cold emails get <1% reply rates. Mine get 10%. Here's why yours are failing: I run a 34-person agency and have tested every cold email "hack" out there. Most don't work. Here's how I actually write cold emails that get replies... and the 3 rules that changed EVERYTHING ↓ ✅ Emails that start with real triggers I get emails like "Saw you're expanding your team based on your recent LinkedIn post about hiring." That's a real trigger. They saw something specific I did. Compare that to "I noticed you work in sales", - which could apply to 10 million people. Pro Tip: Use Clay to track job changes, funding announcements, or social posts. ✅ Emails that name pain + solution immediately "Hiring 10 new SDRs usually means 6-month ramp time is killing your quota attainment." They connected my trigger to a specific pain I'm probably feeling. Then: "We helped [Similar Company] cut ramp time to 6 weeks using our onboarding system." Solution + proof in one sentence. ✅ Emails that give 100% value upfront "They increased quota attainment 73% in Q1 by implementing our 3-week sprint methodology." Full value. Real numbers. Specific outcome. Stop holding back value, thinking it will book you a meeting. ❌ Generic template emails "Hope you're doing well" emails get deleted instantly. If I can tell you, copy-pasted the same message to 100 people, I'm out. ❌ Emails asking for time on the first message "Do you have 15 minutes for a quick call?" No context. No value. Just asking for my time, will get ignored every time. ❌ Emails without specific proof "We help companies scale their sales teams." Cool story. So do 10,000 other agencies. → Where's the proof? → Which companies? → What results? Here's my actual template: "Hi [Name], Saw you're [specific trigger]. Usually, that means [pain point]. We helped [Company] go from [before] to [after] using [method]. They saw [specific result] in [timeframe]. Mind if I share the 3-step process we used? Best, Alex" Everyone OVERTHINKS cold email. They think they need perfect subject lines or AI personalization tools. But if you nail trigger + pain + value, nothing else matters. The pain has to connect to their trigger logically. And the value has to be specific. → Real companies → Real numbers → Real results One more thing: Free work beats everything. "Mind if I build you a custom lead list for your new SDR team and send it over?" That gets replies every time, because you're solving their problem before they even ask. Bottom line: Stop trying to be clever. Start being helpful. When your email actually helps someone, they want to talk to you. 🎥 Want to see me how I write these emails? I break down my entire cold email process (with real examples) in last week's YouTube video. Link in the comments 👇

Here's a current state assessment I do with my clients who bring me in to train their AE/SDR/AM teams on outbound pipeline generation. Try it. It'll cost you $0. 1. Create a Google sheet with these columns: Account Name, Prospect Name, Prospect Title, Subject Line, Cold Email Body. 2. Send the Google sheet to the entire Sales + Marketing org. Not just SDRs. The entire organization (managers + leaders, too). 3. Ask them to pick a target account + person they have reason to believe is a great fit, but hasn't engaged. This can be for new logo, expansion, or re-engaging an account that's at risk of churn. 3. Ask them to write a personalized email to that person, but don't send it. Just add it to the Google sheet. 4. Now, review them and look for patterns. Here are some that I typically see: 1 - Subject line screams "this is a cold email!". 2 - Preview text (first line of the email) is wasted with niceties like "I hope you're well" or "My name is". Assume our readers are selfish. What is it about them/their business that you read/heard/saw, that prompted us to get curious? 3 - LONG. We could email them the winning lottery ticket number. But, if it's in paragraph 4 and they don't recognize the sender name - they probably won't read it. Write for the skimmer who is checking their email in 5 mins in between meetings. 4 - Vastly different definitions of "personalization". Some are stating facts the reader already knows ("I see you went to Penn State...Go Lions!"). Some are using bait and switch personalization ("I saw you love dogs. Anyway, we're the leading provider of..."). Is it relevant to the body of the message? If not, drop it in a PS (shows we're human). Relevance > personalization. 5 - "I/we/us/our/company name". Self-explanatory. Are we showing up to the party and bragging about how awesome we are? No one likes that dude. 6 - Am I giving the reader a reason to reconsider status quo? Better rarely defeats "good enough". What is our unique POV on the problem? Last thing. The reason we do this across the entire Sales + Marketing team is not because Marketers need to send cold emails. It's because, more often than not, there are 22+ different opinions within a company on what "good" looks like when it comes to outbound. And, our prospects & customers are usually the ones who see the negative consequences of that, before we do.

In my 20 years of sales, I've seen countless prospecting emails fall flat. Here's what most salespeople get wrong: 1) Drowning prospects in technical details. 2) Using unnecessary complex language 3) Leading with solutions But the most successful prospecting emails do the opposite. They tap into something deeper emotionally. It's not about what you say but how you say it. Here's the formula: 1) Focus on the problem and the result, emphasizing the "what," not the "how." 2) Keep it brief - 50-75 words is the sweet spot. 3) Use client stories With prospecting emails, less isn't just more. It's EVERYTHING. Emails should pique curiosity so people want to learn "how." #SalesStrategy #EmailProspecting #SalesSuccess