You should forget attachments more often

You should forget attachments more often

I typically do not do a lot of writing about specific tactics that will work. Instead, I tend to write about more prominent strategies you can leverage to increase your commission. Unfortunately, plans will fail if your tactics fail.

For years, articles have advised us that a PS (postscriptum) is the most read part of an email. While their advice is not wrong, it is not the most straightforward way or the best way to get the reader’s attention.

Unfortunately, the PS is not required with today’s editors. Writers of days long since gone created the PS when letters were hand-typed or handwritten, and adding content to the 3rd paragraph of a 7-paragraph note was impractical. With modern editors on your computer, tablet, or phone, if a great idea came to you after typing a letter to a prospect, why wouldn’t you merely place your cursor at the appropriate place in the body and add the thought? Using a PS in modern times is simply an artificial contrivance that your reader will recognize as a fake add-on. It will be evident that you are trying to manipulate the prospect (which you are, but why admit it).

As a salesperson, you regularly send your prospect documents to read. These documents are in the form of attachments or links to a shared site. They help to explain your product or your company. They give more depth of understanding than can typically be done in the body of an email.

Occasionally, you will forget to do the attachment. You typically realize this immediately after you hit send. The accepted practice is to make a quick Reply All to your email, apologize for the mistake, and include the attachment. 

My suggestion is to do this more often. Don’t do it for every attachment, just the most important one. Please do it for the one attachment that you want your prospect to read.

The most read email content that you can send is the “OOPS” email. It nearly always is opened immediately, and it possibly could be opened before the original email. In the list of emails on the prospect’s email client, you are there twice in a row. The one on top must be the most important.

I caution you not to do this every single time that you send several documents to a prospect. Just do it on the most critical issues. Only use this technique when you absolutely must have the prospect read the email and the attachment to move forward. If you abuse the method, you will look obvious or look like a forgetful fool.

Good luck with your prospecting. Let me know what other tricks or tips you have used. You can drop me a note on my contact page, or you can leave a comment below.

Header Photo by bohed (Pixabay)

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