The Top 10 Reasons Sales Doesn’t Read Your Email

Internal email continues to be the pain in every sales professional’s neck – yet email proliferates because it’s easy, simple and ubiquitous. SiriusDecisions regularly conducts sales activity studies with our clients. According to our findings, email is a large drain on sales rep productivity. As a result, they are very picky about what they’ll take the time to read. Here are the top 10 reasons your email won’t get read by sales reps:

10. The sender is unknown. If they don’t know you, they’re likely to think the email doesn’t apply to them. If you’re lucky, they’ll check the subject line before they delete it.

9. The subject is unclear or irrelevant to them. If it says “Process opp req,” they won’t know this means “Action item: update your opportunity records or else” – and they’ll delete it.

8. It’s got weird fonts and headings. If it doesn’t render properly on a mobile device and the summary or top few lines don’t look readable – delete!

7. The email is too long. They’ve learned to master the 100-word elevator pitch – they want you to master yours.

6. The email is confusing or full of corporate-speak. By the way, NO ONE reads these. Sometimes I wonder if the sender even knows what he or she is saying.

5. It’s relevant to selling in general, but not to the particular rep. They don’t sell that product, or to that industry or customer type.

4. It doesn’t support their actual, live deals. If it sounds like administration or smells like corporate process stuff, they will ignore it...and perhaps rightly so.

3. The sentences are too long. Seriously – they want to process info quickly. Buyers want it this way, and so do sellers.

2. They don’t need to know this right now. They can find the relevant information at their convenience on the internal portal, newsletter or social platform.

1. They figure that if it’s really important, someone will tell them.

If you don’t want your message to end up in the circular file, make sure the information is relevant to selling something today. Write it for the sales rep who’s running around making sales calls – short, clear and mobile friendly.