Dear friend,

this week we’re going to talk about an amazing nine-word email that revives dead leads.

Now that sounds pretty dramatic but it’s absolutely true and I’ve seen it happen again and again and again. See I’ve been studying and experimenting with lead conversion almost obsessively for over twenty years now. And there’s a couple of valuable things that I’ve learned over that period of time. And number one is the fact that just over half of the people who enquire about something will buy what they enquire about in the next twelve to eighteen months.

Now that’s been coupled with my own research and with reading a study by a company that handles millions of leads across all kinds of industries every year who say that people who enquire will actually buy what it is they enquire about within twelve to eighteen months. And they do study after study, they go back and they ask people what happened. Did they actually buy what they enquired about? And they find that something very interesting happens. Only about fifteen per cent of the people who enquire about something will actually buy what they enquire about in the first ninety days. So what that means is that the value of any what I call a bundle of leads – if you look at one hundred leads as a bundle of leads – any bundle of leads, only fifteen of those one hundred are going to do what they’ve enquired about within the first ninety days. That means that eighty-five per cent of all of the value of the leads that you’re generating comes after ninety days – between ninety days and eighteen months. Now, that’s good news because most of your competitors can’t follow up with prospects for twelve to eighteen days, let alone twelve to eighteen months.

Now the amazing thing about the simple email that I’m going to share with you is that it works even if you haven’t been following up with these prospects at all. So let me share you the nine words and then let’s examine them. We’ll look at some of the key elements so that you can create even more emails just like this one. But the nine words that I have been using and have proven that will revive dead leads is:

‘are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?’

Those are the nine magic words. Now the temptation that you have is to add more to it to, because, say, ‘well if you are, we’ve got this’, ‘if you are, we’ve got that.’ And that takes away all of the magic of this email. The thing that is at play here is that there are a couple of key elements that we can model through this email. And this email has three of those key elements that I want you to use in any follow-up emails that you have that you’re using with your prospects. And the three key elements are number one, that it’s short. Number two, it’s personal. And number three, it’s expecting a reply. Those three elements, when you add them together, create a combination that people cannot help but engage with. They can’t help but respond to an email like that.

Now a lot of times, people say, ‘well, what if I send an email like that and they reply no’? Well, what if they reply ‘no’? Wouldn’t you rather know that somebody’s not looking for a house in Georgetown, than wondering if they are, or being afraid to say the wrong thing so that they tell you that they’re not? You know it’s far better for you to know, black and white, yes or no, whether somebody is the real prospect or not. So when you’re looking at this, the key elements that are in play — and we mentioned short, personal, expecting a reply — make people feel like they are the only one who’s getting this email.

You know, when you think about the way you communicate with your friends, when you communicate with people that you are sending a one email to them, they’re the only ones getting it. You know the way you interact with your friends is the way you want to sort of interact with your prospects here. You might use email in communicating with your friends to say, ‘hey, would you like to go to the movies on Friday night?’ See, now that is a short, personal email expecting a reply. Now they might reply back and say, ‘yeah, that sounds great. What do you want to see?’ See now, that’s a short, personal, expecting a reply email. And you might reply back and tell them what movie you’d like to see and you can make that whole arrangement in two or three emails back or forth. You don’t have to get all of the information out at once.

See the very best thing, the very best emails, are like conversations. They’re just really slow conversations so you say something, they say something. Then you say something. Then they say something. So you’re engaging in a real dialog. It’s almost like if you imagine if you bumped into somebody in a train station, or at the mall. And you kind of bump into them and you recognise them slightly. And you were to ask them, ‘hey, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?’ It implies that you knew that they were looking for a house in Georgetown at one time. And it also implies that if they are looking for a house in Georgetown, that you have something that they might be interested in.

See when you think about this, you never want to gear your emails towards people who are not prospects. You want to gear your emails towards the people who are prospects. Now when you look at that, it’s kind of a subtle difference, but a lot of times people say, ‘well, what if they’re not looking for a house?’ So what if they’re not looking for a house. They’re not our prospect. They’re not the person that we’re talking to. The people that we are talking to are the people who are looking for a house in Georgetown. So we want to focus all of our attention on them. We want to find who are the real prospects, the five star prospects. See now when we look at that, if, again, you look at a bundle of a hundred leads, if a hundred people come to your website, leave their name and their email address, could you tell which of those one hundred names and emails, which of those one hundred people are going to buy or sell? Can you tell that just from looking at their name and email? And the answer’s no, you can’t, you don’t know. But you know for certain, based on all of this research, that just over half of them are going to buy a house within the next twelve to eighteen months. So the very best course of action that we can take, is to treat all of them like they are five star prospects until they prove that they aren’t. Versus treating like they’re not five star prospects until they prove that they are. See it’s a very subtle difference.

A lot of times we take the attitude that we don’t want to go out of our way. We don’t want to waste our time with tire-kickers. We don’t want to get unqualified leads. Or we ask questions like, are these leads scrubbed leads? As if leads are somehow dirty and we need to clean them before they’re worthy of us interacting with them. Well, get over that mindset and try, just for the next bundle of one hundred leads that you get. Try going out of your way for people. Try acting and engaging with people like they are five star prospects and treat them like you would if you knew for certain that they were going to buy a home in the next twelve to eighteen months. And guess what? Half the time you’ll be right. Half the time, you’ll be absolutely right and there’s a good chance that you’re going to be the one that they will choose to help them.

Now another key when you’re doing email follow-up, is to always lead to the next step. Now there’s two key words there, lead and next step. You know, we don’t want to put too much pressure on trying to get everything done at once. You know it’s almost like you’re engaging in this dance, or you’re engaging in this chess game where all the moves are not going to happen at one time. And if you have the foresight to see where the path is, how to lead people step by step to what it is that they really want, you are going to be able to control the entire situation. You’re going to be able to lead people in a beneficial way because people are silently begging to be led. Nobody wants to be the leader. Everybody wants to be led.

Now let me give you an example of this. And you may have heard me talk about this before but the lesson is so valuable. It’s as if, imagine a scenario where I invite you into my home and I sit you down in my living room, and I say to you, ‘you know what? I’m really glad you’re here. If there’s anything you need to eat or drink, there’s lots of stuff in the fridge. Go ahead and help yourself. I’ll be over here in this other room if you need anything. You just give me a call.’ Now I may be saying those words with the very best of intentions. I may truly want you to take something out of my fridge or to feel comfortable enough to do that. Or to ask me for whatever it is that you need. I’m being a gracious host. Now, the truth is that society doesn’t work like that. You know, we know how we’re supposed to respond in situations like that. We know that if somebody, if I were to just say that to you, that there’s very, very little chance that you would go and get something out of my fridge. You know, just think about it for a second. You’ve been in that situation. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’ We don’t want people to go out of their way for us.

Now if I went into the kitchen and I bake and I came out with a freshly baked plate of cookies  and I came into the living room and I held that plate of cookies right in front of you and I said, ‘would you like a cookie?’ Now just imagine that scenario. I’ve got the cookies right there. They’re warm. They smell delicious. It would be very difficult for you not to take that cookie. It would be very difficult for you to deny it because, again, society, the way it works is that we don’t want to disappoint anybody. You’d probably take that cookie if the truth be known, even if it wasn’t your favourite kind of cookie, because you don’t want me to feel bad. I’ve gone out of my way for you. Isn’t society weird like that? You know, when you start thinking about it, it would be very easy for you to take the cookie because I’ve got it there.

You know, whenever you are offering something to somebody, you want to make it seem like it’s already available for them, that it’s already there. You’re not going out of your way. You know, if I, there’s a difference between, ‘would you like me to make you some tea?’ You know, because as soon as they say that, ‘well, are you going to have some? ‘Oh yes, I’ll have some.’ ‘Well, then I’ll have a cup of tea.’ Because we don’t want people to go out of our way. Just like we would never say to somebody, if asked, is there anything I can get you? You would never in a million years say, ‘you know what? Now that you mention it, would you bake me some cookies?’ Can you imagine saying something like that? You know, we would never do that. Yet, we’re so, in the way we communicate with people, prospects especially, we are so hesitant to be direct, to be direct and to ask people if they would like something. Or offer them something because we don’t want to be rejected.

If we can get over that and we can lead people in the direction that they need to go to get the benefit that you know that they want, or you know at least half of them want that benefit, that is going to be the biggest, most beneficial thing that you can do for your follow-up program. Don’t expect your prospects to take the lead. You take the lead. You know, so often we end our emails or we send people emails and say, if there’s any way that I can help you, or if you have any questions, feel free to give me a call or just shoot me an email. Again, we’re expecting them to lead.

So here’s what I’d like to do. I’m going to give you guys a little bit of a homework assignment this week. And what I’d like you to do is first of all think through what would you respond with next if somebody, if you send that email that says, ‘are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?’ what’s going to happen? You know I’d love it if you tried it with a group of prospects that you haven’t followed up with in quite some time. I’d love it if you tried that and leave a comment on the Marketing Monday.com blog, right on the page, right at the end of this post, you can see there’s a place where you can leave a comment. Tell me what happened when you sent that email and tell me what you think the next step should be. How would you reply to the email that somebody’s going to respond?

And then a little later this week, I’ll reply. I’ll look at all these and I’ll send you a little update with some of these results that people have gotten and I’ll send you a recommended email that I would use to follow up with it. And the good news is that today’s Monday, you can use this email to get a buyer appointment this weekend. So let’s do that. I’m going to let you do that on Monday and Tuesday. And then maybe on Wednesday, I’ll send you another email so that you’ll still have time to send out the email before the weekend. And maybe get a buyer appointment this weekend. So go to Marketing Monday, leave me a comment, and watch on Wednesday in your inbox to see the follow-up for this. And tune in then and see if we can’t get you a buyer appointment this weekend.