Have you ever cold emailed the CEO of a public company?

When I was 18 I sent out 20.

I knew I needed advice to build my company, and figured they might have the answer…

… so I found the list of top tech CEO’s at the time, and sent them an email with a simple question:

Everyone argues that it’s who you know (network), what you know (education) and perseverance (not giving up) that are required to be successful.

If you had to pick just one of these three, which would it be?

That was it, very little context, super specific with an ask…

My favourite response was from Mark Cuban (this was 15 years before he ever invested in my company, and to this day I don’t think I’ve told him this :).

Choosing all 3 when everyone else is picking 1.

Pure Cuban.

Sending outbound emails to potential customers that could be facing challenges you can help them with is a POWERFUL strategy.

IF you do it right.

Most mess this up because they don’t personalize it, they send out thousands of broad and non-targeted messages and they don’t come from a place of service.

Now when I was 18, I didn’t know the 4 pieces of a great outbound email, but in this week’s video I’ll share with you how to craft your message that gets a positive response every time.

To generate customers, high responding cold emails need to have these 4 parts to work properly.

If you forget one, they’ll fall flat…

1. Research: Open with a personalized sentence. Show you’ve done your research.
2. Reference: To similar customer, situation or experience you have.
3. Reward: You have to give, to get. Provide value.
4. Request: Have an ask. Quick call. Meeting in town. Reply with answer.

Also, it’s important to write it like you would to a friend.

Short, simple and not needy.

One of the biggest reasons cold emails don’t perform is because they look like a sales email within the first 2 seconds.

The easiest way to fix this is to reframe things in your mind as “I want to serve this person, but first I need to know if we’re a fit, so it’s not about selling, but instead digging deeper to assess if we’re a fit or not.”

Don’t sell. Serve.

If you reframe all your cold outbound emails using this approach it will come off as natural, helpful and super generous.

Now, before you hit send, check your local email laws as every country has their own restrictions.

But don’t let that stop you.

Anyone can email another person asking to be of service…. The key is to nail the email structure to get a response.

Hope this serves.

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Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter@danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.

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