I have plenty of time to waste – said no one ever.

As sales professionals, we are forever running behind schedule trying to reach the end of our daily agenda.

The last thing you want to do is a spray-and-pray technique where you waste your time and that of your prospects by bulk-emailing them a generic sales copy and end up with zero leads.

What if with every touch point you could increase the trust in your brand? Well, actually, you can. Enter digital body language.

This blog will show you how to streamline your marketing efforts using simple facets of digital body language in your cold outreach.

What is digital body language?

Digital body language is a way to explicitly display the non verbal cues of our body language i.e. emotions, tone and level of familiarity. Just by actively displaying a real understanding of digital body language in your cold outreach, you can make sure your communications are well structured and trust-filled.

Erica Dhawan parallels digital body language to a foreign language dictionary which translates in-person body language to things like punctuation, first impressions, abbreviations, signatures and the time it takes us to press send, digitally.

Erica Dhawan’s bestselling book on Digital Body Language goes on to describe four core laws of DBL. Let us look at how to use these four laws in your cold outreach.

• Value visibly: Use digital body language to show appreciation and value the time of your prospects.
• Communicate carefully: Use digital body language to find alignment between your product and the needs of your prospects.
• Collaborate confidently: Redefine your cold outreach framework to exude authenticity and confidence.
• Trust totally: Put together all four pillars to create trust in your brand.

I will now expand on this idea by giving you actionable ways to use these four laws in your everyday communications.

9 ways to win over your prospects using digital body language

1. Ride the trend train

As a salesperson, it does not help to just sell what you know. You also need to keep yourself updated with the current industry trends so you can keep expanding your value proposition.

Below are some of the ways you can keep pace with the latest developments in your industry:

• Subscribe to industry blogs and your customers’ blogs
• Set up Google alerts and RSS feeds
• Dedicate 20-30 minutes each day to browsing LinkedIn
• Listen to a variety of podcasts

This information will delight your prospects as very few reps actually take the time to read, listen and educate themselves on the changing landscape of the market.

2. Master power play in every touch point

Ever had anxiety talking to a prospect because you are unsure of their tone and/or how to respond. Erica Dhawan has an interesting take on this. She calls it the Trust and Power Matrix. In this, you ask yourself two questions:

1. Who has more or less power in this relationship?
2. How much do you trust each other?

Then review the visual below. The y-axis indicates your level of power relative to the person you are communicating with. If you have more power, then look to the top half of the matrix. If you are communicating with someone of higher power, then look to the lower half. The x-axis indicates the level of trust. If you have a close, trusting relationship with the other person, look to the right side of the matrix. Else, look to the left.

3. Make your copy crisp, clear and concise

Your sales copy is one of the most effective ways to generate leads and sales for your business. At the same time, it can also be one of the tools that are difficult to master.

When it comes to writing your sales copy, remember that persuasive writing comes from genuinely believing in what you do. Be crisp, clear and concise.

Here are some tips for writing a copy that sells:

• Pick a principle selling proposition
• Put important information first
• Use a conversational tone
• Talk about benefits not features
• Remember who you are writing for (buyer persona)
• Always include a call to action
• Learn and evolve (A/B test is a must!)

For more on how to refine your email prospecting strategy, do check out our curated list of hand-picked cold outreach templates.

One of the key aspects of digital body language is communicating clearly. Spend some time working on your email copy to make sure you are being as clear as possible and limit the risk of being misunderstood.

4. Segment your email list and personalise

Your customers expect to be addressed as humans and not just another number on the quarterly marketing report. This personalisation stems from effective list segmentation.

If you are not sure where to begin, think through these six steps and try to plan out a flow that would work for your segmented email marketing campaigns.

• Define your data points: First thing’s first: you can’t build segments without B2B data.
• Create personas for your customers: This includes creating personas based on demographics, user activity, buyer stages, pain points, etc.
• Employ hubsell’s segmentation feature: A sales automation tool like hubsell can handle segmentation and make multiple email sends a breeze.
• Personalise your copy: Use hubsell’s segmentation to craft personalised and targeted copies for your prospects using static and dynamic placeholders.
• Measure, Adjust, Repeat: That is tracking how people are interacting with your emails by open rates, click rate, and conversions, etc. and using that to guide your future campaigns.

Tailoring sales and marketing copy for specific audiences helps you create more successful campaigns and boost conversions. This goes in line with communicating clearly and keeping your prospect at the center of your communication strategy.

5. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes

Remember sales is merely a collaboration between you and your prospects wherein you solve the problems for a prospect. You need to know your prospect’s pain points. The challenge is that these concerns aren’t always readily apparent — in some instances, your prospect might not even have a clear idea of them, to begin with.

This is where Sandler Selling System’s pain funnel comes into play.

The basic idea is this: ask your prospects a series of open-ended questions to uncover their pain points through emotional understanding using one or more mediums. The funnel aims to reveal these pain points by asking increasingly specific open ended questions.

Questions start broadly and whittle down to more personalized and immediate — hence the funnel imagery.

Here are some questions to initiate your discussions:

• Can you tell me more about that problem?
• Can you be a bit more specific? Perhaps an example?
• How long has this been a problem for you?
• What have you tried to do about this problem?
• What has worked well for you and what hasn’t?
• How do you feel about this?

This approach works great for fostering digital body language as it focuses on bonding and relationship building before hard-selling. Through this, you can get started on an honest and open conversation with your prospect and even find out whether or not they are a right fit for you before you invest too much time.

6. Know and express your value

Cold outreach should be used as a way to create trust and build connections with your prospects. Instead of going with a hard sell approach, try to offer value at every touchpoint.

You can do this by actually solving one or few of your prospect’s problems during your cold outreach. This not only demonstrates that you understand their needs, but also builds trust in your brand. Once you have done that, your prospect would be much more likely to pay for a solution than sit with a problem that intensifies

This is why something as simple as sharing a blog post or video with your prospects that you think could be helpful to them is a great way to get a conversation started. This approach is a double whammy as it also attracts inbound traffic to your website from your target audience, thus moving you up a rank in search engine optimisation.

7. Use social proof

The power of social proof is proven. When you include it in your outreach emails, you increase your chances of not only getting a response but getting a positive response. Scan your message for an opportunity to include a detail about a customer, particularly one that will resonate with your prospect, like a customer similar to them.

Below are some ways to include social proof in your cold emails:

• Mention Mutual Connections (especially when you are cold emailing 2nd degree connections from LinkedIn)
• Highlight Your Professional Credentials (such as accreditations, things you’ve achieved, who you’ve worked with in your industry and so on)
• Drop in a few customer data points (such as number of customers, customer achievements, success stories, etc)

Social proof makes your cold emails 10x more compelling as you build credibility for yourself by using borrowed authority from your existing customers.

8. Provide additional value during follow up

Most of your business’s prospective customers will not buy from you instantly, and that is a fact. So, the first point of contact may be important to get the ball rolling but so is the subsequent follow up. That is what encourages your prospect to take action.

Your goal with a follow up is to get better results by engaging the prospect with another touchpoint and ensuring you provide them with value. This “value” does not have to be financial. You simply need to ensure that you are offering something useful and relevant to the person every time you speak to them.

Here are some ways to provide value with your follow-ups:

• Begin by asking the prospect how they are and how business is going
• Keep note of the prospect’s pain points and the problems they are trying to solve
• Include a link to a relevant article, blog post, or video in your follow-up email
• Notify them of a special offer or limited-time discount

Applying Dhawan’s “Trust totally” in your cold outreach helps take the anxiety out of no response. Do not think of silence from your prospects as “ghosting”, rather assume the best intent, and follow up.

9. Be consistent and fulfil your promise

Consistency helps us hold our sales story together from beginning to end. Especially in the world of email copy, staying consistent is the difference between getting a response and ending up in the trash folder. Always be consistent with your messaging and follow through with your promises.

Here are some quick steps to follow:

• Map out your value propositions and list out all the challenges you solve.
• Build a strong message around each one, and focus one campaign around each message. Basically, build up your story one touch at a time.
• Target your personas with the message that would resonate the most with them, and keep adding value, depending on their individual buyer stage.
• Sit back and monitor the impact of your campaign to see what is working well and what is not.

Lastly, make sure to be mindful of all four pillars of digital body language at every touchpoint to create trust in your brand and yourself.

Final word

Digital body language is one of the best tools for shaping outreach and giving value at every touch point. Think of it as a golden ticket to fostering solid connections and trust-filled interactions with your prospects. Use the above tips as a guide to refine your prospecting strategy and become a superstar SDR!

New readers

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