Latest / Sales Leadership with Fexingo: Quota Carriers, Sales Managers, and Revenue Teams / How Cold Emails Can Sound Human
Transcript
- Lucas: There is a specific kind of email I get at least three times a week, and I think you get it too, Luna. Luna: Let me guess — starts with 'I hope this email finds you well' and then a paragraph about how they've been following my work? Lucas: Exactly. And then a feature dump about their platform. It's not terrible, it's just... forgettable. The data backs that up — average reply rate on cold outreach is around one to three percent if you're lucky. Luna: Right, so most of these emails are structurally identical. But some reps do break through. What's the difference? Lucas: The difference is that the ones that work don't sound like cold emails. They sound like a smart peer who thought about you for five minutes before writing. And that's a skill you can learn. Luna: Okay, so what's the first mistake people make? Lucas: The first mistake is what I call the 'declaration of intent' opening. 'I'm reaching out because...' or 'I wanted to connect regarding...' That sentence signals to the reader: this is a template, and you are on a list. Your brain immediately categorizes it as noise. Luna: So what should you write instead? You can't just start mid-sentence. Lucas: You can, actually. The best cold emails open with a specific observation or a question that shows you know something about them that isn't in their LinkedIn headline. For example, instead of 'I see you're a VP of Sales at Acme Corp,' you say something like, 'Noticed you just hired a head of enterprise for the EMEA region — congratulations.' That's a trigger moment. Luna: That's a good example. It's specific, it's timely, and it shows you did some real work. But personalization can backfire if it feels too researched, right? Lucas: It can. I've gotten emails that mention the exact blog post I wrote three years ago, and it feels creepy. The trick is to find something that's relevant to why they might care about your product, not just something that proves you Googled them. Luna: So the trigger moment should connect to a business problem, not just be a random fact. Lucas: Exactly. A good trigger moment is something like a funding round, a new product launch, a leadership change, a regulatory shift — something that creates a reason for the conversation. If you can reference that in the first sentence, the prospect thinks, 'This person might actually have something relevant to say.' Luna: Then what? Once you have the opening, what's the next structural piece? Lucas: The next piece is what I call the 'implied value' sentence. You don't say 'Our product increases revenue by 20 percent.' Instead, you say something like, 'We've been helping other companies in your space solve the challenge of getting accurate pipeline data from Salesforce.' It's not a claim, it's a framing. It implies value without shouting. Luna: So it's more like a hypothesis than a promise. That feels less salesy. Lucas: Exactly. And then you close with a low-friction ask. Not 'Can we schedule a demo?' but 'Would you be open to a fifteen-minute call to see if this is relevant?' The ask should match the level of interest you've built in two sentences. Luna: I want to test this against a real example. Do you have one? Lucas: Yeah. I worked with a B2B SaaS company last quarter that sells a tool for sales coaching. Their original email opened with 'I hope this finds you well. I saw you're a director of sales development at a tech company, and I think our platform can help your team.' They were getting about a one percent reply rate. Luna: Classic. So what did you change? Lucas: We rewrote the first sentence to: 'Noticed your team just hit one hundred percent of quota for the third straight quarter — impressive.' That's the trigger moment. Then we added: 'We work with a few other high-performing SDR teams that were looking for ways to increase rep velocity without adding headcount.' That's the implied value. Then we asked: 'Would you be open to a fifteen-minute call to share what they're doing differently?' Luna: And the reply rate? Lucas: Went from about one percent to just over four percent on the first test. Not earth-shattering, but a four-times improvement. And the quality of replies was better — people were actually scheduling calls, not just saying 'not interested.' Luna: So the structure really is just: trigger moment, implied value, low-friction ask. But it requires genuine research. Lucas: It does. But the research doesn't take that long. For a targeted list of twenty accounts, you can spend fifteen minutes per account and still come out ahead if even one converts. The bigger problem is that most reps send hundreds of emails without any real personalization and call it volume. Luna: Right. And that volume approach is what gives cold email a bad name. But I've also heard that even with good structure, timing matters a lot. Lucas: Timing matters, but less than you think. Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. is statistically best, but honestly, if your email is good, it will get read eventually. The bigger factor is relevance. Luna: One thing I struggle with — how do you personalize at scale? If you have a list of two hundred prospects, you can't handcraft every email. Lucas: You can't. But you can segment by trigger. For example, if you're selling to sales leaders, you can sort by companies that just hired a new VP of Sales, companies that announced a new product, companies that expanded into a new region. Then you write one template per trigger and just customize the name and a detail. That's scalable and still feels human. Luna: That makes sense. So it's not about writing two hundred unique emails, it's about writing five good templates that each target a specific situation. Lucas: Exactly. And one more thing — the subject line. Don't be clever. Be specific. 'Quick question about your expansion into Germany' will outperform 'The one thing every sales leader gets wrong' ten times out of ten. Luna: Because the specific subject line signals relevance, not a mass blast. Lucas: Right. And if you include a reference to the trigger moment in the subject line, the open rate goes up significantly. I've seen tests where 'Question about your new VP of Sales' got a fifty percent open rate. Luna: That's huge. So let's recap: open with a trigger moment, follow with implied value, close with a low-friction ask. Personalize by segment, not by individual. And make the subject line specific. Lucas: That's the framework. And it works because it respects the prospect's time and intelligence. You're not trying to trick them into a call, you're showing that you've done the work to understand their situation. Luna: I think the 'respects their intelligence' part is key. Most cold emails assume the reader is too busy to notice the template. But they do notice. Lucas: They do. And if today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps keep the show independent and focused on practical stuff like this. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to make sure we can keep digging into these topics without any sponsor pressure. Lucas: So next time you're staring at a blank email, start with what you noticed about them. Not what you want from them. That shift alone will change the whole tone. Luna: And if you're on the receiving end of a good cold email, you'll know it because it will feel like a conversation that was already half-started. Lucas: Exactly. That's the goal — make the email feel like the middle of a conversation, not the beginning of one. Thanks for listening.