How To Book Calls And Meetings Through Cold Email: A Step-By-Step Guide

“Cold emailing” has been the most effective and consistent way to book calls and meetings with prospects for a while.

It is truly my favorite way to get in touch with new business prospects and I’ve used it to book meetings with everybody from local business owners, to Fortune 500 CEOs.

But it’s not always as easy as it sounds.

Here’s my step-by-step guide to cold emailing, from crafting the perfect message to following up on your outreach.

1. Research your prospect

The first thing you need to understand about sending cold email is that you want to get away from that “cold” category as soon as possible. The moment your prospect smells that this is an impersonal, bulk or otherwise non-direct email message, they will click “block” quicker than you can blink.

So how do you overcome this? It’s simple really, and it’s the first step of sending a cold email: include a personalized first line in your email that speaks directly to your prospect.

So how do you do that? Simple, you use our good friend Google.

Find one of the following:

• A Twitter account for that person
• A recent interview they’ve done
• A recent blog post they’ve written
• A video of them on YouTube

99% of prospects you email will have one of these online – so find it, spend no more than 60 seconds digesting that content, and write a first line based on something completely non-work related.

• If they mentioned their favourite soccer team in a podcast, ask what they thought of their recent player signing
• If they did an interview where they said they read Dan Brown books in their free time, ask if they preferred The Da Vinci Code or Angels & Demons
• etc, etc. Break them out their day-to-day with something that speaks to them directly.

2. Captivating subject

Use something as simple as the following:

• Hey {firstName}

Seriously. I get consistently great open rates with this, don’t reinvent the wheel.

3. Check before sending

Make sure your email passes the following checks:

• Does it follow this format: {Hey name}, {personalized first line}, {quick into into you/your achievements}, {call to action}
• Is it less than 8 sentences long? Any longer and you will lose interest
• Does it explain what you do in a super captivating and interesting way? Avoid long, uninteresting copy and pasted text of your company bio
• Does it end with one simple call-to-action that your prospect can either say “yes” or “no” to. Something as simple as: “Let’s find some time to chat – how about this Wednesday?”

4. When to send the email

You want your email to ideally not be sent when your recipient is in bed sleeping, wakes up to 100 random emails and quickly swipes them all away as he/she downs their morning coffee.

Look into their timezone (super easy using LinkedIn) and schedule an email to land in their inbox at 10am-12pm their time.

You can use a number of tools, and Gmail now makes it easy to schedule emails natively from within gmail.

5. How to follow up

Now, most Fortune 500 CEOs are busy. You email them when they’re on the golf course, preparing for an investor meeting or just busy. It happens. We’ve all ignored emails and no matter how good your email is, people will not always respond on the first email.

It is imperative that you follow up!

Wait 4 days or so before sending the following, super simple email:

Hey {firstName},

Just pinging this to the top of your inbox – would you be interested in chatting today?

It’s as simple as that, honestly. Don’t send them a bunch of case studies, don’t send them a massive email, just politely remind them that they may have missed your email and if they’d be interested in speaking.

Conclusion

There’s no better feeling than finally finding someone who’s actually interested in having a business meeting with you, and it will happen. Believe me, once you get into the swing of things, you’ll be waking up to meetings with interested prospects every single day.

Here’s my step-by-step guide for booking new meetings with new leads and existing clients. If you can use this approach to find potential clients and customers, you’ll be able to book sales meetings and other meetings like speaking engagements and board appointments with ease.