75: Master the Email Sales Funnel with Shawn Finder
My Guest: Shawn Finder
Shawn Finder has always been an entrepreneur at heart. At age 24, Shawn entered the entrepreneurial world after competing as one of Canada’s top-ranked tennis players. He started out importing packaging from the Orient and selling to top retailers in North America. However, knowing he always loved selling and list building, he founded ExchangeLeads in 2013 which helps his company build quality lists for outreaching new prospects. This was followed by his new venture Autoklose in 2017 that combines both sales engagement and list building all-in-one platform
Episode Highlights:
[1:36]: I played tennis my whole life. I was world-ranked, playing in the same tennis terms as Roger Federer and all the the main guys. They’re all my age right now, all of them are still playing.
[3:41]: My mom actually sat me down and said, “Shawn, listen, you could try and go the tennis route. But remember, one injury, one back injury – I was always injury prone – one thing goes wrong and you’re going to probably have to be a tennis coach, because all you’re going to ever know is playing tennis and teaching tennis. Or, you can go the education route and get an MBA and do something with your life.”
[9:23]: Going into my MBA in finance, and starting in finance, was probably one of the best things for me as an entrepreneur. Because if you can’t read a balance sheet or read an income statement, it’s going to be really tough to run a business.
[14:42]: For all the listeners who don’t realize that they’re literally a commodity being traded, even though I’ve laughed about it every day. But Google owns you and Facebook owns you. And now, every random person that has your name, phone address, email, and company title, owns you, and sells you or trades you.
[24:19]: So some examples are, subject line and body paragraphs of emails. People think that long subject lines or creative subject lines work, but a simple subject line, like “Hi Estie” actually will get you the best-converted conversion.
[26:43]: Every time I see an email like this, I blast them. I just send them chapter three of Dale Carnegie. Nobody cares at all about you and what you do exactly. Three paragraphs introducing it and then asking them for something! What is wrong with you?
[31:33]:
Shawn: MailChimp and ActiveCampaign still send it from you, but from their servers. So if you have spam words and stuff you might sometimes end up in Promotions folder or Marketing folder, because the marketing email.
Estie: So AutoKlose bypasses that because it’s using your personal server. It’s like G-Mass.
[44:40]: I go in first with a generic, try and hit that pain point challenge. So you can actually get them to read the email. And then if they don’t reply, I start to build trust. So I’ll actually input some social touches also. So you might go on LinkedIn and add them as a connection, or you might endorse them or like or share something they post on LinkedIn.
[47:01]: The current business struggle right now is hiring good salespeople. Hiring good salespeople is a struggle, you find a salesperson, they work for you. And people in sales always want to make more money. So if they come in, and after three months, you’ve trained them, you spent all this money training, and then across the street, they’ve offered $10,000.
Quote:
Resources & Links:
- Find Shawn: AutoKlose
- Find Shawn on Social: LinkedIn
- Work with Estie: www.strandconsulting.net
- Join us on the Show: www.estierand.com/breakthrough
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About the author, Estie Rand
I love turning ideas into money, and helping others do the same. I help small business owners with everything from marketing to fiscal management, business plans to staffing, database architecture to work/life balance coaching and I love it all! What do you need help with today?