Sometimes I am asked if we find it easier to sell leads via phone or email. Most of the time I find that the clients who sell well are the ones who are the ones on the phone. Email works as well but most of the time the sales rep that calls as soon as he gets the lead is the one that closes the deal.

There are a few reasons for this:

First, when emailing back and forth with someone it takes a while (normally) for them to respond to your email. This can lengthen out your sales process to an unnecessary level.  Also when answering someone’s questions via email your responses can spark new questions. This is not a huge issue by itself but it can throw your conversation off in a direction you did not want to take or sidetrack your sales pitch. With email, there is no tonality or inflection and the reader may not completely understand how the message was written or worse, take it the wrong way.

Now let us contrast email sales to telephone sales:

When you are on the phone with a potential client, you have their attention right now. This is a major win; it can be hard to get your clients attention because of the pace of their schedules. If you have their attention, you have already won half the battle. With the phone, you can explain your concepts of your SEO or web design solutions and products quickly and make sure that they understand the value of your offering. You can respond to questions quicker and more effectively than email. You have the ability to “set the flow” of the call so you can steer the conversation where you want it to go. When on the phone what you say is just as important as how you say it. Your tonality and inflection of your voice is one of the ways human beings communication. This is an advanced sales tactic that season sales pros use but everyone does this when telling a story or a joke.

When looking at these two approaches it’s pretty easy to see that getting on the phone and speaking with your potential leads is the best way to make sales. Email is still useful and defiantly has its place in your sales tool belt but should not be your primary tool to generate sales unless your service, location or physical constraints demand it.