Just because someone doesn’t respond to your first email asking for a conversation, don’t lose faith. There are plenty of people who don’t answer every message they receive – not only because they may never have heard of you before, but because they may not have the right answer to your question.
Say that you want to talk about machine learning. Do you know the exact person at a given manufacturer who would understand what you’re asking? Not always, but you can get a pretty good idea when you start to reach out through email to employees with specific job functions at those companies. Then, as you follow up with them, you’ll either hear back that they are indeed the right people to talk with, or that you’d have better luck trying one of their coworkers.
When in doubt, remember how much email your prospects are dealing with already, and how that can affect their work ethic. Many of us struggle with digital Inbox management, feeling like it disrupts our focus on other tasks and makes us less productive. While there are some recommendations about how to maximize the use of your email, there’s no guarantee that your prospects are trying them. They could be afraid to check – much less deal with – their Inbox. They might be relying more on email alerts as a way to prioritize which ones they’ll react to. They could also be checking their emails after hours, decide that they’ll look at yours the next day, and then promptly forget when they see 20 new messages in their Inbox by morning.
That’s why you should vary the times that you email your prospects, and follow up with them at least a couple of times each month. There are so many factors that can keep you from hearing back from them immediately, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable to your prospecting efforts. Keep emailing until you know for sure.
