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Have you ever seen a nine word email?
Hello Reader,
I learned a great acronym from Col Fink recently, during a live workshop at Thought Leaders Business School. He calls these SPEAR emails:
- Short
- Personal
- Expecting
- A
- Reply
Contrast this with LINEAR emails:
- Long
- Impersonal
- Not
- Expecting
- A
- Reply
When we are nervous about making sales outreach, we confuse our communications by complicating it with all sorts of reasons to respond that muddy the message. SPEAR emails get responses. LINEAR emails don't.
Have you ever heard of the 'nine word email' before?
You may have seen one of these short, concise messages in your own inbox.
Here are some examples that I have received recently:
These are SPEAR emails. Even though they could be automated, or longer than nine words, a message like this can be used on LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger or sent via SMS. These SPEAR messages are more likely to get a reply than a LINEAR message.
Deciding what to say, in advance, is the hard part.
As Mark Twain supposedly said, "If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter." Distilling your call-to-action down to just nine words takes a great deal of forethought and revision.
That's why I made a template Google Doc, to make the CTA writing process easy. This short 3-minute video illustrates the importance of separating the Buying Decision from the Call-To-Action:
If you want to duplicate my template and write clear and concise CTAs for your own SPEAR emails, get the workbook here:
| Get the Call-to-Action Workbook |
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Generative AI improves your Productivity, Creativity, and Strategy - but only if you build the GenAI Habit. Learning how to incorporate GenAI Training into your day will help knowledge workers prepare for the future of work.
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