This email saved my business a few years ago.
I put together a list of 342 chief technology officers, at small firms. I send them this story. It yielded enough calls to generate a couple of clients. One client, Curiosity Stream, was just fantastic to work with, and a lot of my earliest show-off-able work was done for them.
Now I write little stories for clients.
I used to think copywriting was the most valuable skill in business (and on its own, it still is). But writing tiny stories might be the most valuable skill in copywriting.
Anyway, here’s the email. Feel free to steal it, copy it, whatever you like.
SUBJ: {{first name} , a story about a CTO
Hi {{first name},
Jay is a CTO who spends a lot of time inside his own head. And eventually that got him into the CTO job.
But it didn’t help him with the Sales and Marketing people.
Sales needed him to ‘win the room’ when they took him to prospects and customers. Marketing needed him to impress people in webinars and speeches. And panel discussions. Podcast interviews. Streaming video events…
One day, he books me for an hour. He’s testing me, really. We walk through a presentation he likes to use alongside Sales. Pretty standard — there’s an intro, then he talks about the tech, then a “Questions??” slide. (Yep… it said, “Questions??”) 🙂
After 60 minutes, he’s got the strongest version of that presentation he’s ever seen. That year, we made a webinar. A conference speech. Memorable one-liners. Powerful ways to describe what the company does. And phrases that box in competitors.
Marketing and Sales started to crush on him a little bit. He’s their ideal ambassador.
He didn’t need to change. He just needed some on-demand expertise.
Question: can I send you some information? Maybe Sales and Marketing should start crushing on you a little bit.
Best,
Dean