Just about every sales person, when I ask what they want their email to accomplish, says they want their email to make the sale.  Yeah… But email can be a wonderful sales tool as long as you follow some rules: Know what you want your email to achieve. Yeah… and I’d like Hagen Daz peanut butter ice cream to be a diet aide.  1.

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So, as a leading authority on email etiquette and productivity ( Power Sales Writing - McGraw Hill; How to Say It To Sell It! - Prentice Hall), I think it’s time to apply a couple to your inbox: received an email from a client marked !!. Will she even check her email to see if I responded? Proverbs are cool. No matter how cheesy they are, how can you argue with stuff like:

He says “the biggest factor effecting how likely I am to read and process an email is  how long it is . ” 8221;  And, he added, “ I need to be either interested or feel responsible for the outcome of the email by sentence two .” I’d like to start a  ” Twitter-ize email ” movement. One of the most charming things about Twitter is that you have to say what you want to say in 140 characters. And it’s amazing how everyone can do it.

That’s all she wrote in response to my email that said:  The email application is clear.  Tags: Email Etiquette & Productivit “Got it.” 8221; Your support has made all the difference on this project.

And as much as that may sound like a blinding flash of the obvious, over coffee, it helped me see what I may not be making obvious when I teach Email Selling Skills . How hard do you work to see the beginning and end of your email before you start writing? Do you know exactly what you want to achieve with that email before your fingers hit the keyboard? My golf course architect husband and I were talking golf this morning. More specifically, he was talking about how he goes about his business of “finding” a golf course.

Friends send me appalling emails all the time. Background: The sales person first sent the email and sales proposal to an incorrect email address, using .com The sales person had attached a copy of her original message, the one with the wrong email address, to that message. Her original email? It’s not that they write them; they receive them and forward them on to me. I

If you’re using email to prospect (and who isn’t these days?) Here are  4 must-apply ideas to improve your email: What do I want to accomplish with this email? Make the corrections now so that you don’t have to get home and drive back to the store (or apologize for email, send a follow-up, or lose the sale). or just to connect, consider if you’re (inadvertently) forcing them to reject your offer. Okay.

One of the most often asked questions at my email etiquette, productivity and protocol workshops is: What’s the best way to close an email?  And The choice of greeting or closing and its presence or absence in an email message conveys not only an interpersonal message enabling the writer to negotiate his or her workplace relationships but also contributes to the creation of a friendly or less friendly workplace culture and, in turn, reflects this culture.” And if I could answer that question, I would.  It’s not that I don’t have my opinion.

“ Email sign offs may be turn offs ” said the headline. Reading got me thinking: How we sign our emails really has nothing to do with turning off our readers. It’s so easy to misinterpret intent in email regardless of content. Email creates the perfect storm of communication confusion… Reading about how “Sincerely” is used by 25% of business writers, and “Thank you” or “Thank you for your time” by 20% etc., It’s what we write, or don’t, that pisses them off.