It’s time to level up and set yourself apart in an executive’s inbox, but you know it’ll never happen as long as you keep parroting the same lines your prospect gets from every other seller. In today’s episode, our host Donald Kelly gets into why we should NEVER use the phrase “just bumping this up” in a follow-up e-mail. Listen in to hear the things you should say instead!  The Problem With Saying “Just Bumping This Up” When you say, “Just bumping this up,” you’re prioritizing yourself in their inbox and insinuating that they aren’t organizing their e-mails. This annoys prospects and turns them off. Your prospects are busy people with a lot on their plate. “Just bumping this up,” is a filler phrase that doesn’t add any value and shows a lack of effort on the seller’s part.  How SHOULD You Follow Up? Focus on the same pain point that you highlighted in the first e-mail. Then show the prospect your solution by making a quick video describing or demoing it. Think from your prospect’s perspective. They’re busy people – if their objection is that they don’t currently have time to meet, let them know you can meet later on. We use the Spotlight feature on LinkedIn SalesNavigator to identify prospects who have posted on LinkedIn during the last 30 days (try it free for 60 days at linkedin.com/tse). Use information from LinkedIn to identify triggers and bring those up in your follow-up. You can also use testimonials or describe the experiences of other clients who you serve.  “No matter what you sell, whether it’s a water bottle or it’s a complex HR solution for an enterprise-level organization, you need to think, behave, and act like a consultant and recognize the capability in your role, and treat your e-mails and communication accordingly. Otherwise, [prospects] are going to treat you the way that you sound. You don’t want to sound just like a sales professional, just like an order taker. Jump up in your position.” – Donald Kelly Resources Check out episode 707 for more ideas on following up! Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.  Your organization can overcome these challenges with technology that translates comprehensive, high-quality buyer data into real-time insights. These deeper insights empower sales reps and teams to adopt the habits of top performers, which leads to better outcomes - like more pipelines, higher win rates, and larger deals. We call this Deep Sales. And we’ve built the first deep sales platform with the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse. 2. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.  Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.