Picking the ten accounts worth a letter

A SnailReach letter goes to one prospect, from your own mailbox, with a reason that belongs to them. That is what makes it work, and it is also why you cannot send one to everyone. Starter comes with 50 letters a month and Team with 150. That is a budget, so spend it where a letter can change the outcome.

A good way to start is to pick ten accounts for the next two weeks and give each one your full attention. Here is how to choose them.

Start with fit

The first filter is simple: would this company be a great customer if they said yes? Not just a possible one. Look at the customers you already have that are happiest and easiest to work with, and find more companies like them in size, industry, setup and the problem they hired you to solve.

A letter to a poor fit is a letter wasted, no matter how well it is written.

Write your fit down as three or four plain rules, the kind a new teammate could apply without asking you. For example: a team of a certain size, in an industry you know well, using a tool you work alongside, with a problem you have solved before. If an account breaks two of the rules, drop it from this round.

Look for a reason to write now

Fit tells you who. Timing tells you when. From your list of good fits, look for the ones with something happening right now that gives you a natural reason to reach out.

• A new leader in the role you sell to.
• Expansion: new offices, new regions, new teams.
• A public goal, like a launch date or a hiring push.
• A talk, post or interview where they named a problem you solve.
• A meeting or event coming up where you will both be.

If you cannot find a reason, the account is not ready for a letter yet. Put it back on the list and check again next month. When you do find one, it usually becomes your first line.

Give yourself a time limit for this research. Ten minutes per account is usually enough to find a reason if one exists: their news page, the person's recent posts, a job listing or two. If nothing turns up in ten minutes, that is an answer too.

Find the right person

One letter, one person. Write to the person who owns the problem, not the most senior name you can find. A letter to the right manager that gets forwarded upward does more than a letter to an executive who passes it to an assistant.

If the reader thinks a colleague should see it, they can forward the letter from inside it. The colleague gets their own sealed copy, sent from your mailbox, and becomes a new contact on the account.

Rank, then write the top ten

Score each candidate on three things, using a simple one to three scale: how strong the fit is, how good your reason is, and how sure you are about the person. Add them up and take the top ten.

Here is how that might look for a hypothetical account. A company that matches your best customers closely scores a three on fit. Its operations lead just posted about a messy rollout, so the reason scores a three. You found her name but are not sure she owns the budget, so the person scores a two. Eight out of nine puts it near the top of the list. A company with a perfect fit but no reason and no clear contact scores five, and waits for next month.

The scores are not science. Their job is to stop you from writing to the companies you like the sound of instead of the ones most likely to say yes.

Then write those ten letters one at a time. It is tempting to batch them, but a letter written in a batch tends to sound like it. Ten good letters over two weeks is a realistic pace for most reps alongside everything else.

Learn from what happens

Because an open in SnailReach is a person tapping the seal, the signal is clean (unlike email open rates). After a few rounds, look at which accounts opened, which replied, and which booked. You will start to see which reasons work best for your market, and your next ten will be easier to pick.

Pay attention to the letters that were opened but got no reply, too. An open tells you the heads-up and the timing worked and the person was curious. If the letter itself did not land, the reason or the ask probably needs work, not the account.

Keep the list fresh

Accounts move. Someone who was not a fit last quarter might be one now, and a great account can go quiet for a while. Keep a longer list of good fits, perhaps fifty or so, and check it for new reasons every couple of weeks. Each round of ten comes from the top of that list.

• Accounts that replied but were not ready: note when to check back.
• Accounts that opted out: leave them alone. SnailReach blocks them anyway.
• Accounts that opened and went quiet: look for a new reason before writing again.

Ten letters you are proud of will do more than a hundred you are not.