Kelsey

SDR

Feel like I'm going to be fired after an email mistake. Would love some encouraging words

I'm new to sales completely after transitioning from a career in healthcare. At my company we don't use any integrations, so I have to manually send out emails. I tried using outlook and excel for mail merges after a director briefly walked through it. I loaded my excel sheet into my word document and checked for errors but none were found. However, the word document ended up duplicating the message for 12 prospects as one long chain email and then sending it all as one message. For example, if you had (Frank-> IT Manager at Apple, Jessie --> CTO at Microsoft, Korey --> CIO at Github for example) it'd list email 1 "hi Frank, blah blah, being CTO at Microsft, hi Korey blah blah blah, being CIO at Github, hi Jessie blah blah blah, being at CTO at Microsoft" all in one email chain. I immediately tried to recall the messages then tried recall and replace with a different message. Recalling the message immediately fails, but I don't know if the replaced message overrode the mistake. Anyone got suggestions besides jumping into traffic (not serious, but I'm feeling a lot of dread)?

20

23 comments

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oldcloser

Arsonist

12

💀

You’ll get through it. We’ve all done some kind of silly shit like that- multiple times. I’ve shared this before, but the short version applies- I emailed a profanity laden tirade about a bastard drunken client to my boss once. Only, I actually sent it to the client himself while I was sitting in his office waiting for him. He came in, checked his mail… yeah.

You’ll be ok

Kelsey

Fire Starter

6

SDR

thank you I really appreciate it. Since I'm so new to sales and I transitioned later in life (in my late 30's) I'm terrified of every little mistake I made. I guess the pros are that if the respondents check their email they'll know who I reached out to in terms of company and name, but not their email address. :/ I can't tell you how much I appreciate your message and telling me such a gut churning story! My anxiety would've shot through the roof if I were me. You're incredibly resilient

oldcloser

Arsonist

7

💀

If I had a bag of turds for every time I said something stupid at work, I would need a storage facility. Strive for progress, not perfection. Turds happen.

Kelsey

Fire Starter

1

SDR

Really great advice and words I need to live by. Thank you for adding such great insights to my post. Your comment and everyone elses made me feel better

braintank

Politicker

6

Enterprise Account Executive

You're fine.
If you want the brutal truth -- if you're actually reaching out to the CIO of GitHub and CTO of Microsoft, there is 0% they looked at the email. Probably didn't even make it through their SPAM filters.

SteveD

Member

0

Sales Director

This! What are open rates now on emails? less than 2%?

Gasty

Notable Contributor

5

War Room Community Manager

I can certainly say, we’ve all been there. Small goof ups or big ones. If we all start talking about the mistakes we made, this will be a long ass thread! Haha.
Relax, an apology email almost always fixes things. Humans vs Humans.

oldcloser

Arsonist

1

💀

B2B, H2H yep

Sunbunny31

Politicker

3

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Pffff. This is nothing. Everyone makes mistakes, and you’re doing things the hard way to boot. Cut yourself some slack, laugh about the stupid thing that happened, and move on.

You’ll be fine.
Also - sales not my first career either. You’ll be fine! Good luck.

SteveD

Member

0

Sales Director

Now creating an email storm that crashes the internal email system at Microsoft! That is winning at the game. https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/26/microsoft_reply_all_email_storm_52000/

3

Founding BDR

Email mess ups are a rite of passage in sales. Can’t tell you how many times I sent ‘Hi {{first_name}}’ in the first couple months since the field wasn’t correctly inputted. You’ll be fine, I wouldn’t stress about this!

Pachacuti

Politicker

2

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Lol… email screw ups are a rite of passage. That said, unless you completely embossed the company or opened them up to legal issues, I wouldn’t worry about.

NoToBANT

Catalyst

1

Senior Account Executive

Meh — don’t worry about it. If you get fired because of this your manager and his manager and his manager are a bunch of dickbags

You don’t even want to know some of the things I’ve done

Stay strong sir 💪🏻💪🏻

P.s I would advise another email
“Apologies for the last email - my tech failed me haha. I’m sure you’ve been through something similar.

On another note - here’s something you find interesting…” then send some valuable info 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻

bonez

Politicker

1

Account Executive

I also transitioned to sales in my 30s! You got this homie. This is a blip in the radar - absolutely nothing. I’ve sent bad emails to so many prospects they probably call me bad email bonez. Probably.

Cheers to you transitioning careers - sales is a fun one. I feel like when you transition into it you come with a level of experience that others done have. Use it as your super power!

Justatitle

Big Shot

1

Account Executive

You’ll be alright, this isn’t a big deal

pirate

Big Shot

0

🦜☠️ Account Executive

You'll be alright. Send an apology email and and I'm sure people will understand. And don't do it again.

Revenue_Rambo

Politicker

0

Director, Revenue Enablement

This happens every thing day. Chalk it up as your first big sales lesson.

Pro tip: if you are going to send something out at scale through automation do a test before hand.

Filth

Politicker

0

Live Filthy or Die Clean

Yeah, don't worry they aren't reading your emails anyways - and if they reply b/c of the strangeness of the message, let them know what happened, apologize and be human and use the communication to make something happen on the calendar. Turn the challenge into an opp!

JavierCake

Fire Starter

0

Account Executive

We’ve all been there, friend. Once I sent an email out and accidentally misspelled the word ‘public’ without the L.

Armageddon

Opinionated

0

Enterprise Account Executive

If they fire you for this that is BS.. This stuff happens all the time, and its on them to train you properly.
My advice with any cadence tool, go slow... Its easy to try to get caught up in hitting daily quotas and taking shortcuts, but errors are too common with these tools to assume they will always get it right

sleepingjaguar

Opinionated

0

CSM, Emerging Markets

LOL it happens man/woman. In a previous company one of the reps accidentally sent a holiday email to everyone’s accounts instead of his own 🫠 you will live to see another day, promise

CuriousFox

WR Officer

0

🦊

What was the outcome?

Dantback

Executive

0

SDR

It happens, I ended up screwing over an entire deal because I booked a meeting with the head of benefits at hostess brands and then two days later her close colleague got the same email because I forgot to turn the automation off for that account. My boss and I had a good laugh on simple mistakes. they happen, we are all human,.

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