* Is e-mail your selling medium of choice because it lets you avoid rejection that you dread when you make real cold calls?

* Do you wait and wait for return e-mails from prospects that will give you green light to move sales process forward?

Sad but true, these days most people who sell for a living spend 80% of their time trying to communicate with prospects via e-mail instead of actually picking up phone and speaking with them. Are you one of those people? If so, you aren't alone...but do you understand why you've turned to e-mail instead of personal contact? I think there are 2 core reasons that underlie this unfortunate trend:

* Fear of rejection. The sheer negative force of anticipating rejection makes people turn to e-mail to generate new prospect relationships because it hurts less to not get a reply than to hear that verbal "no."

* Getting blocked by gatekeepers andvoicemail. When salespeople don't know how to break through barriers of gatekeepers and voicemail, they start thinking, "Forget it -- it's not worth aggravation, and it takes too much energy. I'll just e-mail instead."

However, when you try to use e-mail to offer your product or service to someone who doesn't know you, you can't possibly establish natural dialogue between two people that allows trust level to reach level necessary for a healthy, long-term relationship.

We all know how much everyone hates e-mail spam, but even so, many salespeople are still sending introductory e-mails to decisionmakers. They feel that, because they're from a credible organization, they won't be associated with negative image of a spam solicitor.

However, these introductory e-mails typically contain traditional three-part sales pitch -- introduction, a mini-presentation about products and services being offered, and a call to action -- and this traditional selling approach instantly tells recipient of e-mail that your only goal is to sell your product or service so you can attain your goals, andnot theirs.

If you're still using email to sell, watch out for these 7 pitfalls:

1. Avoidsales pitches. If you feel you must use e-mail to start a new relationship, make your message about issues and problems that you believe your prospects are having, but d on't say anything to indicate that you're assuming that both of you are a match.

After one coaching session, one member of sales team came up to me and said, "Ari, your approach makes complete sense -- but I'm afraid I'll lose sales if I stop being aggressive and start being passive!"

Whenever I hear a comment like that, I want to scream, because it means that person just doesn't yet understand that removing pressure from sales process doesn't mean being passive!

But...I didn't scream. I took a deep breath and then explained that Unlock The Game™ is reverse of passive.

Rather, it's an active attempt to create pressure-free conversations with prospects.

However, to do that we must eliminate behaviors and language that prospects can perceive as "aggressive."

We all know what these are -- continual e-mail and voicemail "followups" in which salespeople try to pin down status of a potential deal -- is one common example.

The problem is that prospects react to aggressive, or perhaps we should say "overaggressive" sales behaviors by withdrawing and evading us.

We could say that Unlock The Game™ actually takes "middle ground" between passive and aggressive by being authentically unassuming, yet effective - and that this is most stress-free and effective way to sell.

What do I mean?

I mean that you have to shift away from assuming that every prospect is a fit for your solution.

It's sort of like legal concept of "being innocent until proven guilty."