A friend sent me this infographic recently and asked my opinion: https://contactmonkey.com/blog/114-free-infographic-best-subject-line-for-salespeople. If you look through the graphic is talks about how the highest response rates they got from millions of e-mails sent was from a subject line that had nothing in it or one that starts with “RE:” pretending like it is a response to an e-mail already sent instead of a cold one. I sent a quick response to my friend saying “This RE: stuff is BS” and didn’t think much of it. But then I was doing a training recently and a bunch of reps brought it up and were asking me questions about it and I realized this infographic had spread pretty quickly. When I realized reps were actually taking it seriously I had to stop and write about it in an attempt to stop the spread of terrible information in my opinion.

I read a study a while back that Harvard did on the top 1% of sales professionals and the characteristics they all shared in common. One of them was “impeccable honesty” and I couldn’t agree more. Putting RE: in the subject line, as harmless as it may seem, is lying. I don’t care if it gets great response rates, I don’t want to win by cheating and that’s effectively what you’re doing with this approach. These small little lies and tricks are what demean this profession and feed into the perception that Sales people are all just a bunch of liars who will do whatever it takes to get their commission check.

If you want to be one of those reps that helps feed into the perception then go ahead and use this type of crap approach and all the other stupid tricks you want. If you actually want to help improve this profession and do it the right way then help me spread the word on this one and stop stuff like this from getting out there. Good luck and happy selling.