Updated 11:55 a.m., May 19, 2017

According to a McKinsey & Co. study, the average workerspends 13 hours a week — 28 percent of his office time — on email.This multiplies out to (yikes!) 650 hours a year writing and sending emails!

This begs the question, what does it look like when you totalall those words over the course of one year?

According to Cue, a hub and app for services such ascontacts, calendars, and email (purchased by Apple), this isabout a novel’s worth of email you send every year. Wow!

So why does it feel as if we’re getting very few results fromthis massive effort?

The answer could be in the way we write them.

The problem with email

Most of the emails insurance agents write today are not only filledwith terms that are difficult for the consumer to understand, butmany are WAY too long and require too much time and effort to readand digest.

Nobody wants to sit and read through a sales pitch; they want to grab little pieces ofcontent here and there.

They want people to get to the point.

But most of us were trained to write long, formal emails — thesame way we used to write letters and faxes.

My suggestion to you is — wherever appropriate — use shortemails.

Very short.

I’m going to give you a nine-word template for thehighest-converting email you’ll ever send.

To date, it’s generated well over $500,000 in commissions forthose who have used it.

Your goal is to encourage a reply to start a dialogue.(Photo: Thinkstock)

Tip: Use one question to start aconversation

The technique is simple: Ask ONE question of the reader. Your goalis to encourage a reply or start a dialogue. That’s it.

Related: 7 steps for generating the bestleads

Here’s an example of a traditional email (in other words, whatnot to do):

Hi, John.

Hope you’re doing well.

I’m following up on our conversation from three weeks ago tosee [how your evaluation process is going with your workers’comp, cyber liability, etc.].

The last time we met, we reviewed your needs as gaining more[INSERT DESIRED OUTCOME].

I have taken the time to review your [INSERT PLANYOU’RE REVIEWING] plan, and explored what would happen if yourcompany suffered a breach.

I’d love the opportunity to have a follow up call with youto discuss further.

Sincerely,

John Smith Osmond Insurance

Do you get the idea?

But if you’re ready to make your first SHIFT, there’s amuch better way.

Here’s a picture of the closed cases Annette won within24-hours, after using this email. Total commissions in 24 hours =$8,000. After 1 week it was $20,000.

The $8,000 email

One agent, Annette, tried this strategy and sent the email Irecommended to her list of prospects at 9:05 in the morning.

At 11:53 a.m., she texted me, “Please, stop the madness. I can’tkeep up with the constant flow of responses!”

Then she wrote, “Crazy. More requests just came. I can’t believewhat a one-liner did!”

And all she did was take a very personal, one-on-oneapproach.

In that one day, she closed eight deals for a total of $8,000 incommissions.

Copy this email template right now:

Subject Line: John

John, do you still need help with your [blank]?

Jeremiah

In the blank, you can put insurance, workmans comp, benefits— whatever.

BAM! That’s your 9-word email!

Warning: Don’t change a thing!

Send it EXACTLY as shown above.

Don’t add anything underneath it or above it, other thanwhat normally appears in the personal email template you send fromOutlook or Gmail!

One carrier I consulted with sent this to 10,000 people, butdecided to get clever. (In other words, he didn’t follow my adviceto the letter.)

After the question, he wrote, "Because we’ve got a whole bunchof great products. We've got life insurance, we've got dental,we've got disability, we’ve got..."

And it didn’t work.

Because it didn’t look like it came from a human being. Itlooked like it came from a marketer trying to engage—andfailing.

Why this email works every time

One commercial lines agent had her team send my nine-word email toa few B2B prospects they hadn’t heard from in a while.

The same day, they got two responses that led to two meetings.Fast-forward 60 days, and those two meetings brought in $240,000 incommissions in the commercial lines space.

All from one little email!

There are a lot of reasons why this nine-word email works.

• It doesn’t look like spam.
• It offers help rather than a product or a service.
• It’s personal and implies a previous interaction.
• It’s non-threatening.
• It seems to continue a conversation already in progress.

But the number-one reason is this:

It doesn’t require any effort to mentally process thisemail.

In today’s screen-obsessed society, most people don’t take thetime to reflect and think—but they do value brief, meaningful,personal communications.

Using tools such as MailChimp, GetResponse, AWeber, and others,you can personalize a thousand emails at once, making each one lookas if it’s being sent from one individual to another—and only tohim.

The takeaway

• Send the nine-word email to a list of prospects you’ve targetedbefore but who have never responded. Test the subject line “quickquestion” (yes, all lower case. This converts higher, which you’lllearn more about later on)
• Use an automated tool to personalize the name in theemail.
• Fill in the blank with the product or service you provide.
• Don’t change anything else or add any other content.

Related: 5 email missteps every online marketer mustknow

Jeremiah D. Desmarais ([email protected])is a 23-time award-winning financial marketer, TED Speaker andphilanthropist that has been featured on Forbes, CNN, and Worth.His work has generated over two million insurance leads and helpedadvisors in over 51 countries. His #1 best-selling book, SHIFT:201 Instant-Action Proven Marketing Strategies to Sell MoreInsurance and Financial Products Now is available at www.TheShiftNation.com.