CHAPTER 7
Sales Prospecting in a Digital World
Sales prospecting has been the hottest topic in this profession for as long as I’ve been around. Today, you can find countless books, videos, and online courses on the subject. I’ve even created several different courses on it myself. The fact that there is so much information on prospecting and business development suggests that there is an insatiable appetite for new ideas for how to reach people and create new sales opportunities.
Among all the other topics we’ve covered, I have already peppered this book with a ton of ideas for outbound prospecting. Here, I want to go deeper into the strategies and tactics while acknowledging that we will literally only scratch the surface of this vast subject. My aim here will be to talk about how to integrate digital outbound strategies with inbound demand generation to round out the overall discussion of digital selling.
Why and When to Leverage Outbound
The first question we need to answer is, “Why should we make outbound part of our overall selling strategy, in the first place?” As I have noted extensively throughout this book, multiple studies have shown that today’s buyer shows a strong preference for asynchronous digital interactions with sellers. These statistics could be interpreted in one of two ways.
If we look at it from the perspective that sellers must blindly respond to whatever customers say they want, we could conclude that many companies should simply lay off their entire sales force and put all their resources into Facebook ads and a more robust transaction engine on their website. So, why don’t we do that? Because many companies find that a strictly inbound approach does not produce the best results for them or for their customers.
The other way to look at these statistics is to go beyond what customers say they prefer in some survey and look closely at what actually converts leads into closed sales and satisfied customers. Which combination of sales motions produces the most revenue at the best margins and results in the highest rates of customer retention? I’m not saying that we should force customers to do something they are dead set against doing. But it’s one thing to base our sales strategy on what survey respondents say when asked, “Which do you prefer?” It’s quite another to actually watch what customers do when outbound sales motions are introduced into the buying and selling process.
One CEO of a 500-million-dollar company whom I interviewed as part of my research explained that he and his company originally launched their SaaS (software as a service) business with a straight inbound marketing model. But when they decided to test the effect of adding an outbound component to their strategy, their cost per acquisition (CPA) for new customers was cut in half!
He explained that it was not necessarily cold calls to complete strangers that resulted in so many more conversions. Instead, the real impact came from proactively reaching back into the early stages of the buying process to engage customers who demonstrated some early stage buying intent. This would include actions that prospects took, such as following social profiles, engaging with digital content, visiting specific web pages, downloading free digital assets, and joining email lists.
This is a powerful example of not just resigning ourselves to the belief that we can’t or shouldn’t approach our customers until they are 57 percent (or 70 percent) of the way through their buying process.
I strongly believe . . .
The best time to reach out to prospective customers is whenever they are willing to respond to the outreach!
We should note, however, that the outbound sales team in the previous example did not exclusively use the telephone as the only means of connecting with prospects. They leveraged a variety of different synchronous and asynchronous outbound motions throughout their outreach process, including comments on social media posts, DMs, and email. They also did not push to schedule a telephone conversation during every interaction with an early-stage prospect. They simply helped people advance through the various stages of the customer relationship journey at a pace they were willing and able to go, like we talked about in Chapter 5.
The Right Mindset for Prospecting
Before salespeople or business owners can fully embrace outbound prospecting, they have to conclude that not only is it an effective method for finding and creating sales opportunities, but that it’s socially acceptable in today’s business climate. There are many conflicting opinions about why, when, and how to leverage outbound. Of course, there are a thousand experts online professing that “outbound selling is dead!” But if you buy their quick and easy, foolproof system for SEO, or YouTube ads, or WhatsApp messaging, you’ll multiply your revenue by 10 times in 90 days! Yeah, right.
So much of that noise becomes a justification or even an excuse for salespeople to abandon outbound prospecting altogether. And let’s face it, a lot of people tend to shy away from outbound today because posting on LinkedIn or writing an article for your blog takes far less courage.
I’m here to say . . .
Inbound paves the way for more effective outbound. And outbound multiplies the results of your inbound! Do both!
As I was putting together this chapter, I had the chance to interview Mike Weinberg, the author of multiple bestselling books, including New Sales. Simplified. (AMACOM 2012) and well-known expert on outbound prospecting. Mike says:
Many salespeople feel uncomfortable about reaching out to potential clients they don’t know because they feel like they are bothering them. That kind of fear-based thinking causes reactivity and even inactivity. But if you believe that what you have to offer can help them solve real business problems, you’re not calling to annoy them. You’re calling to rescue them!
Think about that! Maybe we are actually doing our prospects a disservice by not calling them. We’re robbing them of the business outcomes they could achieve with our help. If you knew their house was on fire and they were still inside, when would you stop banging on the door? Shoot, you might even knock the door down!
I’ve been helping salespeople maximize their prospecting results for quite a while now, and I have to say . . .
The main reason most salespeople don’t see the prospecting results they really want is not because they don’t know what to do. More often they just don’t do what they know.
There are a variety of reasons why this is true. I want to take a minute to look at the seven most common reasons why we, as salespeople and business owners, struggle with prospecting and end up suffering with a weak, anemic sales pipeline that does not enable us to consistently hit our revenue goals. As you read this list, ask yourself if one or more of these could be sabotaging you right now.
1. We are not really convinced that what we have to offer actually helps the customer. We can’t—in good conscience—reach out to a customer to promote a product or service that we ourselves don’t believe in. If this sounds like you, go find someone at your company who can convince you of what you are worth. Better yet, ask your happy clients why they keep coming back. Let them sell you on how good you are!
2. We let fear and lack of confidence paralyze us. Not every prospect is going to respond the way you’d hope, but some will! The problem is . . .
If you let fear keep you from doing what you know you need to do, you don’t avoid failure. You ensure it!
Build your confidence by taking small steps forward even if you are scared to take them. Mike Weinberg says, “We have to remember, nobody has ever been injured doing this.”
3. We vacillate between tools, platforms, and approaches too frequently. Often we experiment with several methods but don’t commit ourselves to one long enough to get into a rhythm that starts producing consistent results. I encourage you to pick some ideas that you are learning here and run with them for the next 30 days. Don’t let yourself get distracted by every new whiz-bang prospecting “secret formula” you see on a Facebook ad.
4. We haven’t done enough prospecting to really get good at it. Sometimes we think, “I’m not very smooth, so I don’t want to do it yet.” But if you don’t do it, you’ll never have a chance to get good! Years ago, I heard a conference speaker say, “If you want to get good at something, you’ll have to be willing to be bad at it first.” So true!
5. We don’t manage and prioritize our time well. It’s just too easy to let customer service tasks, billing issues, and delivery problems take precedence over actual selling. We have to prioritize and establish our selling time throughout the week first and let everything else fall in around that.
6. We put forth inconsistent effort. Have you ever tried to get in shape and lose weight by exercising “once in while” and eating better “sometimes”? It doesn’t work like that! Mastering any aspect of prospecting is going to take consistent effort over a period of time. Here’s one truth that has helped me stay focused and consistent. . .
Every day or week that you don’t invest at least some energy to add sales opportunities to your pipeline means there will be a day or week at some point in the future when you’ll have nothing to close.
That truth has helped me get moving on so many days I just didn’t want to reach out to anyone.
7. We don’t have a master prospecting plan or a weekly plan of action. If you don’t know exactly what actions you need to take each week to create a consistent flow of new prospects, you’ll naturally hesitate and procrastinate. Later in this chapter, I’m going to walk you through how to create a 30-day plan of action for prospecting that will help keep you on track all month long.
I have observed that most sales professionals can see marked progress in their revenue results just by making improvements in one or more of these seven areas, even without learning anything new in the way of skills training. Pick one or two of these and make a serious commitment to get better. Set some new goals! Find someone to hold you accountable. Then, combine this with some of the things you are going to learn in the balance of this chapter, and you’ll be unstoppable!
Tactical Versus Targeted Prospecting
Now, let’s compare two different methods of outbound prospecting, which we will refer to as tactical prospecting versus targeted prospecting. I recognize that by drawing a distinction between these two methods—tactical and targeted—I run the risk that the targeted approach is portrayed as good and admirable while the tactical is perceived as somehow inferior. Actually, both alternatives have merit, but they simply have different applications.
Tactical prospecting is the method that is more traditional and where many of us have the most experience. The more targeted method represents the big opportunity for many salespeople and business owners. Compare the characteristics of these two approaches in the following table. These two approaches are different in almost every way.
With the tactical approach, we make as big a prospect list as possible with the name of a key contact, such as the Director of IT, for each organization. We then decide how we want to reach out, maybe with an email blast or a telephone blitz. After that, we put together some kind of a prospecting message—which needs to apply to as many situations as possible and therefore has to be fairly generic—and send it to everyone to see who responds. Then, maybe a few weeks later, we send off another outreach to see if we can get some more responses.
From the seller’s point of view, it looks like we are really working hard, sending things to or calling a large number of people. However, from each recipient’s perspective, it looks as if we’ve sent only one isolated message with no real context or follow-through.
The more targeted method, by contrast, starts with a short list of maybe 3 to 5 accounts to target for a period of time. Rather than one contact, we would make the time to do the research and find 5 to 10 contacts of various key roles within the account (CEO, CFO, CIO, VP of sales, VP of marketing, etc.). We’d focus on the personas that we’d really like to engage with. We would then use a customized one-to-one approach that is specific to the industry, the company, and even the role of each person we’re approaching. We would organize our outreach as a concentrated series of touches using a variety of different forms of communication over a period of a couple of weeks.
Because we are targeting specific individuals within certain companies, this gives us the license to really go deep in our research and preparation. It allows us to tailor our approach and what we want to communicate literally to the specific job role within the company and even to the person who currently sits in that seat.
The term account-based marketing (ABM) has become quite popular in the last few years. The premise of ABM is that we would market ourselves differently to each target account based on knowledge that we have about them or buying behavior we can observe. What I’m suggesting goes even deeper than that. I’m talking about role-based selling at the least and perhaps even person-based selling.
In today’s world, much of the tactical type of prospecting is frequently automated, handed off to another department, or outsourced altogether. In this regard, a lot of tactical prospecting (or business development) has become more of a marketing function.
Sending out 5,000 emails that all say the same thing to 5,000 people is technically an outbound motion (we send an email to them). But sending emails or leaving voicemails in bulk functions more like an inbound technique. In essence, we put a message out there to see who reads it and calls us back.
Throughout the rest of this chapter, we will discuss both the tactical and the targeted methods, but we’ll focus a bit more on the targeted approach because I believe it is quite underutilized and offers tremendous upside opportunity for many organizations. That being said, the ideal strategy would be to continue to use tactical outreach to a larger pool of prospects. And then select a subset of a small number of accounts and key stakeholders to target for a period of 30 days or so. Then we can refresh the short list of target accounts each month.
Defining the Objective of Your Approach
One of the most important aspects of any outbound strategy—whether you’ve created a large campaign or you’re just trying to reach a particular executive with a specific company—is to define the objective of your approach. What are you trying to accomplish with your prospecting efforts?
Whether you decide to use the telephone, email, or any other form of outreach, here are some of the possible customer responses that could serve as your goal or objective. I ranked these according to what many salespeople would consider the most desirable outcomes:
1. Discover an active sales opportunity
2. Schedule a product demonstration
3. Schedule a telephone or video conversation
4. Referral to someone else internally or externally
5. Agreement to attend something like a special event, trade show, or webinar
6. Agreement to read something or watch a video and speak afterward
7. Add a subscriber to something like an email list
8. New connection via social media
Of course, some people will argue with my ranking. Rerank them however you see fit. If I were ranking these I might suggest, for example, that a scheduled video conversation might be an even better outcome than a product demo. Just an opportunity to talk about ourselves and demo our solutions (our B)—without a good understanding of their current situation (Point A) and their future goals and objectives (Point C)—typically yields mediocre results at best. But if a discovery conversation precedes the demo, we can earn trust and build rapport as we learn what to emphasize and focus on during the demonstration.
Throughout most of my career I was always taught that the main goal for every outbound motion was to “get the appointment.” That is probably the most desirable objective for most salespeople! That’s certainly what I would prefer, in most cases. Unfortunately, we typically only achieve that goal on these occasions:
• When we come across a prospect in the Top 3 percent who is buying
• When we come across a prospect in the Open 7 percent who is looking
• When we come across one of a few people in the lower 90 percent who is somehow intrigued by our approach or is just friendly enough to hear us out
But what do we do about the vast majority of the people who aren’t ready for a telephone conversation yet? That’s where leveraging digital assets to sell for us asynchronously becomes invaluable.
For the people in your market who don’t immediately respond to your request for a live conversation, see if you can leverage one or more digital assets to do some of the selling for you. Book a meeting with everyone you can! But in the cases where potential customers are not ready, don’t just relegate them to a “tickler file” and try again for a meeting in three months. There is a chance they might agree to something short of a live conversation if you ask!
Here’s a suggestion to keep in mind . . .
If your prospects aren’t ready to jump into a conversation with you, figure out a different way to help them take one more step toward you in the customer relationship journey.
If, for example, you are doing outbound telephone calling but you are only able to connect live with a small percentage of people on your list, think about what other way you could possibly connect. If you are simply unable to secure a scheduled conversation right now, try to accomplish some other outcome from the prioritized list of objectives mentioned earlier.
A live telephone or video conversation may well be the ultimate goal, but be willing to take any forward motion toward that ultimate goal. If your operating paradigm is “anything short of a live conversation is a failure,” you’re going to have a lot of failure. I’ll take a referral to someone else, attendance at some kind of event, or even just an agreement to read a one-pager or watch a video I created, if that’s all I can get. Make your own list of prioritized prospecting objectives and accomplish something with every person you approach!
Defining the Angle of Your Approach
Another vital part of putting together an effective prospecting strategy is defining your approach angle. The term angle is often used in a derogatory sense suggesting that there must be some ulterior motive behind whatever we say or do. This might be typified by the cynical question often asked about someone of dubious character, “What’s his angle?”
In this case, I’m using the word to basically ask, “What direction are you coming from?” This usage is common for editors of a newspaper or a magazine, for example, when they are considering both the topic of an article (what it’s about) and the angle of the article (what conclusion you want your reader to draw). As you put together your approach and plan what you are going to write or say, think about the direction you are coming from.
How Will You Position Yourself?
As part of my Power-Prospecting at the Executive Level™ course, I identify at least five different positions that you can take when it comes to approaching an executive-level prospect. As you read these, think about which ones might play to your strengths, but also think about how they might apply to a specific account or an individual that you want to target for outreach right now. Maybe even think about the topic or the subject line for an email you could use to position yourself as one of the following:
1. Educator
• Explain how the latest technology can impact the customer’s business.
• Share the latest industry trends and the impact they might have on the client’s business.
• Spot opportunities and threats to the customer’s business and offer a plan for how to capitalize on them or avoid them.
2. Problem Solver
• Proactively identify current-state issues or obstacles to achieving specific goals.
• Find root causes to problematic situations and craft solutions to address or eliminate them.
3. Connector
• Introduce your prospective client to other executives in their industry.
• Provide contact and access to industry thought leaders and experts.
• Bring in needed business partners to solve problems and provide capabilities beyond what you currently offer.
4. Collaborator
• Help your customer assess their current state and current levels of performance.
• Help them put together a plan to improve their performance in some way.
• Help them execute that plan and maybe even provide resources as needed.
• Help them measure the results they achieved at each stage of the process.
5. Innovator
• Bring new ideas from outside their business or totally new to the market.
• Challenge the status quo of the way they do things today.
• Help them rethink how they currently operate and then recommend process improvement and best practices.
In every situation, and especially in the targeted prospecting method, think about how you will present yourself and your company. Which of these positions might you lead with for any particular outreach? If you are able to establish yourself in the customer’s mind in one or more of these ways, you’re no longer just a salesperson trying to sell something. You become an advisor or a partner. Of course, in a perfect world, you would be able to pivot to any one of these positions as needed.
What Is Your Reason for Reaching Out?
A few years ago, I shot a little video with my smartphone from the front seat of my car that ended up being viewed by more people on LinkedIn than any other single piece of content I’ve ever created. I opened with the provocative assertion that our customers are sick and tired of the same old lame reasons that salespeople give for reaching out to them. I even went so far as to say using any of these should probably be against the law going forward! Here are some of the worst examples:
Mr. Johnson, I was just . . .
• Checking in
• Touching base
• Circling back
• Stopping by
Yuck! You might as well be signaling to your customer that you are basically calling to see if they want to “buy something” today! Surely, we can do better than that.
As part of that video, I offered to share an article I wrote—which I mentioned previously—called Seven Good Reasons for Having a Conversation with Your Customer. Before you approach a prospective client or even try reconnecting with an existing client, think about the specific intent of your request for a conversation. Ask yourself, “What’s in it for them?”
The following are the seven good reasons for reaching out to customers that have worked so well for me and thousands of my students. As you read them, think about exactly how you might phrase what you’d say by phone or write in an email for each of these. Maybe even write out a sentence or two that comes to mind regarding how a request for a conversation might sound coming out of your mouth.
1. Learn about their plans, goals, and initiatives going forward.
2. Teach them something relevant and useful.
3. Inform them of something they need to know.
4. Provide insight they may not already have.
5. Bring them a new “profit opportunity” (i.e., a way to help them improve their profitability).
6. Introduce them to others on your team.
7. Invite them to something special.
The practical application for each of these could take many different forms and be phrased or written in an infinite number of ways. If you want a copy of my article, which includes an extensive explanation as well as examples of exactly what you could say or write for each one, you can download it at: www.salesexcellence.com/handbook.
One common prospecting approach that is both pervasive and incredibly annoying is an email or direct message asking, “Can I have 15 minutes of your time?” Please stop doing that! Do you really want to start a relationship with your prospective client by “taking” something from them, especially their most precious resource: their time? To approach business professionals and simply ask for 15 minutes of their time for your own purposes is pretty much like walking up to someone on the street and saying, “Can I have 20 dollars?”
Instead of just asking for 15 minutes so you can “pick their brain” or “learn more about their business,” sell them on what they will get out of investing 15 minutes with you. Perhaps you could use something like this:
After a brief conversation . . .
• You’ll know more about _______________ .
• You’ll be able to _______________ .
• You’ll have all the information you need to _______________ .
• You’ll know exactly what to do about _______________ .
• You’ll be able to decide _______________ .
Here’s a truth about the world we are living in . . .
These days you don’t just ask for a conversation so you can sell; you have to sell your prospect on even having a conversation in the first place!
What Type of Approach Will You Use?
When using the targeted prospecting method, think about the different types of approaches you might be able to use. Here are the three most common approaches, beginning with the most effective:
Referral or Introduction
When used correctly, an introduction or referral opens more doors than any other approach. This is especially true when calling on hard-to-reach executives. Response rates and the likelihood of actually landing a meeting are far greater than with a direct (i.e., cold) approach. For this reason, as part of your preparation, invest a little time thinking about who could possibly provide an introduction or a referral so you can say to your prospect, “Bob Johnson suggested I contact you because _______________ .”
This is always worth the time and effort. Try to garner an introduction whenever possible. Here are a few examples of the types of people who might be willing to help:
• Internal referrals: someone who works within the same company as your target prospect and would offer to introduce you.
• External referrals: a person you know outside the organization, such as another one of your clients or an industry contact who knows your prospect well enough to provide an introduction.
• Partners and alliances: companies with whom you already partner that could introduce you to key people. Maybe you could reciprocate with some introductions for them as well.
• Complementary suppliers: other companies you could form an alliance with who already have a relationship with the people you want to meet.
If you’d like more help on this topic, we offer a free tip sheet on Networking and Referrals for Sales Prospecting on Sales Excellence Academy. Visit www.salesexcellence.com/handbook for the link to download it.
Work Through the Executive Assistant
When trying to reach someone who has an executive assistant, there are basically two different paths you can follow. One is to work with the assistant, and the other is to try to work around them. There are merits to both, of course. But more often than not, you’re going to have to interface with the assistant at some point anyway. Consequently, starting with the “work around them” approach could create tension.
I’ve often found that . . .
If you want to sell past the gatekeeper, sell to the gatekeeper!
Explain to the gatekeeper that it would be valuable for their boss to invest some time speaking with you and explain all the reasons why. Help the assistant understand “what’s in it” for their boss. If your story and your promise don’t persuade the gatekeeper to help you find a way to get on the executive’s calendar, your story or your promise might not be all that compelling to the executive either.
Direct Approach
The third way to go about reaching your prospect is the good old-fashioned direct approach. I don’t usually recommend a “cold call” (a surprise telephone call out of the blue) for reaching out to executives. Although, if you want to try to work around the assistant, I’ve have had good success calling before 8:00 a.m., during the lunch hour, or between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. Many times, executives will pick up their own phone when the assistant is off duty. Of course, there are a wide variety of ways to “warm up” your cold outreach, which we’ll explore later in this chapter.
Any of these approaches can work. I just want to emphasize the value of the referral or introduction and the idea of working through the executive assistant. These often produce the very best results for your efforts.
A Personalized One-to-One Approach
When it comes to putting together the substance of your approach, whether you are making a phone call, sending an email, or using any other medium, always make the content of your outreach as personal as you can. Even if you are sending out a message in bulk, use customer-centric language, such as “you” and “your” instead of “we,” “our,” and “us.” In fact, if you are writing something of any length, run a quick word count to see how many times you refer to yourself compared to how many times you refer to the customer. The more you can phrase your sentences to be about them, the more they’ll feel you have their interests at heart and not just your own.
To make your outreach as compelling as possible when using the targeted prospecting method, I suggest using what I call the Four Key Elements of a One-to-One Approach. I recommend using these four elements in your initial outreach regardless of what medium you use. These four include:
1. A good point of reference
2. Something you’ve learned about them
3. How you’ve helped someone else like them
4. What you want them to do next
Let’s look closer at each of these.
1. A Good Point of Reference
Give them your reason for reaching out:
• “Bob Johnson suggested I contact you because _______________ .”
• “I read an article in _______________ where you were quoted as saying _______________ .”
• “Your CEO stated in your annual report that _______________ .”
• Or even . . . “I was driving past your building last week and _______________ .”
Make sure they know why you are contacting them, specifically, and not just calling anybody.
2. Something You’ve Learned About Them
This would include some key nuggets of information you picked up through your research and preparation that further supports why you are calling. It also helps demonstrate that you’ve done your homework, that you deserve their time and attention, and that what you are going to ask or say will be relevant and useful to them.
3. How You’ve Helped Someone Else Like Them
This is a critical element that builds your credibility and provides social proof that you know what you are doing and that you’ve helped other companies like theirs—ideally other people in their exact role. It shows you have experience solving the kinds of problems and achieving the types of results that might be top of mind for them, too. Use the names of companies and individuals if you have permission to do so. A little “name dropping” can be very powerful in your prospecting approach.
4. What You Want Them to Do Next
This is often referred to as a call to action (CTA). Basically, this means, if what I’ve already communicated seems interesting or compelling, here’s what I’m asking you to do next. Traditional examples include these:
• Call me back at this number _______________ .
• Please reply to this email with a time for us to speak.
• Click on this link to:
Watch a video
Schedule a call with me
Register for our free webinar
Place your order
Unfortunately, in recent years, many organizations have seen a sharp drop-off in the number of people who will pick up the phone and call back. In some selling environments, it is literally unheard of anymore! Likewise, the number of people who’ll even bother responding to an email continues to decline as well. In light of these changes, one effective technique when leaving a voicemail, for example, is to let the prospect know what action you will take next:
• I will call you back tomorrow at 1:45 p.m.
• I will send an email right now so you can respond whichever way you prefer.
• I will send a calendar invitation for Wednesday at 4:45 p.m. If that time doesn’t work, please respond with a time that is better for you.
• I will reach out to your assistant to see about scheduling an opportunity to speak at your convenience.
Using these four elements will make every approach extremely unique, and your prospective customers will notice that! Your targeted outreach needs to sound unlike anything they are hearing from the other 26 salespeople who are approaching them on any given day.
Let’s always keep in mind . . .
If your approach sounds so generic that it could apply to anyone, most people automatically assume that it doesn’t apply to them.
These four elements enable you to construct many types of prospecting approaches with an unlimited number of variations. You can use these four as the outline of a prospecting letter, an email, a voicemail, or even the opening talking points if your prospect picks up the phone. Now let’s look at just a few examples of the kinds of media we could use for our outreach.
The Tools for Digital Prospecting
Once we’ve established the method we’ll use, the people we’ll approach, our approach angle, and the substance of our approach itself, the next question becomes, “How are we going to reach out to try to get these people’s attention?” There is a wide array of options today, so let’s talk a bit about the most common mediums and platforms.
As we explore digital prospecting tools, I want to encourage you with this . . .
Don’t limit your outbound efforts to only the platforms and media you are most comfortable with. It doesn’t really matter which ones you like. What matters is which ones your prospective clients respond to.
As I talk about how these platforms can be used, some people may have a very negative reaction to one or more of these. You might think, “I would never send a text to someone I’ve never met.” Or you could say, “Are you kidding me? My prospective clients would be highly offended if I approached them by sending a calendar invitation.” I’ll simply be making suggestions. Only you know your market well enough to decide which approaches might work best for you.
But remember this . . .
If you reach out to your prospect believing it’s not going to work, you’ll probably prove yourself right.
I’ve had participants in my workshop who decided to disregard all my suggestions because there is one approach or platform on the list they don’t agree with. Don’t let that be you! What I’m presenting here is a buffet. Take what you like and leave the rest for other people with different tastes. But also keep this in mind: if you never try some of these suggestions, you may never know if they could prove effective for you.
Pick the tools and platforms you have enough confidence or interest in to at least give them a chance. I will share these in order from the most tested and proven tools to the ones that are more cutting-edge and make some sellers feel uncomfortable.
Telephone Call
The one prospecting tool that has proven to be effective for decades is the telephone. Ironically, it may well be the most terrifying for many salespeople today and is therefore totally underutilized. I observe an alarming overreliance on email as the only tool used for prospecting by many sales pros. It’s not that email is not a great medium. It could be great for your environment! But as we’ll talk about later in this chapter, combining various media in your approach pattern produces far better results than any one medium alone. Many of us would do well to embrace (or re-embrace) the telephone as part of our prospecting repertoire.
As I mentioned before, however, you shouldn’t necessarily assume that you can go straight from total stranger to having a productive phone call just by dialing your prospective customer’s number. Oh, they might answer, and sometimes you can turn that surprise call into a great conversation. But also be willing to earn a scheduled phone call by building an e-relationship first with other forms of correspondence. I find that landing an appointment for a scheduled call leads to much higher-quality conversations and better conversion rates than simply calling someone “cold.”
In terms of timing, I often lean toward requesting a scheduled call at 30 or 45 minutes after the hour for three important reasons:
1. There’s a better chance that they will accept the invitation or answer the call at 30 or 45 after than if you request it on the hour. They may already have a meeting booked at the top of the hour but could be finished with it by then.
2. 45 minutes after is an odd time. It makes people take notice of the request.
3. They perceive less risk in saying yes because they anticipate it being a 15-minute call.
I use the same psychology when making unscheduled, surprise calls. The latter half of the hour almost always produces better results than the first half. Here are a few other quick ideas that can help make your telephone calls more effective:
1. Check your own caller ID. Make sure your caller ID identifies you the way you want it to. People won’t answer if it says something too cryptic. And if you are calling from your home office, make sure it shows either your number or your own name as opposed to your husband or wife’s name. Call your provider. They can change it for you.
2. When using a mobile phone, connect over Wi-Fi if you don’t have a 5G connection. The sound and the connection quality of many mobile telephone calls can be absolutely atrocious. Latency problems can cause you to constantly talk over the top of your customer. Try turning off your cellular connection and use the Wi-Fi connection through your internet service. That can make a huge difference in what your customer hears. Take the time to test what your customer is hearing before you call.
3. Get a better microphone! Most smartphones have a pretty good microphone these days. But you will be shocked at how much better an external microphone plugged into your phone will sound. There are many excellent choices for under $100 that come with the cord to plug directly into your phone. Try it! You won’t believe how much better it sounds. Improving the clarity of what your customer hears on a telephone call can be a total game changer. I want every advantage I can get!
Let’s keep in mind that the telephone can be used for prospecting in two ways. First, it can be the initial outreach tool (how you make the first approach) to try to earn a more extensive discussion. It can also be the tool you use to have that deeper scheduled conversation.
I want to suggest that, if you are not doing so already, you use videoconference for as many of your scheduled conversations as possible. Yes, I recognize that “video fatigue” is a real issue in today’s business world. But when your customers can see you, it makes it far easier for them to come to know, like, and trust you. And please remember: if you want to earn trust and rapport faster, turn your camera on whether they turn theirs on or not!
Voicemail
I can remember back to the days when people actually listened to and returned calls in response to voicemails. Of course, that still happens in certain sales situations. In customer service and account management environments, where your prospects already know you, voicemail still serves an important purpose. For prospecting and reaching out to strangers, however, just leaving an isolated voicemail with no follow-up or additional outreach yields very limited results. That being said, voicemail can still be a powerful tool when it’s woven into an overall approach pattern or a sequence of touches using a variety of mediums.
When you leave a voicemail, there is an expectation that the responsibility for the next action is on your prospective customer. The “ball is in their court,” so to speak. I personally like to avoid that because that means I need to wait some period of time to let them get back to me. I want the freedom to place another call anytime I want, including later that same day, if I choose.
My personal habit is not to leave a voicemail when calling unannounced. But if I have told my prospect, “I’ll reach back out to you at 3:45 Wednesday afternoon,” I always leave a voicemail so they know I did what I said I was going to do. With every email, I almost always include this: “I’ll also send you an email right now so you can reply in the way that is most convenient for you.” The rate of response is typically three or four times greater when you leave a voicemail and send an email together than if you do either one without the other.
All the latest studies show that open rates and response rates have significantly dropped off in recent years, yet email still remains one of the staples of proactive outreach. As you’ve heard me mention, putting the time and energy into developing an email subscriber list is truly one of the best investments you can ever make. But let’s draw some distinctions between an automated email sequence sent to a subscriber list and outbound email used for prospecting.
An email subscriber list, like we talked about extensively in Chapter 4, is a phenomenal mechanism for keeping in touch with and feeding new ideas to people who have opted-in to hear from you. You can set up an automated email sequencer to regularly deliver insights and advice to either early-stage prospects who’ve never bought from you or current and past customers who have. If subscribers provide their contact information, such as joining a mailing list or completing a form to download a free digital asset, that provides a smooth transition from inbound to outbound where prospects, in essence, give permission for us to send them future emails.
Outbound email prospecting is something entirely different. Email prospecting more often involves acquiring a person’s contact information in some way other than them giving it to you and then proactively reaching out to make contact for the first time.
I most often recommend sending highly targeted prospecting emails to executive-level contacts manually, one at a time, if you are willing to write something specific and personal to each individual you approach. When reaching out to a larger number of prospects with one common message, I frequently suggest using a ghost-writer (a proxy) to simply cut-and-paste a standard message manually and send it to a large number of people with minimal customization.
If you are trying to get the attention of and build a relationship with a specific person within a target account, you want your outreach to look and feel very personalized. Sending a prospecting email that is generated by an automated system frequently ends up looking like an advertisement—or even spam—and requires the recipient to “opt out” to make you go away. This doesn’t make a great first impression!
Of course, there are schedulers and sequencers built into tools such as HubSpot (www.hubspot.com), Outreach (www.outreach.io), and many others that can automate a lot of the administrative work for you. They can even integrate with your CRM system to help you keep track of what you’ve sent to whom. Just make sure you test and ensure that some of the advantages of using these kinds of systems—such as tracking who opens your emails and whether they click on the links—don’t cause your emails to be flagged by spam filters or end up in “junk” folders.
These kinds of email systems are ideal for opt-in mailing lists or large volume outbound prospecting. But for the more strategic one-to-one approach, a simple email from you to them that does not contain behavior tracking mechanisms—and looks like a simple, personal email—usually produces far better results.
There are a number of tools available today to dramatically improve your prospecting workflow and productivity. One of the best, that many of my clients are currently utilizing, is Seismic (www.seismic.com) sales enablement. It’s a fantastic platform for organizing all your digital selling assets, quickly putting together exactly what you need to include in your outreach, and even sending and tracking your messages right from within the platform.
Automated “cold email” platforms designed to send out thousands or even millions of unsolicited emails can be effective for more tactical prospecting where you are canvasing a broader market to see who happens to be buying, looking, or open to a conversation right now. Woodpecker (www.woodpecker.co) is one of the best. Yes, they are legal as long as you follow the laws very carefully!
Of course, you can include links to your latest YouTube video, the newest episode of your podcast, or even a new article you posted on LinkedIn. If you design your digital assets to help readers and viewers arrive at new conclusions, they can be a fabulous addition to a written message alone. Perhaps instead of simply writing the names of a few happy clients as a means of establishing credibility, for example, you could send your prospective customer a link to a video testimonial!
Video via Email
Video is rapidly becoming the hottest thing in selling via email. Beyond just including a link to a video asset that supports what is written in the body of your email, many successful prospectors are now using video to deliver the main message of the email with very little text.
Services such as Vidyard (www.vidyard.com) and Loom (www.loom.com) enable sellers to shoot a short video using their computer camera or their smartphone and embed that right into the body of the message. Most sales professionals have at least heard of this, and many are curious, but at the time of this writing only a tiny fraction are actually using it.
This is a huge missed opportunity! If the goal is to help prospects come to know, like, and trust us asynchronously, why wouldn’t we embrace using video as a way of life? Response rates to emails that include video are documented to be at least three times greater than response rates to emails that don’t include video, and some studies show it is far higher than that.1 Why in the world would anyone choose to approach 50 people to get three responses when they could approach 50 people and get nine responses?
Prospecting with video takes more work. Of course! But today’s sellers have a choice to make. You can take the easy path by doing what you’ve always done and let your competitor break into your target accounts using video. Or you can be the one who embraces the latest technology and makes a much greater impact while your competitors sit back and watch. Which one do you want to be?
I believe that if you are doing targeted prospecting to key executives within marquis accounts, you should be shooting custom, personalized, one- to two-minute videos as a standard part of your email campaign—at least for one of the emails you choose to send as part of your overall approach efforts. Why wouldn’t you do that if it would increase the chances of getting in front of a C-level executive? The pushback, of course, is that it takes more time.
But let me ask you: if you knew that you could jump on a videoconference right now and have two minutes to share a few ideas with that exact same executive, could you find the time to join the conference? Of course you could! It’s actually not a time problem; it’s a confidence problem. We just might not be sure it’s going to work. But I think it’s safe to say that if we don’t branch out and at least try using some of these newer approaches then it darn sure isn’t going to work! Don’t let fear or a lack of confidence defeat you before you ever even try. Invest the energy to do it wrong enough times to finally get it right. What if you could master the use of video delivered via email over the next 90 days? Start this week!
LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook Direct Message
Direct messaging through social apps can produce some of the highest response rates of any medium available. They have also been entirely overused and even abused in recent years. I’m sure we’re all familiar with what Mike Weinberg has labeled the “connect and pitch” prospecting tactic that is rampant on LinkedIn now. It goes like this:
• Someone approaches you with a very unconvincing reason to connect, such as, “I came across your profile, and it seems we have a lot in common.”
• You reluctantly accept because you want to increase your follower count.
• 18 seconds later you get a four-paragraph sales pitch and a request for a 15-minute appointment.
Do not be this person! DM is most effective after you’ve invested a little time to build an e-relationship and even a reputation with the person you are reaching out to first. As I mentioned previously, I most often start my conversation with a prospective client by leaving comments on their LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube posts first. Once you’ve built a bit of credibility and your customer is pretty sure you’re not a machine, then you might ask to connect, if it makes sense.
Once you have a connection, DMs can be a fantastic mechanism for getting people’s attention. In fact, multiple studies show that it gets far higher response rates than an email even though the message is often received in the very same email inbox! DMs containing written words work just fine. But what gets an even higher rate of response is video and audio.
The LinkedIn app offers the capability to send a custom-recorded video or an audio message up to 60 seconds long to anyone you are connected with, and it’s built right into the app! This is an incredible differentiator for anyone willing to use it. You decide how well you need to know the person before you reach out this way, but I have received numerous audio and video messages from connections I barely know. I have never refused to listen to one, and I respond to most of them, even if I’m not a prospect for them right now. Who’s not going to be impressed to see someone putting forth this kind of effort to try to reach you?
I use both audio and video DM on LinkedIn for reaching out to prospective clients on a regular basis with outstanding results. It works exceptionally well with people you may have already met at some point in the past or for newer contacts as long as you approach them in a professional and respectful way. Just make sure you employ the suggestions presented earlier in this chapter for making your approach as compelling as possible. If you use video or audio to simply ask the same old question, “Can I have 15 minutes of your time?,” expect to be ignored just as often as if you sent a traditional, text-based DM.
Postal and Express Mail
When I mention using written letters in my prospecting workshops, I sometimes hear, “Bill, what century are you living in? Nobody sends written letters anymore!” Exactly! That’s why, when it’s done well, writing letters is an outstanding mechanism for getting your prospect’s attention today. This is especially powerful when prospecting at the executive level. Granted, it’s technically not digital. But the results can be fantastic!
I’ve found using a FedEx or Express Mail envelope to be the most effective way to get the attention of a busy executive and his or her assistant. Write a nice letter about why you are reaching out and ask for a scheduled videoconference. Print the letter on a nice high-quality paper. Then, toward the bottom of the page, handwrite a note in red ink pen that says something like this: “If for some reason we are not able to connect before then, I will call on _______________ (specific day and time) to follow up.” This technique has a very high success rate!
Handwritten Note
The idea of a handwritten note is not a new idea. Again, it’s not digital, but it has been remarkably effective for decades! As people are pummeled more and more by automated email and telephone autodialers, the personal touch really stands out and can get your prospect’s attention like nothing else. Even adding your handwritten signature or a short greeting on a printed mailer can be fabulous. I usually use this as one of the touches of a multipronged approach pattern, especially to key executives. It’s incredible how many times prospects mention how much it impressed them.
Text Messaging
As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, a text message subscriber is about the ultimate in terms of being able to stay top of mind with existing clients or followers who highly value the insight and knowledge you provide. Likewise, one-off text messages for prospecting will almost always capture your prospect’s attention. The concern that many salespeople have is that they might be stepping over a line. In recent years, I have become comfortable using text for prospecting, but only after I’ve reached out in some other way first.
Studies have shown an interesting generational divergence in the way people perceive the acceptability of text messaging. It seems most Baby Boomers and Generation Xers are accustomed to receiving phone calls from people they don’t know but consider text messaging a much more private matter. Millennials and Gen Z, on the other hand, have far less aversion to receiving a text from a stranger but are not nearly as comfortable receiving a phone call. Interesting!
Not everyone will agree, but my feeling is that if someone’s mobile number is readily available, I see no reason why calling the number should be acceptable but sending a text message to the same number is taboo. But my clients and students definitely don’t see great responses to a “cold text” before sending any other correspondence. It works best when it’s part of series of touches including phone, email, DM, etc.
If I’m pretty sure I have the mobile number correct—and especially if the number turns blue when I type it into my iPhone—I will usually text something like this: “John, it’s Bill Stinnett. I know I am interrupting you. If you prefer to respond to the email I sent yesterday via text instead, this is my mobile number.” This gets an exceptionally high rate of response!
Calendar Invitation
Another tool that is gaining more acceptance as a prospecting technique is simply sending a calendar invitation to a prospective client to request a meeting. Here again, I would not lead with this! This is something you can earn the right to send to your prospect as you invest in the relationship through multiple attempts to reach them. Your persistence demonstrates that you truly believe you have something of real value to offer.
Invitation from Your Videoconference Platform
Most videoconference platforms have the ability to invite people to a meeting. That invitation is normally sent via email, but the link can also be pasted into a text message. You can use this as an alternate to a standard calendar invitation. But this also works well for salespeople who are willing to open a conference and remain available for it during a particular period of time. You can then send a message saying, “John, I’ll be in my videoconference room from 3:30 to 5:20 p.m. this afternoon. I would love to get your feedback on the materials I sent previously if your schedule permits. Join any time (include link).”
Scheduling Application
There are a number of calendar scheduling apps, such as Calendly (www.calendly.com), available today that can be used to allow people to schedule an appointment directly in your calendar. To be completely transparent, I’m not using one yet. But so many of my clients are having success with them I’ll probably be jumping on the bandwagon at some point.
You can use a scheduling app in a variety of ways, such as posting your availability on your website. It can be used with inbound methods, such as posting the link on your LinkedIn profile or in the first comment on a post. Remember that the social algorithms don’t like links contained within the body of a message that take users to a URL outside their platform, but a link placed in a comment works well. You can simply say “Link to my calendar in the comments below.”
Online calendars can also be an effective tool for outbound prospecting. Some people embed their calendar link in the signature block of every email they send and may use a call to action such as this: “If you’d like to speak further, pick the time that works best for you from the options below.”
Obviously, these are just a few of the tools available today. Who knows what will be coming out next? My hope is that you’ll explore the practicality and effectiveness of every tool and platform that could possibly be used for prospecting and incorporate as many of them into your personal arsenal as possible.
The Multipronged Approach
The real magic of outbound prospecting is not any one tool or platform but weaving many of these together into an overall approach pattern designed to maximize your results. The idea of a multipronged approach is leveraging four to six or more forms of communication in an orchestrated series of touches to virtually guarantee a response from your targeted prospects. I have taught this method to over 800 sales teams over the last 20+ years with outstanding results.
If we look at using just email only, for example, we consistently see that when you orchestrate a series of multiple email touches over a period of two weeks, the response rate is three to four times greater than just sending one isolated email message alone.
However, we’ve seen that when you utilize a number of different forms of communication—which might include telephone (voicemail), email, DM on LinkedIn, and handwritten notes—the likelihood of being recognized and receiving a response is more than nine times greater than when you send one email alone.
Of course, not all of those responses result in an appointment. Some responses might include the following:
• “I’m not the right person. You should be talking to __________ .” Awesome! A warm referral!
• “Now isn’t a good time. Contact me again __________ (timetable).” Great! A scheduled follow-up!
• “We are not interested.” When someone tells me this, it usually inspires me to call someone at a higher level within the company to see if everyone else actually shares his or her opinion.
• “Take me off your contact list.” When I hear this, I never push it any further.
Some who just read that last sentence are terrified to hear that response. I don’t like it either, but . . .
When you don’t reach out to people because you want to avoid hearing no, you also avoid hearing yes!
The variety of media and platforms you use, the number of touches, and the frequency of outreach are totally up to you. Some will be more aggressive than others. But the multipronged approach helps get more responses more quickly! With this approach, you can determine where the opportunity lies and where it doesn’t much faster than with just an email here and there!
I’ll share two of my favorite multipronged approach patterns that are my go-to sequences. As you look at these, see if either of them seems like it might be a fit for you. Of course, you can add, subtract, or rearrange any time you want, even on a prospect-by-prospect basis if you choose. But I find that most salespeople really flourish when they adopt a pattern, use it for a while, and tweak it into just the right sequence to use repeatedly over time. You’ll have to find a rhythm and a cadence that feels right for you and, just as importantly, produces consistent results! Find your sweet spot by being willing to experiment and prove to yourself what works and what doesn’t.
Here is an example of an approach pattern that utilizes an existing connection via LinkedIn. The day you begin your outreach process is considered either “Day 1” or, in some systems, “Day 0.” Notice that I’m leveraging a handwritten note partway through this sequence. This requires a physical address, which you may or may not have. It concludes with a video sent via the LinkedIn app. These are seldom ignored, especially after all the other work you’ve put into trying to initiate a conversation.
Day 1: LinkedIn text DM
Day 3: Email #1
Day 6: Telephone (voicemail) #1
Day 6: Email #2
Day 8: Handwritten note
Day 11: Telephone (voicemail) #2
Day 13: Text message
Day 14: LinkedIn video DM
Here is a different pattern option that works quite effectively for approaching an executive who has an assistant. Here I’m leveraging the FedEx letter, which requires a physical address, as well as a meeting invitation.
Day 1: FedEx letter
Day 4: Telephone (voicemail) #1
Day 4: Email #1 to the executive
Day 5: Telephone (voicemail) #2
Day 5: Meeting invitation
Day 9: Email to the assistant
Day 13: Telephone call to the assistant
Day 14: Email #2 to the executive
It is very rare to work completely through either of these patterns and not get a response. I won’t say I have a 100 percent response rate, but it’s very high. I don’t always get a meeting, but I get a response! Some approaches advance to conversations. Some don’t. It’s all good!
Please note that these are simply two examples of an unlimited number of approach patterns that you could employ. The key is to come up with a pattern in which you have confidence. Use it for a few weeks, and then tweak it and perfect it as you go. But as I mentioned earlier, you have to commit to something and prove it out. Don’t just try it one-and-a-half times before you deem that “it doesn’t work.”
30-Day Prospecting Plan
To help salespeople develop their own road map of how to apply what they learn in our prospecting workshops, I created a tool that I call a 30-Day Prospecting Plan that really breaks it all down into seven easy steps.
Please note: the outline of this plan will serve the purpose of the “Putting These Ideas into Practice” section found at the end of every other chapter in this book.
This is a great tool to help you put together a good track to run on for the next 30 days. At the end of the month, assess how you did. You may want to tweak your activity goals, select a few new target accounts, change up your multipronged approach pattern, or allocate your time differently.
This kind of plan has proven to be absolutely invaluable for literally thousands of salespeople who have put it to use after coming through one of our prospecting workshops. If you want a copy of the fillable PDF tool, you can download it at: www.salesexcellence.com/handbook.
This is a strategic plan that will help you focus your energy on your targeted prospecting efforts within a few select accounts. Let’s walk through these seven steps together:
1. Set some business development goals! Determine exactly what prospecting results you want to accomplish and why. Determine the number of opportunities you want to add to your pipeline this month. Think about how many client visits you’d like to hold each week, the numbers of approaches you want to make each day, or the number of new deals you want to add to your pipeline by the end of the month. Your goals are both your motivation to do the work and your yardstick to see if you are making progress.
2. Decide which companies, divisions, or business units you will target that would be ideal additions to your client list. This speaks to creating your short list of target accounts. Pick companies that are in the right industry and location, are the right size, and, most importantly, that you would be really excited and proud to do business with.
3. Decide which people you will target within each company. Which ones would most likely play a role in a buying decision? Rather than starting with just one name, identify multiple contacts by taking the time to research and select a number of different people in each organization you target. This increases your chances of success and reduces the time it will take to get a response.
4. Decide which mediums of communication (letter, phone, voicemail, email, text, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc.) will be part of your approach pattern. Develop a multipronged approach pattern that you are excited about and start employing consistently. You’ll tweak it as you go. But make sure to test your pattern enough to really determine what’s working and what’s not before you totally change it up.
5. Decide which planning and tracking tools or templates you will employ to organize and track your efforts and results. Think about where you will keep track of who you reached out to, on which date, and in which way. Use your CRM system if you can. Otherwise, a spreadsheet or even a trusty old notebook will work.
6. Decide how much time you will invest in business development on a daily or weekly basis. Manage your time carefully! This might be the hardest step of this plan. There are just so many things that can cause distraction. I recommend blocking the hours you will dedicate to prospecting for the entire week before the week even starts. Guard that prospecting time ferociously!
7. Execute relentlessly for the next 30 days. Don’t let anything knock you off track! Then, reassess and plan for next month. This final piece boils down to discipline and focus. That’s the reason it’s so important to think about “why” in Step 1. Without some burning desire to accomplish something, it’s too easy to lose momentum and give up. Know your why and keep it in front of you! If you need to, find someone to help you stay accountable to yourself!
An end-to-end discussion of sales prospecting, and especially all the technology enablement and automation tools available today, would fill 100 books or more. In fact, it already has! And long before this book ever makes it into your hands there will be new technologies and tactics that don’t even exist at the time of this writing. If outbound prospecting is something you are responsible for or interested in, come join the conversation about prospecting and digital selling on LinkedIn. Connect with me at: www.linkedin.com/in/billstinnett. I can’t wait to share the latest ideas that have been working for me and hear what’s been working for you!