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No matter what type of industry, there exists many types of prospecting to find qualified leads. Salespeople need to prospect continually-the real question is how? Here’s a list of several common types of prospecting:
Warm Calling
Warm calling remains the most effective way to set up appointments with the right decision makers in your target accounts. If you want to get your prospects attention you need to have something compelling to say, so dig deep to understand them when your gathering sales insights. So much great information can be found on your prospect’s social media profiles and website – be sure to look through them before reaching out. Find the common connections, such as a person, a group, an interest, or anything you and your prospect have in common.
A great way to increase your response rate when making warm calls is to implement the Double Whammy method. This refers to following up a call with another touch-point to the same prospect – whether that be an email, LinkedIn message, text message, or video. The Double Whammy shows persistence and tenacity, which buyers say will get their attention!
Referrals
Referral prospecting simply means prospecting through people that you know, your existing contacts, clients or business partners. Start with a list of people that may know the people you want to talk with (example: business associates, strategic partners or clients, etc.) and ask for an introduction.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. By providing valuable and educational information to your customers you create a level of trust.
Networking
Networking, like sales prospecting, is a process and not an event. It takes time to develop a network, especially if you’re new to the working world or still trying to establish yourself in your industry. Identify your reasons to network. Is it to find new business, contacts or introducers, or is it to retain and build existing relationships? Identify the people you should network with. Do you know the names of the people you need to develop better relationships with? If you haven’t already met them, can you arrange to meet them?
Email Marketing
Email is free, fast, and available to most anyone. By sharing information about your business through emails, you help customers see how valuable your product or service is. Email marketing will help your product or business remain top of mind to your consumers. You can use emails to establish and nurture a relationship with your customers by providing informative pieces.
It is important for your email to stand out in a prospect’s inbox in order to earn an ‘open’. To do just that, consider the first ten words of your email. These words are often visible in an inbox, without clicking the email open. Craft a strong, intriguing first sentence that will make your prospect want to read more.
Another great way to stand out of your prospect’s inbox clutter; video emailing! Platforms like BombBomb, Vidyard, and CoVideo are fantastic tools for recording and sending short, personalized video emails. Self-recorded videos help to put a face to the name and peak a prospect’s curiosity.
To further assist with your prospecting efforts, download our complimentary 90-Day Prospecting Blitz Activity or schedule a purposeful business conversation with Lisa Leitch – Teneo’s President, Sales Strategist & Coach.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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Are you ready to make your pipeline sizzle like this summer heat, and crank up your sales performance?
Its easy to become a sweaty mess stressing about prospecting, but it’s a necessary step all Salespeople need to take in order to fill that pipeline and make up for the Covid crash this Spring.
Here’s three easy steps you should take to develop your prospecting goals, activities and results:
1. Goals
What are your sales goals for the remainder of the year? Do you have to make up for any sales lost this spring? What sales will come from existing clients? How much business do you need to secure in the next 90 days to ensure you will achieve your 2020 sales goals?
For example: Your sales goal is $1M for the year. You have secured $450,000 to-date. You have $550,000 for the next 6 months. You want to secure $350,000 in the next 90 days with $100,000 coming from new customers. Your average sales is $25,000 that’s only 4 new customers. This is do-able!
2. Prospecting Activities
With limited travel, you can block more time for prospecting! You want to block a time in your calendar when you think your buyer will be available to take your call or respond to your email. Typically, most people are in meetings at 9am, 11am, 1pm, or 3pm – you will want to consider alternative times for your prospecting blitz.
Examples:
5 By 5: This means making 5 calls everyday by 5pm
10 before 10: 10 calls/emails before 10am
13-13-12-12 = 50: 13 calls/emails on Tuesday, 13 on Wednesday, 12 on Thursday and 12 on Friday
Personally, I find early morning between 7:45am – 8:55am the best time to make prospecting calls. I commit to 10 phone calls and follow it up with the Double Whammy of an email or text to the same prospect.
3. Results
Applying the Double Whammy approach will increase your response results by almost 50%! In addition, customizing your email to your prospect, their organization and the challenges they are facing will also improve your results.
It’s easy to get distracted or procrastinate each day, so focus on the results you want to accomplish.
Example:
You will secure 3 calls each week to have PURPOSE Business Conversations, to better understand your prospect’s business and explore how you can provide solutions.
3 calls x 12 weeks = 36 new prospective consultative calls to hit your goal of securing 4 new customers in the next 90 days.
Prospecting can be hard, daunting, or flat-out scary. Putting your focus on your goals, specific prospecting activities, and most importantly the results you want to achieve can make the process manageable. You’ll be surprised at how many new customers you can secure by stepping out of your comfort zone and focusing on the right things!
Looking for more reading on prospecting? Check out some of our past blogs below!:
7 Ideas For Writing Better Prospecting Emails
SUMMER SIZZLE PROSPECTING BLITZ
Why Buyers Ignore Your Calls and What To Do About It
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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Did your sales fizzle during the past 90 days? Now is the time to add a Summer Sizzle Prospecting Blitz to grow your business!
Yes, we all want to enjoy the great weather as lockdowns are finally easing up. Summer is the time to be enjoying the beautiful weather, taking holidays, and spending time with family and friends. It can be easy to put prospecting on the back-burner when there are so many other (more enjoyable) things that you could be doing! That said, this Summer is NOT the time to procrastinate, with spring 2020 being impacted by Covid. We need all Salespeople on deck (no, not the boat kind) to turn this economy around and set up a stronger next 90 days to create a booming 2021.
We all know that prospecting can be hard, tedious, and sometimes even discouraging – making for the perfect “procrastination-storm”. I’ve been there! I learned a few years ago when planning a great trip in September, that putting prospecting into high gear in July & August when everyone else was taking holidays, allowed me to capture new clients and business before everyone else started their sales blitz in September. Luckily, I’ve been able to overcome my own objections and I have put together a list of top prospecting tips to help you get motivated, get busy, and get your pipeline sizzling as much as your grill this summer…
Here are 7 tips to heat up your Summer Prospecting Blitz:
1. Create your Hot List of at least 50-100 Customers and Prospects. Go through current customer lists, past customer lists from the last few years, webinar leads, tradeshow leads and your LinkedIn connections to create your Hot List.
2. Block your time in your calendar – the earlier the better. I find 7:45am – 8:55am is a great time to prospect, before customers get into 9am meetings. Take into consideration when your buyer will likely be available to answer your call or email live.
3. Identify your list of 10 prospects you’d like to contact the day prior, so that you’re prepared and excited to call your Hot List. Do your research on their website or their LinkedIn profile so you can create your compelling reason to meet with them. At least 10 calls each day, allows you to get your mojo going.
4. Apply the Double-Whammy method (a phone call followed by an email, text, or video) for even better results. It can improve your response rate by almost 50%.
5. Most customers read their emails on their mobile devices. The first 10 words of your email must be compelling to get a Buyer to click “open” and avoid the delete button
6. Be creative with a video email to break through the clutter of a Buyer’s inbox. Video Emails have been shown to get 81% more responses than traditional emails. Platforms like BombBomb and Covideo both offer 14-day free trials, so you can test this new creative method and get comfortable in front of a camera.
7. Your messaging must be focused on how you can help your prospect improve their business, not on how you want to secure a meeting to sell services. Avoid selling too soon in your prospecting emails. Your objective is to create interest to secure a meeting, not the sale – yet!
Implementing these tips and committing to making those phone calls and emails is sure to make for a fruitful prospecting blitz – then you can grab a towel and hit the beach!
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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Why would your customers or prospects meet with you – either virtually or F2F? What can you say, do, or offer that would warrant a worthwhile meeting to them?
Even though some businesses are re-opening, there are still some major hurdles to jump when it comes to securing a meeting. Most businesses are not allowing salespeople on-site, and everyone – especially buyers – are receiving almost double the amount of emails as before, making it easy for some to get lost or easily deleted before they are even opened.
This is the current reality, and yet salespeople need to be securing more business now than ever, to make up for the sales lost during lock-down.
What will you say to get the attention of a client or prospect to secure a meeting – virtually or F2F?
You will need to have a strong, compelling, and purposeful reason to meet.
Don’t wing it – take the time to prepare in order to increase your chances of securing the virtual or F2F meeting. It’s more about quality than quantity.
You MUST craft a conversational reason to meet – its not a pitch – as that will easily get ditched!
Ask yourself these questions before you even pick up the phone or send an email:
- What are the biggest challenges in their role? Their organization?
- What would make them look good in their role?
- What are they looking to change or improve?
- What are their goals/strategic direction? Has this changed during COVID?
- What do you and your company do better than your competition?
- What would be the purpose and ideal outcome for a meeting?
- What expertise, advice, solutions can you bring to this meeting?
- What can you concisely say to get their attention?
After asking yourself these questions, you can then craft your customized messaging for your email, telephone call or even video email!
Here’s a few tips to consider when creating your customized messaging:
- You will have to be creative. A generic “copy, paste” message is not likely to “wow” your prospect. Take the time to write something original and tailored. Better yet, try reaching out in a new way with a video-email! Platforms like BombBomb, Covideo, and Vidyard make this new form of contact simple (even fun!).
- Keep it concise! Everyone seems short on time these days, meaning they likely won’t have time to read a page long email, or listen to a five-minute voicemail (if they even check their voicemail these days). Highlight only the most important, compelling, and though-provoking points when you’re reaching out – save all the nitty-gritty details for once you’ve secured the meeting.
- It must evoke an emotional response.
- Clearly answer WIIFM – What’s In It For Me (the prospect, not you as the salesperson). Let them know what they can expect to gain from meeting with you.
- Double Whammy – 2 compelling touch-points back-to-back to increase your response rate. For example, a phone call followed by an email, or an email followed by a text. Its doesn’t matter which combination you choose, you can increase your response rate by 50% when you do the Double Whammy!
End your email with a strong call to action and provide 3 date/time options to meet with you. Doing this shows your client or prospect that you’re serious about meeting, and have time allotted to do so – making them more compelled to respond. Put these tips into practice, and let me know your results!
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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If you had known what the past 90 days would bring, what would you have done differently?
We are almost at the 90-day mark of COVID shutting the entire world down. It has impacted businesses, customers, families, and personal lives so drastically. What is different for you, your customers, your business and your family now?
In last week’s blog, we talked about what you CAN do, rather than focusing on what you CAN’T do. As we reflect on the past 90 days and the next 90 days, it is an opportunity for you to align your goals with plans for what you CAN do for sales, business and personal interests!
Some people and organizations have accomplished many things in the past 90 days things, while others have hit the “pause” button.
The reality is that we can’t afford to pause anymore. We need everyone, especially salespeople, to pick up the pace and improve performance to turn this economy around, or the last 90 days of 2020 could be a bloody business bath.
It’s summer, so let’s enjoy the time outdoors to fuel our energy for what we need to do for our business and our customers’ businesses. The past 90 days may have been a pause, but that just means that the next 90 days is all about picking up the pace!
Before you plan the next 90 days, it’s important to reflect on the lessons learned, the insights and the meaning of what this pandemic has brought to us. Find a different place to do this reflection. My favourite place to reflect is near the water – I’m not sure what it is, I just think differently when I get away from my desk. Go for a walk, a drive or, like me, find your own place with a note pad to write down your thoughts and your future 90 day goals.
Ask yourself:
✓What did you learn about yourself?
✓How would you rate your business in how they handled the COVID19 situation?
✓How were your sales impacted?
✓Who are the individuals and companies that did an incredible job of pivoting to thrive during COVID?
✓What are the lessons learned?
While many people view the past 90 days as having put a “pause” on the world, we can’t afford to “pause” the world’s economy.
We need strong leaders and salespeople to turn this around. We need to move from “pause” to “pivot” and finally, to “performance.”
What will the next 90 days bring? We don’t know the answers or have the crystal ball. But we can develop goals and plans for our business, customers and even ourselves to enjoy the next 3 months of summer.
What will you plan for the next 90 days to pick up your performance?
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
