How do you adapt your prospecting approach to your prospects?
You’ve got the basic contact information of a prospect…now what? Sure, you could shoot them off an email that you’ve sent to dozens of other prospects that week, or maybe you could give them a quick phone call to see if they’ve got time to chat. Both are great ways to check off the ‘initial contact’ box in your sales process, but neither option is likely to lead to a purposeful conversation or better yet, a sale.
What should you do, you ask? Make your contact count by using the Trifecta Factor – 3 factors to take into consideration when adapting to your prospect!
1. Their Decision Making & Influencing Role
The first thing to consider when communicating with a prospect is their role. Are they the Final Authority, in a position to make purchasing decisions? Perhaps they’re the Advisor and give input and advice to the Final Authority, influencing the decision. If their role is a Coach, they’ll want you to succeed, put you in touch with the right people, and give you any relevant information that may help you along in the sales process. Finally, Users – as the name suggests, they’re the people who use your product or service.
It’s important to consider which of the four roles your prospect falls into before reaching out! Be Strategic, Be Proactive and Be Brave to reach out to prospects that are the Final Authority, whenever possible – as that is the person who will be able to say “yes” sooner to you! Their job title or LinkedIn profile can often help to figure this out.
2. Their Personality Style
The next thing to do is determine your prospect’s personality style.
Drivers are people who cut to the chase and don’t like chit-chat. They want to know the most important facts, and ultimately how your solution will benefit them.
Analytical people are statistic and fact hungry! The more information, proof, charts and graphs you can provide, the better!
Expressives are the type of people who are looking to build a relationship and have great rapport. They’ll want to learn more about you, your weekend plans, and new or exciting things before jumping into business conversations.
Amiable people are likely to make decisions based on emotions. They often consider the feelings of others prior to making a decision.
3. Their Generation
The generation of your prospect is the final factor of the Trifecta to consider.
If you are a Baby Boomer selling to a Millennial – what do you think the Millennial is thinking when they meet with you? Vice Versa – if you are a Millennial selling to a Baby Boomer what do you think their initial assumption would be? These varying viewpoints are exactly why you have to adapt to the preferences of your prospect.
A prospect’s generation often links to their preferred form of communication. For example, a Millennial or Gen Z often prefers a LinkedIn message or text, and may rarely check voicemails. For Baby Boomers, the preference is typically a phone call or email, and they are much more likely to listen to their voicemail messages. Some Traditionalists still even prefer the good old pen and paper letters.
Conforming to your prospect’s preference is a key to securing their business
Conforming to your prospect’s preference is a key to securing their business. Share on X
For additional tools to help you with your prospecting, check out our Tools & Templates page and download the 90-Day Prospecting Blitz Activity or our Great Questions Template to help you make the most of your meetings.
Got a challenge you’d like some help with? Schedule a complimentary meeting with me to see how I can help!
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.