It can feel pretty chilly after a big client loss, whether or not it’s winter!
During this past year, we have tried several different prospecting strategies to grow our business after a major client had to halt their sales training program. We are sharing with you the best three proven prospecting strategies that worked and the three prospecting strategies that are as chilly as the cold weather!
I don’t need to tell you how it feels to have your sales revenue significantly impacted.
In order to regain the lost revenue, we figured out three things that worked and three things that didn’t.
Three proven Prospecting Strategies:
1. Be proactive and block out time to prospect every week. I have blocked my calendar and been disciplined to make at least ten telephone calls and/or emails every Thursday morning from 7:30am– 8:55am.This is when most of our ideal clients, VP of Sales, are in their offices early or enroute to work, and before they get into their 9am meeting. This simple habit has increased our business consistently this year and for the past 15+ years. The best marketing is still consistent and habitual prospecting!
2. Ask for Referrals. I’ll admit I never liked to ask for referrals because I felt that I was asking for a favour. I realized I needed to change my own mindset and self-talk on referrals. Now, when I call a sales leader and reference a client’s name, they are much more willing to talk to us. We have secured five new clients this year, all resulting from client referrals.
3. Sales Leader Evolve Breakfast. We hosted sales leader events this year and our efforts resulted in new leads, new opportunities and new business. These events provided us with a reason to reach out to new prospects and warm up these calls.
In order to regain the lost revenue, we figured out three things that worked and three things that didn’t. Share on XThree Prospecting Strategies that did not work:
1. Connecting to any and every sales leader prospect on LinkedIn is a bad idea. Even though we have increased our LinkedIn Connections by an additional 1000+ new connections, it didn’t generate any new leads or interest. We learned the importance of first nurturing these new connections.
2.Being active on all social media platforms doesn’t always work. In our efforts to increase our social media presence and connections, we realized that many of our ideal clients, who are sales leaders, are way too busy to be social on Facebook and Twitter. Choose the social medium that is active with your ideal target market and stick with it.
3. Not all paid advertising will get you results. When we realized that LinkedIn invites were working for the Sales Leaders Evolve Breakfast, we decided to bolster advertising with more paid ads on LinkedIn and Facebook. Even after spending over $1000, it really didn’t generate any additional leaders coming to our event. We learned again that nurturing connections matter in sales.
This year, we launched our new Advanced Prospecting program.
One of our client sales teams has already secured over 54 new client partners as part of their prospecting blitz. They have slam dunked their goal of 50 partners!
If you’re committed to warming up your prospecting efforts, check out our new Advanced Prospecting program for your team.
Teneo Challenge: As part of your prospecting strategy for the next year, take time to do a quick analysis. Figure out what’s working and what’s not working to maximize your prospecting efforts and time.
Give me a call at 519-863-3975 if you’re interested in hearing more about our Advanced Prospecting program.
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.