The purpose of lead generation and prospecting are the same: to get prospects into your funnel. Mark Boundy—a Sales, Pricing, and Value Consultant—has amassed wide-ranging experience in the industry for 25+ years. One thing that he always emphasizes is knowing your customer’s wold intimately. Why does it matter so much? How does it impact your prospecting process and level of success? Find out in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
After you understand the customer’s business you need to provide perspective. You can’t have perspective on something you don’t understand. Your customers are being bombarded with calls and emails. They don’t want to spend time educating someone on their business.
So your job is to slow down to speed up. Before you make a call, understand the customer’s business well enough so you can have an insightful question to ask in the first 15 seconds. It lets them know you have an intimate understanding of their business and know what their big fires are. You can’t do that with a canned script.
Your job is to be in the top 10% of the fires they’re already fighting. The secret to successful prospecting and lead generation is understanding the customer’s world so well that you can instantly plug into one of their top priorities. You become a priority and a resource to meet their business needs.
Mark once had a job where his whole region was light on funnel. So they did a prospecting blitz to fill the pipeline. The guy who did the best was only making 5 calls a day. So they asked him what he was doing. The answer? Research.
He would find someone that looked like a candidate, researched them to understand them, and prepared 1–3 insightful questions that he can help them answer. He was crushing it. But if he was in an organization that measured “activity” he would’ve been in trouble.
An organization needs to measure the right KPIs. John Tukey—a famous statistician—says “Far better an approximate answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question.”
Mark had worked with two SDRs that he was sharing with other salespeople. He found out that one of the SDRs was getting bonuses based on the number of calls that he made. So what did he do? He gamed the system by letting the phone ring for 1 ½ seconds—and then he’d hang up. What should you measure instead? Listen to hear Mark’s thoughts!
Don’t measure the wrong thing. Measure the number of appointments. If you slow down your reparation, you can vastly increase your number of appointments. You can leave a great insight as a voicemail. At one point, 25% of Mark’s voicemails got return calls. He had earned the right to a conversation.
Mark firmly beliefs you must understand your customer’s problems. Know how your product or service delivers customer outcomes. Then, learn how to translate features and benefits into customer outcomes. When you’re prospecting, you say “My company delivers these outcomes. Does that resonate with you?” If you’ve done your research, you’ll know the answer is “yes” or they’re lying. Sometimes the answer is “no” but can mean they just don’t have time to talk to you.
If they’ve said “no” to your offer—but you know your insightful question impressed them—ask if you can call time to time with any other insights. If they say yes, you’ve received permission to come to the front of the line and move into their circle of trust. Deliver value from the first second you’re on the phone. What are Mark’s top 3 prospecting dos and don'ts? How do you earn the right to a conversation? Listen to find out!
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Prospecting—though every salesperson hates to admit it—is the necessary evil in any business. You have to prospect to get leads in your funnel to nurture them through the process. But how you do it matters. That’s what Steve Hall—the Managing Director of Executive Sales Coaching Australia—emphasizes in this episode of Sales Reinvented. Don’t miss it!
Prospecting and lead generation: They’re just labels, according to Steve. Prospecting is identifying potential customers who may have a need that you can supply and can afford to pay for it. Lead generation is looking for people in the middle of the buying process looking to buy.
In Steve’s opinion, prospecting is more important. You want to prospect for choice. If you have a full pipeline ready to buy, you won’t get desperate. You won’t try to close deals that aren’t ready or close those that don’t fit. The fuller your pipeline is, the less desperate you are.
Is there an ideal prospecting process? Steve’s answer? It depends. It depends on what you sell, who you sell it to, and what the deals are worth. It also depends on how big your team is. If you’re an individual, you have to do everything yourself. If you have a huge marketing team it’s different. Everyone has different capabilities.
The most important thing is to understand who your ideal customer is and identify companies that fit that. Assuming that a new customer’s lifetime value is upward of $250,000, they’re worth putting effort into. So you need to do research (either you or your minions). Then you reach out to them.
What do you do if someone is an ideal customer but they aren’t ready to buy yet? Do you come back in a year? Do you get them in a nurturing program? Who builds the relationship?
Then you have the actual sales process. Steve has one client that has multiple people involved in the sales process:
What attributes does a salesperson need to be successful with prospecting? What skills should they develop? Listen to hear Steve’s thoughts!
Steve shared quite a few dos and don’ts for salespeople to keep in mind:
Don’t say “Hello, how are you?” Every single person does that. It says “I don’t really care how you are I just want to sell stuff to you.”
Steve was working with a company trying to invest in aged care facilities. They wanted to talk to the CEO of the company they wanted to work with. The problem was that he couldn’t find a phone number for these people anywhere. Every single number for the company went to a call center!
Eventually, he went to their website and looked at their press releases. The head of corporate communications had their mobile number on the press release. So Steve called him and asked him to forward a message to the CEO’s executive assistant.
She got back to him and said “The CEO is away—do you want to speak to the CFO?” Of course, they accepted, and that’s how he connected his client to this company. The moral of the story is that not everyone wants to be communicated with. But if you desperately want to connect—try the PR people.
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Do you want to achieve your quota? Do you want to make more money? Salespeople need to be hungry, according to Mark Sellers—The Founder and Managing Partner of Breakthrough Sales Performance. You’re asking people to open doors—and they won’t all open. But there are a few things you can do to achieve more success with prospecting and lead generation. Listen to this episode of @SalesReinvented to learn more!
In Mark’s eyes, lead gen consists of marketing departments that are conducting nurture campaigns, inquiries, or Mailchimp and Hubspot kinds of activity. Prospecting is the domain of the salesperson. You’re out there every day constantly doing something to feed the funnel. The activities can be similar, but it’s about the mindset. The lifeblood of selling is getting new sales. It’s how companies grow and quotas get achieved. Unless you have an organic following, you have to prospect and generate leads to get more business.
Mark’s business is different from most others. He runs a consulting and training business. His lead gen and prospecting efforts are mostly referrals. Where he goes to get his new clients is a small universe. He takes care of the customers he has and because of that, he asks them to hire him year after year. Secondly, because his focus is on caring for his current clients and offering impeccable services, they are willing to directly refer him to other prospects.
Mark emphasizes that you need to engage in stage zero conversations. COVID has given us an automatic excuse to ask “How are you doing?” and “How is your business doing? Have you changed your strategies or direction?” Having important business conversations gives you credibility while also emotionally connecting and empathizing with a potential client. Hopefully—out of those conversations—new opportunities will arise. What are Mark’s top 3 prospecting and lead generation dos and don’ts? Listen to find out!
A year and a half ago, Mark reached out to a consultant from another business (a conglomerate of 89 companies). Mark had done business with 3–4 of them. Mark asked if there was anyone he should be introducing himself to and was given a name. Then he asked if he could get a warm introduction, suggesting that this person speak with him.
His contact took the time to write an email encouraging this person to speak with Mark. That led to Mark presenting to 15 of the presidents. He immediately secured two pieces of business. You can’t be afraid to ask. Reach out to people—even if you don’t know they can do anything for you. Take the chance, if they can’t do anything, nothing is lost.
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Customers don’t just show up—you have to go get them. Or, have a way to get them interested in learning more about what you offer. You need to engage in both prospecting and lead generation if you want to grow consistently and be sustainable. To do that, you need to get a prospecting system in place. What does Diane do? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to find out!
Diane Helbig is a business advisor and trainer, author, and podcast host. She’s been training small business owners and sales professionals on the importance of discovery during the prospecting, and lead generation stages of sales for over 20 years. She is the author of Succeed Without Selling: The more you think about selling the less you’ll sell, Expert Insights, and Lemonade Stand Selling.
Diane’s prospecting system begins with identifying a target market. Then you must develop a list of prospects within that target and do some research on them. You need to learn as much as you can so when you do outreach, you have something to talk about. Diane loves it when people use LinkedIn to see how they’re connected. Why? Because a warm introduction is ideal. When you go to set up a meeting, you’re more likely to get it.
With lead generation, you need to develop a list of prospect characteristics in your target market. Set up an ad campaign or an email drop campaign to draw their attention and interest. You get them to your website to reach out to you.
Be realistic. Understand that you’re not going to sell to everyone in your target market. Attention to detail is also important, especially when getting down to determining characteristics.
You must be patient and good at reviewing data. What are the results of your lead gen? Is it working? Are you targeting the right audience? You can be flexible and make adjustments.
Curiosity is a huge skill that salespeople need—but most salespeople don’t embrace it enough. Why? Because they want to sell to everyone.
She emphasizes that you have to listen actively and intentionally and ask questions. Lead into a conversation not knowing if they will be a customer. Allow the conversation to tell you if they are a good customer fit.
You also have to learn how to structure your time for a prospecting system to work. It’s really easy to get distracted. So set up a system and work it. Know what the steps are and block them on your calendar. What are Diane’s top 3 prospecting and lead generation dos and don’ts? Listen to find out!
Diane had a business friend that owned a gift basket company. She was very motivated and clear on her target market and who she should be doing business with. She went through Diane’s LinkedIn connections and emailed the 5 companies she wanted an introduction to. But they got zero responses on LinkedIn.
So Diane decided to try and different tactic emailed each of them directly and asked if they’d take her call. All of them said yes. Why? Because they trusted Diane. She wouldn’t send them someone not with talking to. It gave this gal credibility. She ended up doing business with four out of the five! She had a process, she worked it diligently, and she followed through immediately. Prospecting systems work.
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