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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