Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Reigniting Your Older Teleprospecting Leads

  

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One of the biggest road blocks inside sales reps face on a daily basis is bad data and exhausted lists. The amount of time that passes planning a new calling campaign can be days or weeks. The inside rep is left annoyed and anxious over their shrinking CRM homepage and every time you ask them how things are going, the answer is “I have no names.” That’s a really bad feeling for both management and inside sales reps. Along with working on a new campaign, the next step in that conversation needs to be “How are you currently managing the list you have been working on?”

Once an inside sales rep has called through an entire list, they may not think about the value in their old names. As time passes, companies have undergone normal attrition, the inside rep has grown their sales/product skill set and the New Year is upon us. The opportunities in these leads can be just as hot as new names.

According to J. David Green, in his Fresh Ideas to Reignite Stalled Leads and Accelerate the Sales Funnel:
“Professional teleprospecting representatives should consistently approach “dead” leads as an informal market-research project. The message can be straight and true. The representative is trying to find out what went wrong to better serve customers in the future. The rep should ask the customer to be as candid as possible, then listen and thank the customer for his candor. Open-ended questions should be used at the outset, with probing and clarifying questions thereafter.”

I think there is a lot of value in this thought. Using your previous conversations/emails and voicemails as a leg up in your follow up already sets you apart from a cold caller. You are more apt to get through a gate keeper, you are not starting your sales cycle over and you have a pointed question to ask.

For Example: “Hello Mr Prospect, this is Bob from XYM Company following up on a message I left you a few months back. I just wanted to circle back and see how things were going with the XYZ project and see if there has been any progress.”

Asking open-ended questions, empathizing with the busy holidays and remaining brief is a great way to have quality conversations. Along with gathering this “informal market research” through conversations, try it in an email. We all know how hard it can be to get prospects live on the phone. A member of my team asked me if I could help him come up with a warm way to reconnect with older contacts on his list if they aren’t answering.

Brian began sending out:

Hey {!Contact.FirstName}, 

I am following up on some correspondence we had a few months back. At the time it did not make sense to speak further regarding our services. 

With the holiday season upon us and companies planning for 2012, I wanted to connect briefly and learn further about any projects you are planning for. If you have sometime to connect briefly I can follow up accordingly.

Happy Holidays,

Brian 

From this email, Brian was able to update his records. Prospects either told him they still weren’t interested, when to follow up, what they were doing, or who the best person to reengage with was. Whether or not you like the style of this email, being brief and open ended in your follow up is a great way to open these leads back up and keep yourself productive while waiting on a new campaign. Reignite your leads, and see if you light a fire under your prospecting list.