Sales Prospecting Perspective Weekly Recap - Week of November 12, 2023
We are in the mist of the holiday swing with only a week left till your standing out in the cold at midnight waiting to get that special holiday gift. We all be stuffed on turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. There is nothing better than having the feeling of a full belly as you watch a little football to cap your night before you embark on the lines and mayhem of Black Friday. Which leads me to a post I wanted to share this week from our friends at Heinz Marketing. They've recently begun implementing marketing automation, to capture more information on potential prospects and ultimately more leads, keeping their sales pipeline stuffed with all they can eat. They break it down into three phases in their post Eating the dog food: How Heinz is implementing marketing automation. They emphasize the need to start and build slowly, recognizing the the first phase may not be all too sexy, buy will be vital to reap the benefits as you streamline your process.
Now...on to our weekly recap.
Monday, November 12, 2023
We started the week with a post regarding social prospecting and I provided an example of what NOT to do when trying to gain someone's interest in your product. In my post An Example Of Social Prospecting Gone Wrong I highlighted an exchange between our friend Bob Terson and an organization trying to pitch a demo. This is a great example of what you are seeing across many social networks. The organization shared one of Bob's tweets, Bob then thanked them for the share and the immediate response from the organization was that they would love to give Bob a demo. Bob's response was great, telling the organization to first connect with him, try and get to know him a little better and then maybe there would be an opportunity to show Bob what they do. Unfortunatley that door has closed and they may never get the chance to pitch their product to Bob, all because they failed to build a relationship and jumped the gun on their sales pitch. Make note of this mistake and try not to replicate it in your social prospecting endeavors.
Tuesday, November 13, 2023
Stephen Wolff, a senior business development rep, contributed our next post, discussing scripted voice mails in To Script or Not To Script?. Stephen provides six practical guidelines to consider when developing and implementing new voice mails: use simple words, keep it short, isolate one major pain or need your product solves, practice, tweak your scripts regularly and always be smiling while on the phones. Your ultimate goal should be to be comfortable enough the product and the message so that you don't sound like you are reading from a script. But, it doesn't hurt to have your notes at hand to be a helpful reminder when needed.
Wednesday, November 14, 2023
Craig Ferrara provided our next post of the week, Marketing Campaign Success Starts and Ends With Quality Data. Craig has almost ten years experience in dealing with the subject of data quality and list vendors and when he looks back to determine what can make a campaign successful or an epic fail, it comes down to the quality of data. It is difficult to find data that may exceed a 70% accuracy and hoping to scrub you list by having an inside team call into it will only slow the sales process further. Based on his experiences and research, a target account can take an average of 2-3 weeks longer to convert to sales if you are not cleansing your data to begin the process.
Thursday, November 15, 2023
Our last blog of the week, Lead Scoring: A Beautiful Theory, An Ugly Truth, was provided by Director of Channel Development Maegan Kopka. In her post, Maegan talks about how misleading the concept of lead scoring can be, and why just because you have watched a marketing lead progress through the funnel, it doesn't mean there is buyer's intent. Unless there is a form filled out by a prospect specifically asking for a sales rep because they need to buy your product, then lead scoring is nothing but an educated or calculated guess. Sirius Decisions recently added Telequalification to their sales funnel because of they recognized the need for human interaction to asses the motivation of these prospected buyers. In the end, the only way to really know what your leads are looking for is to just ask, not always relying on a fabricated score.
Thanks for reading this weeks recap and we'll have a few more posts to share with you next week before the holiday. Enjoy the weekend!