CHAPTER

5

Getting Meetings Through Prospecting Campaigns

Now that you have a high-level understanding of how to craft compelling content, it’s time to explore the right channels and the right frequencies for delivering messages in ways proven to secure meetings that ultimately win business.

To frame this properly, we need to take a moment to explore the life cycle of a lead as illustrated in Figure 5-1.

  FIGURE 5-1   Predictable Prospecting Lead Life Cycle

Prospects enter the sales cycle with their lead status set to New. Alternative labels for this status include Cold, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Not Attempted, and Open. A new lead may come from an inbound source such as a white paper download or from an outbound source such as a rented list.

After receiving a new lead, the salesperson must decide whether to accept or reject it. Leads are primarily rejected for one of the following three reasons. First, the data may be too corrupt to clean, in which case it should be soft deleted from both the marketing automation platform (MAP) and the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Second, the salesperson may judge the lead to be low quality for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to poor firmographic fit, poor demographic fit, or a prior negative experience with the prospects or their company. Third, the salesperson can flag as “Not my account” if the lead was incorrectly assigned, triggering manual reassignment by sales operations.

Once a salesperson does accept a lead, it advances into the Working contact status. Some sales organizations refer to this status as Attempting, Contacting, or sales accepted lead (SAL), and we will concentrate the bulk of this chapter on this contact status since advancement to the next stage depends upon securing this first meeting. If the salesperson is unable to secure a meeting either because the prospect was unresponsive or was unambiguously uninterested, then the contact status should be set to No response or interest so the prospect can be returned to automated nurturing after a cooling off period.

Critically, the Predictable Prospecting system recommends holding prospects in the Leads category for as short a time as possible, which is why accepted New leads advance to Working contacts. By way of reminder, most CRM systems treat leads as independent entities. Leads convert to contacts when associated with a new or existing account. In addition, the account (and selected contacts) may be linked to a new or existing opportunity. We strongly prefer working prospects as contacts rather than as leads in order to have a persistent picture of inbound and outbound prospect activities for a holistic view of what is happening in each account.

After that most important first meeting is secured, the prospect advances to Qualifying contact status, sometimes labeled Converting. (The next chapter covers this richly detailed and highly nuanced stage.) If the prospect fails to meet qualifying criteria, the salesperson sets the account status to Disqualified so the prospect may return to automated nurturing.

Once a lead is qualified, it converts to the Closing contact status. If all goes well, a prospect advances to the final contact status, Customer, commonly labeled as Client, Transacted or Won, or simply Won. Alternatively, if the prospect does not purchase, the account status is set to Lost and returned to automated nurturing.

When to Add Granularity to the Sales Cycle

Much to the dismay of salespeople who justifiably dread busywork, sales leaders are constantly tempted to increase the granularity of each Lead Status and Contact Status category. For instance, No Response or Interest could be split into No Response and a multitude of reasons for No Interest. Similarly, Disqualified could be broken down into reasons associated with qualification criteria; for those organizations using the ubiquitous BANT approach, one would have Disqualified—budget, Disqualified—authority, Disqualified—need, and Disqualified—timing.

There is no absolute right or wrong level or granularity; there is only right or wrong for a given sales organization. However, we do offer the following guidance: the right reason to add a lead or contact status item is if the new item is crucial for optimizing pipeline velocity and success. For instance, if prospects begin to pile up in the New Queue, then marketing may need to increase its scoring threshold to provide fewer higher-quality leads. Or if prospects get stuck in the Qualifying Queue, then the qualification process likely needs evaluation and additional structure.

Avoid adding granularity when doing so only enhances reporting. For example, it may not matter from a sales process optimization perspective whether contacts were not responsive versus not interested in which case the deeper reporting is not worth the added sales complexity. When in doubt, choose simplicity. You can always add complexity later as you begin to understand your unique situation.

Building the New Queue

The top of the sales funnel starts with a robust volume of prospects in the New lead status queue who, importantly, match the ideal prospect profile. At a high level, there are two groups of lead sources: inbound and outbound.

Inbound leads are generally the most desirable since they indicate some degree of recent exposure to the salesperson’s company or products or some degree of recently expressed interest in solving a problem addressed by the salesperson’s company. Most inbound leads come from digital and traditional marketing programs, including digital content marketing (webinars, white papers, blog subscriptions, and so on), trade show badge scans, and events.

Response time for online leads is particularly critical as proven by an oft-cited study jointly conducted by MIT and InsideSales.com.¹ The researchers found the odds of contacting a lead are 100 times higher in the first 5 minutes compared to the first 30 minutes and 10 times higher in the first hour compared to all longer durations combined; the odds of reaching a prospect exhibit rapid exponential decay. Even more importantly, the odds of qualifying a lead, which the researchers defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker, are 21 times higher in the first 5 minutes compared to the first 30 minutes and 6 times higher in the first hour compared to all longer durations combined. These results make intuitive sense since prospects are likely to be both available and interested just after submitting their information.

Outbound leads can be broken down into three types, two of which we recommend. The best starts with an organization’s house list. Usually, the most valuable prospects on a house list are former clients, followed by prospects lost after qualification, followed by prospects who were disqualified, followed by prospects who were not interested or did not reply to prior attempts to set a discovery meeting. In addition, many sales and marketing organizations supplement their house list by gathering ideal prospects from high-quality sources such as LinkedIn.

The next best type is rented lists. Among rented lists, the best ones for B2B are supplied by trade publications since prospects are fresher and have opted in. In the case of e-mail-only (or direct-mail-only) lists, the owner deploys a campaign on the renter’s behalf not only reducing effort but also protecting the e-mail reputation of the renter. (Mass e-mailing is fraught with risk because senders can be flagged as spammers, which will affect the delivery of any type of e-mail. In addition, it is easy to run afoul of various anti-spam laws, leading to significant fines.)

When renting a list, we recommend piloting with a small sample to determine the expected return on investment (ROI). For example, imagine a company has a 5 times the ROI threshold; that is, the profit from the list rental needs to exceed the cost by 5 times. Currently, e-mail lists range from $0.10 to $0.50 per name per mailing. So, imagine you send 100,000 e-mails consisting of a content marketing offer linked to a landing page at a cost of $250 per thousand (in industry parlance, a “250 CPM”), equal to $25,000 of the total cost. Using a typical average² open rate of 20 percent and a typical average click-through rate (CTR) of 3 percent nets 600 prospects who arrive at the landing page.

Conversion rates, measured as visitors who complete a registration form, vary widely, but we will use 30 percent because rates from e-mail exceed rates from paid search engine clicks. Hence, we are down to 180 leads at a cost of $139 per lead. Now, we can calculate the win rate needed to achieve 5 times ROI based on the customer lifetime value. For instance, if the customer’s lifetime value is $50,000, then the win rate would need to be 1.6 percent, or 3 wins out of the 180 leads (Table 5-1).³

  TABLE 5-1   E-mail Marketing Return-on-Investment Calculation

There are many reputable, and many more disreputable, e-mail list sellers and renters. In addition to the previously mentioned trade publications, some reputable vendors our clients have used include Discover.org, Data.com, Dun & Bradstreet (which owns NetProspex), InfoUSA, and ZoomInfo. For do-it-yourselfers, there is an excellent mailing list finder available from NextMark at http://lists.nextmark.com/. For those willing to outsource, a practice we recommend, there is a cottage industry of list brokers available to help; one we have used with success, Merit Direct, is one of the larger ones.

The third type, and one which we do not recommend, is purchased lists. If a provider is willing to sell a list, the list has almost certainly been spammed beyond recognition, collected through illicit or unethical means, or filled with out-of-date records.

Regardless of source, all lists must be judiciously cleaned before distributing contacts to salespeople. In our experience, the three most important fields to append and verify are e-mail address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile URL. With respect to phone number, strive to acquire the direct dial. If you cannot obtain the direct dial, then try to find a number to access the company’s dial-by-name directory; access the dial-by-name directory from voice mail using the key combinations shown in Table 5-2. Worst case, you will need to dial the company’s main number. If you end up in this last situation, be prepared to develop a friendship with the switchboard operator.

  TABLE 5-2   Dial-by-Name Directory Access

Building a New Queue as a Continual Process

Finally, we need to stress that building the New Queue is a continual process. Some prospects engage, some are unresponsive, some opt out, and some leave a company or are no longer in a role matching the Ideal Prospect Persona. Leads must be replenished to minimum watermark levels to prevent the pipeline from running dry.

A sample list replenish waterfall looks like this for every 100 records:

3 prospects are actively looking for a solution.

7 are open to hearing about what you have to offer.

30 know they do not want your product.

30 aren’t sure how relevant your product is for them.

30 don’t know they need what you have.

Given these numbers, it is likely that after one full prospecting cycle, approximately 40 percent (3 percent actives plus 7 percent maybes plus 30 percent don’t want it) of your initial list needs to be replaced for the next prospecting cycle.

Building a Customer Referral Program

As a New Queue lead source, referred leads are distinct from inbound and outbound leads. Referral programs generate higher win rates, faster deal velocity, and higher lifetime value. In addition, customers who provide referrals are likely to have higher retention rates, even when compared to other customers with the same satisfaction, due to the psychological principle of consistency.

Referrals work because people trust people, especially people like themselves, more than they trust any other source of information, as shown in Table 5-3.⁴ This survey by Nielsen polled more than 29,000 people in 58 countries.

  TABLE 5-3   Trust in Advertising

Referral program success is not only a business-to-consumer phenomenon. A study of hundreds of business-to-business companies (see Figure 5-2) found that referred leads close at more than twice the rate of any other source.⁵ Though the overall average lead-to-deal conversion rate of 0.8 percent may seem low, the results are consistent with our experience. According to the study by Implisit, 13 percent of leads convert to opportunity after an average time to conversion of 84 days. Then, 6 percent of opportunities progress to a closed deal after an average time to win of 18 days.

  FIGURE 5-2   Lead-to-Deal Conversion Rate

One of our favorite turns of phrase describing the most important factor of a successful referral program is “Be referable.” When a company delights its customers with exceptional product and service experiences, customers are delighted to provide referrals as a gift to their friends and colleagues.

In nearly all cases, one must deliver value before asking for a referral. The timing of the ask should be guided by the peak-end rule,⁶ which relies on evidence that people judge an experience based on how pleasant (or unpleasant) it is at its peak and at its end. Consequently, our best advice is to conduct a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey either at the expected peak or, more practically, at the end of a service experience. An NPS survey asks the simple question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, 10 highest, how likely are you to recommend _________ to a friend or a colleague?” According to its trademark owners (Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix), promoters give ratings of 9 or 10, passives give ratings of 7 or 8, and detractors give ratings of 6 or lower. It is a no-brainer to ask for a recommendation after receiving a rating of 9 or 10, though shockingly few companies actually close this loop. (Since all rules are meant to be broken, the exception to the ask-after-service rule is when the value of a service is enhanced by having friends and colleagues be part of the experience, as is the case in social networks and live events. In those instances, go for the referral when onboarding the new client.) Similarly, one must go into service recovery mode for the strongest detractors, particularly those with ratings of 0 to 2.

In addition to driving growth via referrals and retention via service recovery, sending NPS surveys at a regular cadence helps identify when customers move on. This is valuable because it is much easier to win recent B2B customers back soon after they switch jobs than it is to win a prospect who is less familiar with us. Tracking B2B movement remains a manual task, so we employ contractors on Upwork (a freelancer website) to locate contacts whose e-mails have bounced. For low volumes, expect to pay about $1 per contact; at scale, the cost is much lower. Our contractors find new contact information for 68 percent of our former clients.

Indirect Referrals

Current customers are often the best source of referrals, but they are not the only source. Particularly in B2B, a customer’s social sphere is limited to colleagues and vendors; customers are unlikely to know and highly unlikely to provide references to their counterpart at a competitor. When the direct route doesn’t work, there is an effective indirect route. First, ask a customer to connect you with their other favorite vendors or partners. Then, simply trade leads informally or formally (via affiliate marketing) with complementary suppliers. Finally, include employees across the company in lead referral programs.

Best Practices for Referrals

The best referral programs are characterized by the following:

Simplicity: Make everything about the referral program simple and easy, including communications, landing pages, and forms.

Transparency: Provide transparency at the beginning, middle, and end of the referral process. At the beginning, share details about how the referral process will work, and convey the program’s benefits for the customer and the referral. Include the customer in the cc or bcc (with disclosure) in the first e-mail communication with the referred lead. During the process, provide the customer with the means to check referral status. Finally, provide closure to the customer whether the deal results in a win or a loss.

Incentives: Provide appropriate monetary and/or nonmonetary incentives to both the customer and the referred lead. Incentives should not be so large as to be judged a bribe and must comply with applicable laws and with the customer’s business ethics policies. In most cases, this means monetary rewards should be less than $100 per referral. Quite often, nonmonetary incentives are a better choice, especially those tied directly to the product or service (for example, beta tests, priority support, or added features). Donations to charity are another compelling option.

As with all initiatives, the success of a referral program depends on having expectations set, activities calendared, and performance measured. To that end, we recommend leveraging referral software solutions as part of your prospecting mix and assigning a partial or full resource from sales operations or marketing to the program.

Though it falls into the “simplicity” category, we have saved the ultimate referral best practice for last. Most salespeople approach referral requests in an open-ended way. However, there is a simple way to increase your odds of success and make it easy for your prospects to help. Check your client’s LinkedIn profile and identify three to five connections that you want to engage as prospects. Then ask your client for permission to mention him or her in your communications to the prospect. It truly is that simple.

Executing Multitouch, Multichannel Prospecting Campaigns

After advancing quality leads from the New Queue into the Working Queue, sales professionals work to set up first meetings with responsive prospects. The goal of the first meeting, especially with complex B2B sales, is not necessarily full-blown qualification; rather, the goal is to determine “Are we a fit?” and set up next steps leading to a qualified lead following one or more discussions with the one or more decision makers and influencers involved in the deal.

The first decision to make in a Predictable Prospecting campaign is the choice of communication channels. Since social media direct messaging is not yet a proven or accepted B2B channel, let’s focus on e-mail and telephone. Although we would like to say there is a universal magic mix, like many other things, it is context dependent, and it must be continually optimized through testing and iterating.

We cannot tell you what perfect looks like, but we can share what actual industry standards look like thanks to a study⁷ conducted by SalesStaff, a B2B appointment setting service provider. Within a one-hour window, the company filled out “Contact Us” forms on the websites of 350 B2B companies. In addition to standard contact information, SalesStaff included a message indicating “a project existed where the target company may be of use.” The mix of responses is shown in Figure 5-3.

  FIGURE 5-3   Market Response by E-mail-to-Phone Mix

The actual market response is definitely not what great looks like. A shocking majority of B2B companies completely ignore valuable inbound leads. The good news for B2B sales professionals is that it should be easy to stand out with a multichannel campaign when only 15 percent of competitors respond via both e-mail and phone.

And what about multitouch? The same SalesStaff study revealed, as shown in Figure 5-4, that the vast majority of companies that respond via e-mail do so only once. The overall average is fewer than two e-mails.

  FIGURE 5-4   Market Response by Number of E-mail Touches

The data is only slightly better for the 23 percent of companies that respond via phone. As shown in Figure 5-5, most companies give up after two call attempts.

  FIGURE 5-5   Market Response by Number of Phone Touches

What makes this most shocking is that sales professionals have long known (via the InsideSales.com and MIT study cited earlier) that persistence in the follow-up pays. As shown in Figure 5-6, toughing it out for six calls instead of one can increase the chances of making contact from the mid-30s to as high as 90 percent! For reference, the average company that made calls attempted contact only three times.

  FIGURE 5-6   Chance of Making Contact by Number of Calls

The average company fails to respond adequately to inbound leads. Among those that do, only 15 percent leverage a multichannel strategy reliant on phone and e-mail. Assuming the overall averages hold, those multichannel companies persist for five touches, including two e-mails and three calls.

A Sample Outbound Campaign

While we want to avoid providing a universal prescription, we do want to set a recommended starting point that sales teams can confidently use to build multichannel, multitouch campaigns. There are all kinds of salespeople. Some are hunters with the luxury of being either purely inbound or purely outbound. Others have a mix of inbound and outbound responsibilities. In the most complex, but by no means unusual, scenario, a sales professional must be adept at balancing everything, including hunting, farming, servicing, and renewing.

Consequently, each type of salesperson will possess unique abilities to execute time-light e-mail touches and time-intensive phone touches. To that end, the following sample campaign takes a middle-of-the road approach to Predictable Prospecting, and it recommends 8 to 12 touches over 22 business days, or a calendar month. This sample outbound campaign includes 9 touches over 20 business days, including seven e-mails and two phone calls as illustrated in Table 5-4. We will comment as we go regarding adjustments that should be made for inbound response campaigns. For simplicity, we will continue with the CMO example we began in the previous chapter, repeated here for convenience:

For whom? Chief marketing officers at B2B information technology companies headquartered in the United States with revenues of $1 billion to $6 billion

To do what? Increase inbound lead generation

In order to? Increase the revenue impact from marketing at a 5 times or greater ROI.

By what means? Content syndication on third-party websites

  TABLE 5-4   Nine-Touch, 20-Business-Day Outbound Campaign

For those wanting a shorter and more delicate campaign, we offer one with three e-mails and five calls over 13 business days as shown in Table 5-5. Among the five calls in this campaign, the salesperson only leaves two voice mails—one at the beginning and one at the end.

  TABLE 5-5   Eight-Touch, 13-Business-Day Outbound Campaign

In the remainder of this chapter, we will explain the templates used in the more comprehensive campaign detailed in Table 5-4.

Starting with Precadence Planning

Precadence planning is our term for a light version of precall planning optimized for low- to moderate-volume, multitouch campaigns. At the Rainmaker 2016 conference in Atlanta, SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter shared just how important precadence planning has become. (The company applied an algorithm to classify each of the 4 million e-mails its SDR users sent to prospects as either generic or personalized. In their experiment, generic meant templates with or without dynamic fields such as first name or company name. The personalized e-mails had to have distinct subject lines or at least a sentence of unique text in the body. SalesLoft found prospects replied to 2.7 percent of generic e-mails and to 8.0 percent of personalized e-mails. Given that generic e-mail delivery rates (due to ever-improving spam filters) and open rates are collapsing by the hour, it behooves every SDR to personalize their cadences.

The key, of course, is striking the balance between too much and too little research given the fact only 1 in 20, give or take, prospects will schedule are-we-a-fit calls in response to outbound cadences. In contrast to the catchy but impractical 3×3 approach (3 things in 3 minutes), we feel a good balance is trying to learn no more than two contextually relevant pieces of information about a prospect in 10 minutes or less. Stop and move on after you gather two pieces of information or you hit the 10-minute mark, whichever comes first. Also, remember to log the information in your CRM so that you (or your SDR descendants) don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

The first piece of information should be about the prospects as individuals. For B2B sales, seek professional information starting with LinkedIn and possibly Twitter. If the prospects are public enough, you may find news about them by searching the Internet with a combination of their name and company. In the event you cannot find professional information, you may seek out personal information on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networks. Tread lightly with personal information because being approached by a stranger (yes, SDR, that’s you) with personal information can be off-putting. If you go this route, focus on genuinely shared interests and hobbies about which are you prepared to speak at length.

The second piece of information should be about the prospect’s company. To find a strategic initiative aligned to your solution, comb though press releases, financial releases including 10Ks and 10Qs, and investor presentations.

Touch 1, Day 1, E-mail, Call to Action (CTA): Internal Referral

Designed as a find-the-right-person e-mail, the first touch applies a number of best practices. The sender is a real person, the sales executive. The subject is descriptive of the body of the e-mail and applies the first-word-capitalized best practice we shared in the previous chapter. In addition, the word “Potential” kindles loss aversion; people do not want to miss out on valuable opportunities. The body is extremely short. The risk we took in not including any problem-solution or company-specific language should pay off since our goal is to confirm responsibility or get an internal referral. In this case, we could hit the jackpot if the CMO replies and copies his direct report in charge of demand generation. The closing, “Please advise,” has been proven recently to command a higher response rate than more conventional ones such as “Thank you,” “Regards,” “Sincerely,” or “Cordially.” Finally, the sales professional’s signature does not include her company’s website to maintain the integrity of the one e-mail/one call-to-action rule.

Sending a find-the-right-person e-mail to a person senior to or lateral to your target prospect can be particularly effective. We were once on the receiving end of this strategy. The first e-mail sent to one of our bosses was as follows:

After receiving no reply to the first e-mail, the salesperson sent the following (take special note of the subject line and body personalization):

The salesperson actually sent that series of two e-mails to a large number of people (perhaps too many) across the firm. Nearly everyone forwarded the second e-mail after receiving it, and we called the sender to discuss both his prospecting approach and his product.

Touch 2, Day 3, E-mail, CTA: Internal Referral

Touch 2 includes a number of incremental best practices starting with the use of “Re:” in the subject line. While in-line replies are highly effective, the technique must be used sparingly and genuinely. In the entire campaign, we use this only once to prevent the thread from getting too long. Additionally, overusing “Re:” is as off-putting as overusing someone’s first name during a conversation. We have received plenty of e-mails out of the blue with “Re:” or “Fw:”. The worst, albeit clever, offense we came across while collecting unsolicited e-mails was the following:

This e-mail was followed a mere three minutes later by the following:

We looked up Rep1 and Rep2 on LinkedIn, and they did at least appear to be real people. Moreover, Rep1 was indeed a second-degree contact to the author who received the e-mail and was connected to the shared individuals (mostly LIONs—LinkedIn Open Networkers) referenced. Nonetheless, the whole thing felt disingenuous since it did not come from a first-degree contact, was too fast, did not include Rep1 in the cc line of Rep2’s reply, and did not include the text of the first e-mail in the second e-mail. Yes, salespeople have to sell. However, ethics wins in a relationship-driven world. Sales guru Zig Ziglar said it best, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

Returning to the Predictable Prospecting touch 2 e-mail, the body maintains the same call to action as touch 1 to keep the conversation genuine and begins the problem-solution journey we previewed in the last chapter. Importantly, each e-mail should contain not only a single call to action but also a single pain point or value proposition.

Finally, the closing of touch 2 could have used “Please advise” again, but we decided to mix things up with “Thanks.” In addition, we close with only the salesperson’s first name since real people tend to reply with less formality.

Touch 3, Day 6, E-mail, CTA: Unaware to Aware Asset Click

Assuming no response after the first two touches, we remain optimistic that our contact is responsible for lead generation in his organization but, as yet, is just not motivated to reply. In touch 3, we are in hot pursuit of a click that will serve as a signpost validating that the prospect is aware he has a problem. Here we pick from our list of short, high-value, vendor-agnostic content types such as short videos, blog posts, and infographics. Once again, we have one problem-solution and one call to action. In addition, we have loaded this e-mail with psychological triggers. “We just synthesized” appeals to the human craving for newness. The repeated phrase “best practices” serves as social proof that is far more powerful than a vendor’s own findings.

Touch 4, Day 8, E-mail, CTA: Secure a Meeting

After providing value with nothing in return during the prior two touches, we have earned the right to ask for a meeting in touch 4. By mentioning competitors (that a company really does do business with), we trigger curiosity and desire. Our call to action imposes very little burden on the prospect by asking for just 15 minutes and by promising to set up the meeting request.

Touch 5, Day 8, Phone, CTA: Secure a Meeting

In this campaign, we wait until the fifth touch to call for two reasons. First, a sales professional should figure out if the contact is even the right person before devoting time to calling. Second, as mentioned in our commentary for touch 4, the salesperson has to set the expectation that the prospect will get value out of the relationship by giving before the prospect asks—relying on the psychological principle of reciprocity.

Notably, we have decided to conduct the touch 5 phone call the same day as but just after the touch 4 e-mail. This recently discovered best practice relies on the familiarity benefit of the recent impression—the prospect is more likely to recognize the name on the caller identification. Touch 5 also makes the ask, replying to an e-mail, a much less burdensome task compared to returning a phone call.

On a related side note, prospects are as much as 57.8 percent more likely⁸ to pick up calls coming from their area code compared to blocked, long-distance, or toll-free numbers. While many dialer technology companies provide this feature, known as local presence, tread cautiously because the practice amounts to starting out what one hopes will blossom into a meaningful, long-term relationship with a lie. If you do adopt local presence, role-play to ensure that SDRs are comfortable explaining the practice when called out on it. For example, an effective and honest response is, “Our company uses a telephony provider that dynamically provisions phone numbers.”

Voice mail scripts, such as the one above, should be written conversationally using less formal language and short sentences. Even better, consider drafting voice mail recommendations as bullets. For example:

Greeting: Hyperpersonalized

Benefit: Offer to walk through CMO survey findings

Call to action: Reply to e-mail to set up time

We strongly recommend that sales professionals practice the script to internalize it rather than memorize it. Furthermore, to sound more friendly and authentic, we encourage salespeople to stand up and smile while leaving voice mails.

A salesperson will connect live with a prospect 20 to 30 percent of the time; the rate is even higher for rapid response (defined as less than 5 minutes) to inbound leads. In the happy event of reaching a person on a cold call, especially in complex B2B selling situations, we urge salespeople to resist the temptation to qualify the prospect then and there. Instead, they should use those precious moments to set up a meeting to further explore their situation and needs.

It is not dialing that makes salespeople dislike cold calling. It is connecting. Invariably, the prospect at the other end of the line regrets answering the phone as soon as she picks up. To make the proactive outreach call better for both parties, we recommend that the salesperson have a set of talking points covering the following four areas. (Though we do not recommend scripting live calls, we scripted the talking points below to make this example more concrete. Just make sure to cover items 1 through 4.)

1. Introduction (Let’s make a deal.)

Hi, Betty? (wait for response)

I’m Wilma from SalesCo. I lead our practice serving product managers at financial services companies.

I appreciate that you were not expecting my call, but let me borrow two minutes of your time. If you think we might work together, we can schedule a follow-up call. If not, you can go on with your day. (Alternative: I just want to make sure I’m calling the right person at PropsectCo. Are you responsible for new product development?)

2. Show me that you know me.

I just reviewed the transcript of ProspectCo’s most recent earnings call and noticed that your CEO has committed to increasing the percentage of revenue from new products introduced in the last 18 months.

Did I understand that right? (wait for answer)

3. Value pitch

At SalesCo, we help product managers at financial services companies implement agile new product development practices by providing a software platform along with services and training.

In fact, we just helped another Fortune 50 financial services company increase its percentage of revenue from new products to 30 percent from 20 percent.

4. Objective

Since I’m assuming you are really busy right now, can we schedule a 10-minute call to discuss your business and some ideas I’d like to share?

Let’s closely examine this call flow starting with the introduction. The first words, “Hi, Betty?” are pretty standard. Besides drawing upon the timeless practice of engaging people by using their first name, it is also possible that one has the wrong number for a prospect. Once the prospect confirms, we intentionally do not respond with the cliché “How are you doing today?” Instead, we launch right in with “I’m Wilma from SalesCo. I lead our practice serving product managers at large financial services companies.”

Importantly, we use the phrase “I lead” to convey a sense of authority. Everyone leads something so do not be afraid to say it. And, while a salesperson might lead a broader practice, we narrowed it down to the precise role of the prospect, a product manager at a large financial services company.

We end the introduction with, “I appreciate that you were not expecting my call, but let me borrow two minutes of your time. If you think we might work together, we can schedule a follow-up call. If not, you can go on with your day,” instead of asking, “Do you have a quick minute to talk?” or “Did I catch you at a good time?” This wording is important because we do not want to give the prospect the chance to say, “Well, no actually. I’ve got to run to a meeting. Bye.” Here is a great variation: “Let’s make a deal. We chat for two minutes. I’ll briefly share what my company does and ask you one question about how you manage (prospect’s key objective). Then you decide whether or not we should continue the discussion in a follow-up call. OK?”

The first 5 to 15 seconds are always the most tense because rejection is always uncomfortable and prospects always have their guard up. Greetings such as “How are you doing today?” have become ineffective. However, this approach was once quite effective because it was an unconventionally informal way to address prospects. Salespeople are ever on the hunt for effective pattern interrupts—that is, in this context, conversation starters that disrupt a prospect’s behavioral pattern for rejecting unsolicited calls.⁹ A couple of fresh ones to emerge include “I’m guessing I caught you at a bad time. What were you doing?” and “How do you typically handle cold calls?” A particularly interesting one we heard at a conference¹⁰ was “Are you sure you want to do that?” in response to the “Please send me an e-mail” objection. Of course, today’s killer pattern interrupt will become tomorrow’s cliché as it gains popularity in the sales community.

Most prospects expect salespeople to launch right into a pitch. We confound their expectations with the “show me that you know me” step. In our example, we referenced a relevant insight from a recent earnings transcript. We also could have cited other professional information gleaned from annual reports, press releases, websites, or LinkedIn. There are, of course, other ways to prove that you care about earning a prospect’s business and that you have invested time up front to do so. Since we like pairing calls with e-mails, we might say, “I recently sent you an e-mail referencing a study we did on product management. Did you get that?” To which the prospect might reply, “Yeah, I might have, but I don’t remember,” which gives the salesperson the chance to provide a one-sentence summary. Finally, if we have nothing else, then we try to refer to a personal intersection gleaned from social media such as a common connection or hobby. Hoping to get the prospect to engage, we end the “show me that you know me” step by asking for confirmation: “Did I understand that right?” Since any response is a good response, welcome any corrections the prospect makes to your analysis.

In as little as one minute into the call, the sales professional has earned the right to very briefly pitch the value of her solution to the prospect. A great value statement leads with the benefit (the why) the prospect will receive—“At SalesCo, we help product managers at financial services companies implement agile new product development practices.” The benefit should be stated at the level relevant to the prospect as determined by your Ideal Prospect Persona. Here, we used “implement agile new product development practices.” However, if we were speaking to the CEO, we would frame it at a higher level: “increase revenue from new products.” After sharing why we do what we do, we explain how we do it: “by providing a software platform along with services and training.” Then we conclude the value pitch step with relevant proof in the form of a very high level case study: “In fact, we just helped another Fortune 50 financial services company increase its percentage of revenue from new products to 30 percent from 20 percent.” Social proof is extremely effective since it triggers loss aversion; people do not want to be left out of an opportunity or left behind their competitors.

Finally, we move to the objective. Every call and every meeting needs to have an objective. In most business-to-business selling situations, attempting a one-call close is ill advised. Instead, our objective is to secure a meeting. We acknowledge that the prospect is busy, ask for just 10 minutes to accomplish two things: discuss his business and share some of our ideas. This shows we are not out to present a standard pitch deck to them; rather, we are curious about his business and interested in having a true dialogue to determine if we are a fit.

(Though rare, going for the close does work sometimes. For instance, we ran across a firm that sells Internet services to single-location restaurants that not only gives owners their own website but also integrates that website with popular dining review sites like Yelp. When the price is low enough, the owner busy enough, and the value proposition high enough, a one-call close works well.)

One should expect objections. Here is how we would respond to the most common ones:

Objection: I’m really busy right now.

Response: I know you are busy, so I’ll be brief.

Objection: Can you call me back next week (or next month)?

Response: Sure. Let’s put a time on the calendar to reconnect. Would (specific time) on (specific day) work for you?

Objection: OK, why don’t you send me some information via e-mail and I’ll have a look.

Response: Sure, I’ll send you some information. Since we have a lot of material, can you give me an idea of what might be most helpful? Followed by: And let’s schedule a quick follow-up call since people find it more valuable to hear how this works given their specific needs.

Objection: We already have an internal (or external) solution.

Response: That’s excellent since many of our clients find that we complement the great tools they already have. Which ones are you using?

Objection: I have no budget.

Response: Understood. I’m really just looking to have an introductory conversation and don’t expect you to have budget right now. I’d like to understand your needs. If you see value after we meet, then I can partner with you to bring the opportunity to your colleagues.

Objection: This sounds expensive.

Response: Yes, I completely understand. I’m focused on my clients’ return on investment. Let’s take time to figure out if this might be valuable first. Then we can talk about price. (Note: The previous sentence is also the answer to someone who asks about price too early.) Or ask: Is this a value issue or a budget issue?

At a high level, the responses above follow the golden rule of improvisational comedy: “Yes, and . . .” More specifically, objection handling follows a general pattern. First, pause briefly to think. Even though the silence may feel awkward to you, the prospect either will not notice or will appreciate that you are taking the time to process what he said. Second, acknowledge the objection with empathy. To acknowledge does not necessarily mean to agree; it means to understand. In certain circumstances, saying, “That is a great question” works well. Third, ask probing questions to isolate the issue. Consider asking, “Why do you feel that way?” Fourth, handle the isolated objection. While there are many ways to do this (entire books have been written on the subject), our go-to approach is to share a specific case study of a similar client with the same objection who realized significant value. Fifth and finally, confirm that you have addressed the prospect’s concern. Ask, “Did I answer your question fully?” Then pause. You need to make sure the objection is closed so that it does not linger in the prospect’s mind and resurface.

If a prospect pushes back three times, then we relent and move into referral mode: “It sounds like you are really busy, or I may not have done a great job of explaining how we can help you. Is there someone on your team I could speak with who could report back to you?”

Touch 6, Day 11, E-mail, CTA: Aware to Interested Asset Click

and

Touch 7, Day 13, E-mail, CTA: Interested to Evaluating Asset Click

Touches 6 and 7 are identical in construction to touch 3 so we will not draw out this chapter with e-mail templates. Instead, we summarize what each touch needs to accomplish.

Touch 6 serves as a signpost indicating that the prospect has progressed to the interested stage. Like touch 3, this touch frames a problem-solution (via obstacle, outcome, and opportunity) and drives a call to action in the form of an asset click. However, this time the content served up might be a topical report, e-book, diagnostic tool, or thematic webinar. It is also appropriate for the salesperson to gently begin to develop awareness of her company and its products.

Touch 7 serves as a signpost indicating the prospect may be evaluating the salesperson’s company and its products. This is the opportunity to share case studies, testimonials, product reviews, product demo videos, and product comparison charts. Time permitting, the salesperson should lightly customize the e-mail to demonstrate research on and awareness of the prospect’s company and the specific business challenges it faces.

Touch 8, Day 18, E-mail, CTA: Secure a Meeting

and

Touch 9, Day 20, Phone, CTA: Secure a Meeting

Touches 8 and 9 are a complementary pair like touches 4 and 5, albeit with differences in the timing gap and in content. The final two touches execute what is colloquially known as a “Hail Mary” or “breakup,” giving the prospect one last chance to reply. Here we wait two days between touches rather than doing them on the same day to let the feeling of lost opportunity sink in.

In case you think option 3 is not real, it is from an actual e-mail received by one of the authors. In fact, the e-mail even included a very cute photograph of said animal. Since that was a last-ditch effort, the salesperson had little to lose and a lot to gain by adding a touch of humor. We quite like the reply with “1,” “2,” or “3” which makes it incredibly easy for the prospect to engage.

If the above e-mail does not suit your fancy, here is one that is a little more formal yet carries a tone of self-pity. Also, notice we switched the closing from “Please advise” to “Just let me know either way,” which at least one of our clients has found to be effective.

Using Social Selling Tools Tactfully

You likely noticed that all of the touches we walked through relied on phone and e-mail. What about engaging prospects via social media channels?

For starters, we think social media is more valuable as a research tool than as an outreach tool. LinkedIn and, to a lesser extent, Twitter are valuable for discovering professional interests and mutual connections. Those two channels plus Facebook also provide a glimpse into your prospects’ personal and social interests. Given how much it is possible to learn about people from their digital tracks, remember to exercise restraint so as not to be off-putting.

We find solicitations via social media, including and especially LinkedIn, highly irritating. Following the “advise unto others as you would advise unto yourself” mantra, we recommend using LinkedIn with a light touch. Following SalesLoft’s best practice (mentioned elsewhere in the book), consider waiting to connect on LinkedIn until after you have received an e-mail reply or reached the person on the phone. And when you do connect, replace LinkedIn’s standard “I’d like to join your LinkedIn network” invitation with personalized text. As long as you are not selling or asking for a meeting, connecting on LinkedIn at the middle or end of a cadence is an acceptable next-best practice.

We recommend spending 30 to 60 minutes per day establishing a professional presence on social media. Blog, share, answer questions, and comment thoughtfully on others’ contributions, particularly those of your ideal prospects. Additionally, spend time polishing your LinkedIn profile because prospects will check you out to see if they can trust you. Some of the more important elements of the profile include your photo, your professional headline, your skills, and especially your recommendations. Avoid boasting of your sales acumen, and instead focus on the value you bring to clients. Last, with respect to recommendations, give and ye shall receive.

Even with increasingly impressive out-of-the-box functionality available from most CRM vendors, no human being could successfully execute overlapping, multichannel, multitouch campaigns. Fortunately, an ecosystem of workflow tools has emerged that integrates seamlessly with most major platforms. For the Working Queue, our clients have had success with three in particular: InsideSales.com, Salesloft Cadence, and Velocify.

If the prospect does not reply after all this work, the contact should be moved to the No Response or Interest contact status and put back into a slow-drip nurturing cycle for (re-)activation.

However, if the prospect does reply and a first meeting is scheduled, the salesperson should advance the contact status to Qualifying, the subject of the next chapter.