Tag Archives: prospects

5 Roadblocks preventing clients from receiving your emails

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One of the biggest challenges of sending B2B (Business to Business) emails is ensuring that the prospect on the other end will actually receive it. With so many companies (and individuals for that matter) being flooded by emails on a daily basis, safeguards have been placed to prevent unsolicited emails from coming through.

As a marketing or salesperson who wants to increase your bottom line, what are you supposed to do? Sure, you can make cold calls. Nothing wrong with that. But with voicemails, caller IDs, and receptionists (gatekeepers) blocking your way, cold calling just isn’t your only option these days.

Yes, you could send direct marketing pieces. Maybe a nice card with a handwritten message enclosing your business card. Or, you could send swag like a mouse pad or magnet with your company’s contact information and logo. But there is no guarantee that your prospect will read your information much less open up the envelope.

So what to do? You must use a combination of tactics. Cold calls, Check. Leaving voicemail messages, Check. Sending direct marketing pieces, Check. And….also sending emails. Check.

Real Magnet, a marketing automation company, outlines several challenges that you face when sending emails to your prospects. In the video below, the Bethesda based company mentioned 4 hurdles we all have to overcome –

1). Too many domains – while B2C  (Business to Customers) clients only have a few major domains, e.g., aol.com or gmail.com, B2B clients have thousands of different domains. Making sure you have the right domain is a major task in itself.

2). Spam filters – even if you have the right email address with the correct domain, you still must break through spam filters. There are many spam filters on the market, including Microsoft Exchange, Barracuda, and McAfee, to name just a few.

3). Capacity varies – While most B2C clients will accept emails quickly, B2B clients may have strict limitations on how many emails they will accept at a given time. This is especially true for large and popular companies that you are trying to target.

4). Message Placement – even if your email reaches the prospect, there is no guarantee that it will reach the inbox. In some cases, your email may end up in a spam or quarantine folder. I dealt with this situation firsthand; for example, even if both the prospect and I know each other, and have been speaking to one another, I would still find my emails ending up in his spam folder. After a few phone calls, the prospect would eventually adjust his server to accept my future emails.

And I will add one more problem below –

5). Using the wrong email address – It happens. We think we wrote down the correct email, but then we receive a bounce back. No worries. Just review your notes and resend the email again.

While Red Magnet is obviously promoting its own tool, I believe the video below does a great job discussing in more detail the problems we all face when sending emails.

Please watch the video below –

Would you send the same e-mail three times?

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Would you send the same email to a prospect three times?

That is what one salesperson suggested doing recently in a discussion on a sales LinkedIn discussion board.

My answer – no. Here’s why –

It makes you look lazy and unprofessional. Look, I know we are all busy. You have lots of calls to make. You may have a tight quota to achieve. But it only takes a few minutes to reword an e-mail. Maybe add something of value, like a white paper, case study or an interesting article that may apply to your prospect. But whatever you do, take a few extra minutes to make a few changes before sending out another email to the same prospect.

Related to this, recently someone sent me an e-mail to my LinkedIn profile asking me if I would be interested in a lead generation tool. I politely replied that this was something that I wouldn’t be interested in, but since we are both in sales, I requested that we connect with each other and stay in touch. She accepted my connection request.

And then – amazingly – she sent me the same e-mail again about the lead generation tool – after I already told her that I wasn’t interested in it. No change in the wording!

Was she lazy? Was she busy? Didn’t she even read my e-mail? Who knows. But it was all very improper.

Take a few minutes and reword your email. Your prospect will be grateful.

How to prepare for a trade show

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You paid your dues. You worked hard in the inside sales department. Now it’s your turn to join some of the senior sales reps to your first trade show with the company. Great! But wait – how do you prepare for a trade show?

Besides making a list of what to pack and places to see while attending the show, you need to come up with a game plan. Hopefully, your company has attended enough trade shows that they have a good sales and marketing plan in place. But what about you – the first-timer? How are you going to be successful? How are you going to obtain good leads and shine in front of your colleagues? How are you going to look good in front of your prospects and clients?

Here are some tips –

1). Research the show – study the agenda, workshops, and speakers. Get a clear sense of the type of prospects who will be attending the show. Also, review YouTube clips or videos of previous shows. These days, most show organizers post videos of past shows to promote the event, and to encourage more attendance and exhibitors for future shows.

2). Talk to your colleagues – get their advice on how to do well at the show.

3). Notify your clients and prospects that you are attending the show – yes, you expect your employer to announce that your company will exhibit at the show, but you need to take a more “hands-on” approach. You could send out a short email to your clients and prospects announcing that you will be attending the event, and encourage them to stop by. You could casually trade show exhibit boothbring it up in conversations.

4). Schedule important meetings – if you have major clients or prospects that you know will be attending the event, schedule a meeting with them while at the show. Or better yet, invite them out to dinner.

5). Ask your prospects and clients for advice – if you know that some of your prospects and clients will be attending the show, ask them for their advice. What do they hope to get out of the show? Why are they attending the event? And more importantly, is there anything you can do to help them while they are at the show?

6). Find out if your competitors are attending the show – for the record, I really don’t worry about competitors – I worry about making sure I’m doing a good job for my clients. With that said, it doesn’t hurt to know if your competitors are attending or not. This way you can be prepared if someone comes up to you during a show and says “your competitor at the booth two rows down claims your product isn’t any good, what do you have to say about that?” Hopefully, you have been in sales long enough to know how to handle this question.

You also need to be prepared if your competitors come to your booth. Now, hopefully, your competitors will be professional and polite. I’ve attended trade shows will competitors will stop by briefly at our booth, shake hands, and wish us well. In short, we exchange some pleasantries, and then we go about our business. On the other hand, I’ve attended a couple of events where competitors will act like total jerks. In that situation, you need to remain cool, be polite, but assertive enough to ask them to leave. After all, you have a limited time to gather leads, so wasting it with competitors is not good time management nor good business.

I hope my tips are helpful.  Please let me know if you have any tips that you would like to share.
photo credit: MedicalTourismAssociation via photopin cc

Good questions to ask during Trade Shows

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What is the best way to find good prospects during a trade show?

It all begins on the exhibit floor. When a prospect arrives at your booth, don’t treat him like a side of beef ready to be cooked.

Don’t treat attendees like they are a side of beef.

Instead, treat him like a human being. Your goal is to engage in a conversation with the prospect and determine his needs and interests. Remember, the prospect doesn’t care about your products, he only cares about his problems and how you can help him.

Some good opening questions are –

1). Why are you attending this trade show?

2). What do you hope to gain from attending this show?

3). Is there anything that catches your eye in our booth?

4). Can you tell me a little about what you do and some of the problems are you trying to solve at your company?

5). How is the show?

By asking some open-ended questions like the above, you can determine fairly quickly if you are dealing with a serious prospect, or just a sovereign hunter looking for swag. It also helps you create rapport.

Time is very critical at a show. You have to look at a trade show from the prospect’s point of view. There may be literary hundreds of booths for him to visit. He is spending most of his day walking from booth to booth listening to sales pitches and watching presentations. So you have to determine his needs and problems quickly, gain his interest, and most important of all, try to arrange a phone conference or meeting with him after the show. This is not the time to try to hard-sell the prospect. It is extremely rare that a prospect will make a buying decision on the spot. This is especially true if you are selling services or products with a long sales cycle.

As a general rule, the longer you speak to a prospect at a show, the better chance you will have to continue the conversation after the event. And if the prospect is asking you a lot of questions and showing interest, that’s definitely a good sign.

From your point of view, you will only work at your exhibit booth for two or three days max. On top of that, you will be taking some breaks or going to lunch. So you need to use your time wisely and try to engage with as many serious prospects as you can.

Finding good prospects at a trade show isn’t difficult. You just need to be patient, ask good qualifying questions, quickly establish rapport, and arrange an appointment after the show.

What would you do with 10,000 sales leads? Part 2

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In part 1 of this post, I asked the question “What would you do with 10,000 sales leads?” In part 2, I will provide you with more of my suggestions.

6). Do some research. Prior to making a cold call, do some quick research on your prospect. You don’t have to be a professional research associate. Just take a few minutes to read the prospect’s profile on LinkedIn or some other site. What is his title? What are his responsibilities? Can you find a hook, e.g., did he work for a company that is now your client? Or, did you find an article that his company is having a problem that your service can solve?

7). Develop a cold calling script. As a rule, I’m not a big fan of using scripts. However, when you are new to an industry, it’s always helpful to have a script handy when making first-time calls. Eventually, you will develop your own natural voice, and throw the script away.

Below is a list where you can find sample cold calling scripts –

www.profitbuilders.com
blog.close.io
cdn2.hubspot.net

8). Develop a voice mail script. What type of message are you going to leave if you don’t reach the prospect? The last thing you want to do is embarrass yourself by leaving a fumbling or long message that screams out “please delete me.” You need to know in advance what you are going to say. Everyone has their own variations. Just use your natural voice, but sound confident and strong at the same time.

Below is a list where you can find sample voice mail scripts –

www.salesgravy.com
blogs.salesforce.com
sales.about.com

9). What is your goal? Why are you calling prospects? In the case of our young salesperson, his goal was to set appointments for his company’s consultants. Once the appointment was set, the consultants would do the heavy lifting. You may have a different goal. Maybe you want the prospect to trial your service for 30 days. Maybe you want the prospect to watch a demo. Maybe you want to qualify the prospect to determine if he needs your service. Regardless of the reason, have a goal in mind. You don’t want to fall into what’s known in the industry as the “busy fool syndrome,”  i.e., doing a lot of make-work and activities that don’t lead to any concrete results.

For example, I once worked for a company that had a very strict outbound call policy – you were required to make at least 50 calls a day. However, there was one salesperson who almost consistently didn’t meet his call quota, but he always generated more sales than the rest of the sales team. His secret? He did some research before making calls and he had a set goal in mind for each call he made. (Despite his success, he has still fired anyway for not meeting his daily call quota).

Do you want to be a busy fool or a successful salesperson? Have a goal in mind.

making sales calls10) Start making phone calls. OK, you have a client profile in place. You have reviewed your prospect list and will begin targeting who you consider being the best prospects that meet your client profile. You have cold call and voice mail scripts in place. You know what your goal is. You also know that you need to do some quick research before making each call.

Now comes the fun part – making phone calls.

I can write several posts on how to make cold calls (which I will later). But for this post, let me give you a quick and dirty approach.

First, the best time to reach prospects is early in the morning and after work. This way you will bypass the gatekeeper. Sure, you can leave voice mail messages, but your ultimate goal is to talk to a live person.

Second, there is a big debate in the sales community on how many attempts you make, but depending on the industry you are in, and the types of services you are selling, I would make at least 6 attempts – but spread those attempts out over a period of time. Don’t be a pest and call every day. That’s rude and unprofessional. And when I mention attempts, I’m also including sending emails and sending direct marketing material.

Third, don’t just rely on phone calls. Send emails too. Keep the emails short and to the point. Offer some value. Maybe attach a case study, white paper or an interesting article that is related to your prospect.

Fourth, in some cases, send some printed material, and include swag – may be a magnet, a pen, a mouse pad or something with your company’s name and contact information.

Fifth, after making several attempts, if you are not getting anywhere, put them on your back burner call backlist, and circle back in a month or six months (depending on the size of your prospect).

It would also be a good idea to have your employer or someone senior listen in to some of your calls and voicemails. They can offer you some valuable advice and pointers to help you.

In part 3 of this post, I will make suggestions on social media strategies.

What would you do with 10,000 sales leads? Part 1

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What would you do if you received 10,000 sales leads to call?

That’s exactly what happened to a young salesman who started working for an environmental consulting firm in Maryland a few months ago. He was the only salesperson – and probably the first one ever hired – by the firm. In the past, the firm probably relied mostly on referrals, word-of-mouth, and bids to obtain business. Now, the firm decided to become more proactive and mount a cold calling campaign to obtain more customers.

making cold calls in salesAfter making several cold calls for a few weeks, the salesman became frustrated. He wasn’t reaching anyone and his prospects were not returning his phone calls. Furthermore, it appears based on his company’s website, that they didn’t offer any marketing content to share with others, and had no social media presence. With that in mind, the salesman decided to post his problem on a LinkedIn sales discussion group and requested our help.

What would you do in his situation?

Here are my suggestions –

1). Develop a client profile. Before making any cold calls, examine your existing customers. Why are they buying from you? Why do they like your services? Do you see any patterns in the types of customers using your services? Do your customers fall into specific categories, e.g., small, mid-size or large companies? Do you see a pattern in the geographic locations, e.g., more Northeastern vs. fewer Southern-based customers? What are the positions of the people who are using your services? Are they C-Level or lower?

2). Talk to your top customers. Make a list of about 10 to 20 of your largest and best customers and talk to them. Why do they like your services? What recommendations would they provide on how to persuade prospects to order from you? What attracted them to your company? This doesn’t have to be a long process. Maybe 30 minutes per customer tops. Your goal is to gather ammunition that you can use when making cold calls. For example, if a prospect doesn’t want to order from you, you may say “well, some of our top customers had similar problems like yours, but once they began to using our services, they really appreciated what we could do for them.” Also, if you don’t already have these, now would be a good time to gather some testimonials that you can display on your website. And finally, by talking to your top customers, it will give you a better understanding of your industry and how your company helps its clients.

3). Talk to your employer. What advice can your employer offer you to help you make better cold calls? What are some of the common problems or pain points faced by prospects in their industry?

4). Know your industry. Sure, you may be new to the industry. You may not know all of the buzz words or technical phrases yet. Well, start learning. Ask your employer for advice on which industry publications and blogs you should follow and read on a regular basis. You don’t have to be an expert in the industry – but just know enough so that you don’t embarrass yourself when speaking to a prospect. Also, while studying your industry, make note of any potential prospects to contact later.

5). Review your prospect list. Now that you have a good understanding of your existing clients and industry, review your prospect list. Check off the prospects that you feel have the highest potential for ordering from you.

In part 2 of this post, I will continue listing my suggestions.