It’s spring, which calls for spring cleaning, of sorts: it’s time to freshen up our prospecting repertoire. Over the fall and winter, we’ve faced many challenges with prospecting. Of course, we persistent, relentless salespeople don’t give up easily: we’ve come up with workarounds—and they’ve succeeded! According to a recent DoubleDigit Sales survey, 74% of us plan to continue using these new prospecting tactics in the future. Today we’re examining the current sales environment and offering prospecting ideas to help you secure more meetings right now.
Get “social”
You may not be having many in-person meetings yet, but you have a great tool for connecting with prospects regularly: social media. Share articles and posts from your company that are meaningful to you and your clients and highlight an idea from the post that will be thought-provoking or valuable to your prospects. Also, share posts from your clients that you like; tell your network what value you got from their post, and don’t forget to thank your client for the insights.
Social media is an excellent one-to-one prospecting tool, too. Write to prospects directly inside the social media platform. Forward content that caught your attention and explain why you thought they would find it interesting. Even on social media platforms, personalized messages can have a great impact and ensure that you are staying connected and top of mind.
Finally, set aside time every day to comment on posts shared by your prospects. This is an excellent way to have a conversation with them that they start.
To phone, or not to phone. Here is the answer:
The phone has been a little-used prospecting tool for the past two years. Why? We’ve shied away from phoning someone who’s working in a home office because it feels intrusive. What’s coming to light now is hybrid work environments are the new reality, so it’s time to embrace the change and start phone prospecting again! What’s more, with so few of your competitors using the phone, you’ll be sure to stand out with your warm and friendly voice.
Get creative with email
Are you hearing crickets after you hit send on your emails? It’s happening to many of us. The question is, what can you say in your email to earn your prospect’s time and attention? Our suggestion is to be creative about how you personalize what you’re writing. Try something different with your email to capture a prospect’s head and heart and elicit a response.
Think: what do you know about them, what can you share to make the email feel like it’s truly from you, and can you add a personal anecdote or embed a photo or visual (that’s relevant to the conversation, of course). This approach works because it’s memorable, relatable, and feels like it’s from a real person.
Find your motivation and discipline
There’s a saying we love at DDS: motivation gets you to the starting block, and discipline gets you across the finish line. Prospecting is one of those tasks that tend to get put off, so you need to find ways to motivate and keep yourself disciplined. One-offs will never get the meeting you want. Persistence is critical to success.
Ideas to help motivation:
- Set a goal (like 10 calls before 10am)
- Create a competition with your colleagues
- Craft a message you are excited about, and then prospect.
- Treat yourself when you get your calls done, like a latte, a walk, or whatever is motivating for you
- Post a quote on your wall to remind yourself what you’re trying to achieve
Ideas for discipline:
- Make a list of 10 reach outs you want to make the day before, then start your day doing them
- Block your calendar twice/week for 2 hours for prospecting
- Create a system for being persistent with prospecting, where you are reaching out to your prospects regularly
- Map a strategy that balances different tools and approaches for your prospecting list (email, phone, social media) and stick to it
- Read a book or listen to a podcast about creating habits/discipline
While we wait for in-person conferences, coffees and golf games to return (and boost our prospecting activities), try one or two of these tactics. For best results, add new tactics one at a time to your routine so they become part of your prospecting cadence. Combined with the rising buyer confidence and return to workplaces, spring/summer 2022 is full of exciting potential. We’d love to hear your experience trying these prospecting approaches, so please write to us on LinkedIn to share.