How To Approach Prospects: Winning Clients

1. Class Introduction: Hello. It's been a very long time, but welcome back. I found some more time in what has been an incredibly hectic schedule over the last 67 months. And so I thought I would come back and continue with my sales basics run of lessons. So far we've had one lesson on the cell cycle. The theories that have built the cell cycle, the concepts within the cell cycle. And then how did they actually py, being out there in front of prospects and clients selling. We then moved on to a second lesson which is all around how do you find prospects? Which surprisingly is actually one of the most common questions that any salesperson has is, who do I know who I'm going after? Not every business has a list of thousands of businesses or individuals that would have a need or an issue that would make the solution that is being sold valuable. Actually, a lot of businesses work in niches and finding prospects that would have, would find value in your product or service can be slightly more challenging. So we discussed the man as the tools and the theories that are available that you can use to go out and find prospects and good prospects and qualified prospects being the key word. Today we're moving on to the next step in what is the sales cycle? Well, to a degree, at least, we're going to bring together the research element and then the approach element of reaching out to a prospect. So today we're gonna be focusing more on cold prospects because being quite candid, they are the more challenging type of prospect to approach, whether that be an individual or a business. We will be touching on warm prospects because it is still valuable to be considering those. And a lot of the theories and concepts and strategies that we'll be talking about Around cold prospects will still apply to warm prospects who will normally be more receptive to any form of approach. So if you're only interested in warm prospects, this will still be very valuable to you and I think there's still a lot that you can obtain from this lesson. But of course, as most of us will be looking for, we're gonna be focusing more on cold prospects. How do you move those cold prospects into warm prospects? And if a warm prospects and clients were going through some theories around how to research prospects, why we researched and what we're looking for while we researched them. Then starting to think about how we would approach them the manner, whether it be email, an introduction to cold call, an event. There's many, many different ways you can think about approaching a cold prospect. And then from there, once you've done the approach, what are we going to be thinking about while we're approaching what the employee's information we want to convey when approaching. What message do we want to leave them with when we walk away from they're going to leave the introduction here. It's going to be a very broad lesson all around the approach of cold prospects and some of the best practices that you can bring into your selling lives to hopefully improve your success. 2. Researching Your Prospects: Right, So firstly, we're gonna be talking about how do we research our prospects. As from the previous lesson, what we would have come out with is either a list of, well firstly, a list of organizations, businesses that you believe your product or service would be valuable to them. That would sell the problem, bring them a solution. Drive efficiency, drive revenue, whatever it may be retained staff through too. Fixing a building, looking at fleets of vehicles, sending your SOW services, selling and marketing services, whatever it may be. You've found a list of organizations that you think you could add value to or solve problems and deliver solutions. If you haven't got that yet, I'd recommend jumping back a lesson and watching the how to prospect. And then come back here and we'll press on. So you have your list of organizations. The first step to think about then is who, who do I want to contact? This will be, again, as usual folks on the B-to-B landscape rather than business to consumer. But of course, there is still links between how you would approach in a B2C environment and how you'd approach the B2B environment. But again, I'll always be giving my perspective, which is much more focused on B2B. As I have a limited amount of B2C sales experience. 3. Discovering Your Buyers: So that's very, very important when you're looking to approach any business because businesses contain buyers. Buyers for small businesses will typically be the same group of people and that's either the business directors, the senior managers, or if your product is very niche, the head of the head of the department, your product directly relates to if you're a marketing professional and you're looking to sell your marketing services, then the marketing department, or possibly the sales and marketing department or the sound department, would be the most relevant. And you need to research to find out what would be the most appropriate. Now for larger organizations, it becomes more complex because there could well be more than one buyer or more than one stakeholder in the buying group that has to buy into your product or service to sign off and say Actually yes, this will deliver our business a lot of value or solve some of our problems, or hopefully both. So how do you research those? Now with all of this we've touched on already in the previous lessons, so we won't go into too much depth. But I just want to reiterate that. It's very important when you're approaching a prospect. You are approaching the individual within the organization, within the business. That is the most relevant. Now there's various ways you can do this. The easiest if you have it available is LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which I spoke about in my last lesson. A fantastic tool from LinkedIn that helps your prospect in a more targeted manner to the most relevant individuals into business. This is most valuable when you're looking at large corporates, multinationals, or businesses that are in the thousands of employees. If you're coming down a level to the middle market, to the SME space. This tool is a little bit less value, less valuable, sorry. And that's frankly because there are less individuals that could be responsible for the purchasing. So firstly, corporates, as I say, if you're looking to sell your marketing services, then consider using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to look at the lead marketers, head of marketing department, whatever it may be in your target organization. If you're looking at them or middle market space, SME space, is quite possible that they will not be an individual whose role is tailored exactly to what you're offering. A head of marketing might be head of distribution, of sales, might be head of distribution. I'm head of facilities, could be ahead ahead of real estate. You've got to be flexible and think creatively about what individual could be the most suitable. Because of course, drop rows are not always consistent from business to business. In that middle market and SME space. It's also possible that the buying group will just be the group of directors or senior managers or the business owner. So a lot of businesses with a shop front, whether the restaurant, dentist, estate agent, a physical shop front that people walk into. These types of businesses will have a manager. Would that be a store manager, a restaurant manager, Jim manager of Business Manager, Commercial Manager, who will be present in that in that property. And they will lead that said, individual individual store or individual office or individual business. If it's a single office location, that could well be where your head by and that could be the bile that makes the decisions. That could be the person that signs off on the budget to pay for your product or service. Or it could also just be a director. I see a owner of the smaller the business becomes, the less valuable service like LinkedIn Sales Navigator will be, because it's an expensive resource for these smaller middle market SME businesses. Even visiting the store will be more efficient because you can ask in person, you can pick up the phone and say, Who would be the best person to talk to about x, whatever you're looking to propose or offer to this business. Or even better if you're able to do research on the company because they have a website, they are on the government registered businesses. You can see the directors in that fashion is going out and doing your research and finding out who you want to talk to, Starting with the business owner and working down. If you can't be entirely sure for an SME or middle market business, or a director, or a head of sales or, or head buyer or head of procurement, whoever may be available on the website, start with an individual rather than going broad and work for there. So again, we've touched on this before. We go into a lot more depth around finding what individual to go for in the previous lessons. So I'm going to leave it there. If you need more advice, more coaching around how to find the correct individual to approach. Do jump back to the previous lesson, go through that. And then as I said just before, now jump back in at this point and press on. 4. Choosing Your Method Of Approach: Okay, So now it's about deciding what method of approach to go for. Now, you can have done all the research available. You could have found every answer, every piece of information out there that would make you the most prepared to possibly could be the most amo to the most ready to go out there and attack this prospect and deliver your offering in the best manner possible. If in the unfortunate event, then you choose a method of approach that isn't right, either for the individual, for the business, or actually in relation to what you're offering. You may still get nowhere. Doesn't necessarily mean you will never get anywhere. But that first hurdle will hold you up and stop you. That might be a ignored email that could be hung up, phone call, that could be anything. So there are many different types of ways or manners in which you can approach whatever word you want to use to approach a cold prospect. The easiest. In my opinion, the most lazy is a cold email to a German of address. An absolute minimum. You want to be finding out that individuals contact details. Now, always bear in mind local rules and regulation around cold email approaches. Gdpr in Europe, always bad heart, mind and make sure it was being compliant. But at least an absolute minimum, you need to find that individual that is going to be the most relevant to the product or solution you're offering. Send them a personal tailored bespoke email for their business, for the issues they may have, and for the value that your product or service may bring them unexplained, why it's relevant to them. No blanket email. Hi, I'm Sam. I've got this fantastic solution for walking upstairs faster. Now is interested in that. Now if you say I've got this fantastic solution for walking upstairs faster and safer, your employees will get in and out of the building faster. We'll see efficiency rays will see energy saved. We'll see morale raised, x, y, and z. Be creative. What value could your product bring that it's a really silly product, if you will, that because it about woken up some stairs going to lift. That is the fast way of walking upstairs. Why does this exist that exact reason? But be creative and bespoke? And think about how your first business might actually have a slightly different need, an, a slightly different tailoring for the product or service you're offering them. The second business, if one's an estate agent and one's a gym, one selling houses and one is looking to sell memberships. That's very different. High ticket sales, few and far between gym memberships, subscription services, lower value, higher turnover. So you've got to consider that. And you've got to shape the reasons and the values and the solutions that your product will bring to suit their business model. Now, some may say cold emails on that successful. The majority of them go into your spam inbox, the metro to move or ignored. It's incredibly challenging to get a person to respond to a coding now because it's reliant on them opening the email. Funny, that interesting. They go, Yes, I want to read this, which is unlikely. And two, I want to think about how it might actually helped me very challenging. Then three, actually, then being that interested in thinking your product is that valuable? That they're going to be the pickup, the phone, or write you an e-mail response, which in a busy person's schedule is going to be one to five per cent of the time. Being completely realistic. You may think your product is amazing, groundbreaking, and you have to be passionate about what you're doing and passionate about what you're selling. But others won't always share that passion. It's on you to show them why they should be passionate and why they should care about the product. And a short blanket copy and paste code e-mail isn't gonna do that. If you set on sending emails, which I would always advise that they are better approaches, better methods you could take an absolute minimum, make sure every single email is tailored, spoke grammatically correct, has a call to action, whether it be a Calendly link to they can book a call with you in two or three clicks or a pole or a yes-no response box or link they can go to so you can track if they've engaged with the e-mail. You've got to make sure that e-mail has something in it that's going to make them act upon so you know that they have an interest because that's all about moving that cold lead to a warm lead. 5. Cold Calling: Cold calling. Cold calling is to be completely candid, frowned upon in a lot of places and a lot of industries. But most individuals, and that's frankly because cold calls can be irritating, annoying. There was come at the wrong time. You'd be denied. Your phone will be ringing, you'll be in a meeting, your phone will be ringing. You jump out to pick up the call and someone looking to sell you a product that you've never shown an interest in, a phone upgrade, an upgrade to your team, your TV subscription, something that isn't relevant or pertinent to what you're doing at that very moment when the phone rings. And you've got to bear that in mind. You've got to think, how do I feel when I get a cold phone call from someone I don't know, offering me a product that at the moment I don't think I'm interested in or need or want. And the answer will always be rather, rather irritated. When you're thinking about cold calling, when you're considering, considering it, sorry, there's a method of approach for your cold prospects. You've got to bear that in mind. Does cold calling work? Yes, 100 per cent. Of course it does. It's one of the most used methods for warming up cold prospects across all industries. All sizes of organization, from big multinationals to small five-person businesses to individual self traders. Cold calling is still used across the board. I've done it myself. It's very difficult. Either lot respect people that good at it. But there is a right and a wrong way of cold calling you. You will know what is right and what is running from the cold calls, you would have received. Some are aggressive. So I'm showing no consideration field time. Some cannot even tell you why they are calling and why it's relevant to you. Cold calling is a fine art. Again, has many links to a cold email. If you're cold calling an organization, you will have a much higher success rate if you know the direct number of the individual you want to talk to. If you don't know that the name of the individual wants to talk to when you get through that switchboard, when you get through to reception, when you get through to whoever it may be that picks up that phone. Could be someone front of house from restaurant to be front of house. In a gym. It could be a reception desk. At a corporate office, it could be anything. But you've got to know little with confidence. A request to talk to an individual, the individual that is most relevant to what you're offering. If you pick up the phone. And I referenced this not too long ago during this lesson. If you pick up the phone and say to a small business, Hello, I'd like to talk to someone about your plumbing or who would be most relevant to talk to you about installing solar panels on your building, or who would be most relevant to talk to about your current banking provider? Absolutely anything. The response will always be, why do you want to add that? And secondly, why should I tell you that? They might not say that wherever you call probably won't be as bond as I'm being. But that thought we'll go through their head. If you pick up the phone and go. Hello, I want to talk to Jane x, whatever I surname is your commercial manager, your head of HR, head of facilities. And they say, oh yeah, no problem. Why is that? And you can say, I want to talk Jane about how good your building would be to have panels installed. Just a very random example when I'm picking out different examples because I want this to be as relevant to everyone as it possibly could be. Rather than just going down the route, the route that I know. You will have a much higher success rate because the person that picks up the phone will fill your confidence. They will, they will feel that you deserve. Deserve isn't the right word. But if you know who you want to talk to and the person picks up the phone, you come across less salesy. You come across that you've done your research, you've come across it, you know, the business. And the moment you are transferred, your throat your through the what they call gatekeeper is always a gatekeeper when you're performing code calls, unless you know the direct number of the individual you want to talk to. Which is rare. Because individuals that work for these businesses that would be targets for cold calls for cold emails. Obviously don't share their information to why the otherwise I'd be bombarded all the time with cold calls, cold emails, and people don't want that right. So you pick up the phone you are to the individual that you want to talk to. You tell them where you're from. Hi, I'm Sam from x. I want to talk to x because it's because this would be most relevant to this person. Whatever it may be. Hi, I'm Stan. I worked for sam marketing and I want to talk to your head of marketing about are very interesting new approach to social media marketing that sounds very confident rather than pick up the phone and saying, hi, please talk to your marketing department. Why do you want to talk to the marketing department? Because people don't call up and just ask talk to the marketing department. It's not like you're calling us into talk to customer service or someone that the general public we want to reach out to your asking for a specific department or business department. And you will not invoke confidence in the person that picks up the phone to you. So bear that in mind. 6. Approaching Via LinkedIn: Linkedin, one of my most used for most favorite methods of approach for cold prospects. There's a handful of reasons why. The first one is they can see who you are. Yes, you need to have a good LinkedIn profile. Yes, it needs to be up-to-date. Yes, you need to be able to appreciate that your LinkedIn profile is essentially your CV. Not saving in the standard context Huck apply for a job. But if you reach out to, I'm going to stick with the same example. The head of marketing at an organisation that you're looking to sell your social media services to. Your CV says, Head of Business Development at social media agency X or ONOFF social media media agency x. You put five to ten years experience in marketing and media. And you've got a very good interesting statement at the beginning of your profile around while you're working media and while you work in marketing, your experience, what you do day to day, the types of clients you look after. That in itself is one form of social proof. If you've heard that concept before. Social proof, very, very, very common term in marketing, especially in social media marketing now, where social media followers comments. If you're releasing your product and you've got hundreds and hundreds of people coming and going, Oh, this is amazing. I absolutely loved it, worked incredibly, a bit like an Amazon review, right? That social proof. Your LinkedIn profile essentially works in the same way. Because you're able to pick up, instead of picking up the phone and saying, this is me, this is what I do. This is what I worked for, this is what I'm good at it. This is what's done for other people which could take ten to 15 minutes. Someone can scan through your LinkedIn profile after get a little notification that you want to connect with them or send them a message and go. Actually, yes, this person could be valuable for me to know or go. I'm not sure actually, I want to connect with this person. But again, this is all caveat by the need to have a good LinkedIn profile. If you have already out of date LinkedIn profile. That doesn't explain what you do. Isn't professional, doesn't have a nice photo that shows who you are, a friendly. So it's not one of the powerful or whatever it may be that sells you. If it doesn't sell you, then why would you expect someone to respond to you? Why would you expect someone to have respect for the message or looking to deliver them? Ask yourself, if you've got approached by someone with your qualitative profile, with your background, and what you're looking to offer. Would you look and go? Yeah, this person is passed to really do things for me or would you look and go? I'm not sure. Or would you look and go, Oh, this person has no idea what they're talking about. I wouldn't reach out to someone on LinkedIn and try to sell them marketing services because I'm not a marketer. I have no no real experience in marketing small amounts, small pockets. I know if I reach out to someone and said, Look, I would tell you social media marketing services. Why have not experienced in it. But if I reached out cell what I do my profession, they would go. Okay. You've got experience. You've got clients. You have a presence. Yes. We're going to listen to you. Yes. We're gonna we're gonna give you 1015 minutes of our time. Yes. We're gonna give you an hour at a time. Yes. You become present to us. Yes, you can give me a call. Linkedin is the safest in terms of more safer than cold calling because there's a risk that you can panic on the spot when the person answers and you get a bit jittery and you're not to do. You can think about it in the same way. You can e-mail. So safely, say safe and e-mails because there's a guarantee that it will get delivered. And he wouldn't jump into spam box around, bounce back. The message you're looking to get across will be conveyed in a professional environment and received in a professional manner. I like LinkedIn. I think it's fantastic. Sales Navigator LinkedIn. Well, when you're, when you're moving from research into approaching, having looked at South navigators, you haven't already. But this will only work if you know the individual you want to reach out to. You can't reach out to an organization in general, you've got to find a point person. You go to find the person that's most relevant. You've got to reach out to them, the confidence. You're going to reach out to them with a, with a, with a few things. And this applies to e-mails and calls as well. You need to be clear on who you are, where you come from. Why are approaching? What are you offering? What do you wanna talk about? It doesn't have to be the solution itself, doesn't have to be the product. Just context. If you are reaching out to your social media marketing solution, which got about marketing. Could be changes in industry need to reach out with a bit of insight. Go straight into the cell because the Ansible nine times out of ten NB national interests. But if you could say, and this is a completely made-up fact. Every day a million people join a social media across the world. And these are the most relevant, most up-and-coming social media platforms to be real. Tiktok. You shine credibility. You've shown me know you're talking about That's not a real facts. Don't fact check me on AKS. It will be wrong, but the concept stands. You shine credibility. You shine relevance. If shared knowledge, an appreciation for what you're trying to do. If given your prospect piece of insight, there'll be valuable to their day-to-day jobs. And that's already a box ticked that show that you can be valuable. Then finally, in that counter cold LinkedIn again, cold, cold, cold email. This remains relevant. You need to be clear on why you've chosen to approach them, why what you're offering is relevant? Jane doesn't have to be the entire cell because no one wants to entice. I want a cold e-mail. And when I say an entire cell, I'm not talking hard sale, which I'm talking solutions and you have to sell all the value. You don't have to sell how it can help them in its entirety. But give them a flavor, give them a fill of what you're doing while you're approaching them and why it's relevant to them. And then a call to action. You got time for coffee, have we got time for cool content you for lunch? Can we make for a drink? You want to challenge the officer or a meeting or come visit you, whatever it may be. 7. Developing The Relationship : Now that is the three most common forms of approach from what I see on a regular basis. And what I just said at the end. Be clear on what you're approaching. Be clear on who you are. Be clear in how you come from, and be incredibly clear, and why you can be valuable, and why you are relevant to that individual and business you're approaching. However, before we finished up a little bit here, I want to touch on two other methods which I find incredibly useful. I didn't want to include them at the beginning because they don't apply as broadly to cold prospect, slightly better football and prospects. And you'd argue actually that if you use these methods by the time you make contact with them, you could argue that our absolute warm prospect. And those two methods are firstly, events. You can get into an event, whether that be by ticket or the introduction and invitation to talk. The event, a standard and event. You've got prospective clients and then you want to engage with, if you meet them at that event, you're sharing your first layer of credibility, your understanding for their industry, for if it's an industry based to them all. If it's a product based event or a solution-based event, or a theory based event like a sales event, a marketing event, whatever it may be. You'll show them that you've got credibility in the space that they are interested in. And when you, you could possibly arrange to meet them at the event via LinkedIn or an e-mail or whatever it may be. And just say, look, you're going to this event and not these events published attendees or stands are businesses that are attending way before the events. You will always, always have plenty of time for this. But if you're reaching out and asking for these types of meetings, introductions, you will have much more. In my experience, I've had a much more positive response to those types of approach because people go to these events not only for the content of the event, but also to network. So bear that in mind. And if you can financially afford to be going into more events, if your businesses can afford to send you two more events, pushed to do that because it's important, we tend to write types of events. It's important, you know why you're in attending of n and who you want to talk to and who you want to engage with. But if you can use that method to engage with new cold prospects, I do believe you will see more success. Second thing I wanted to touch on, or the second method I should say that I want to touch on is introduction. Introductions. If you've already got existing clients, we will doing a good job for that. You generally know you're doing a good job. But four, and I believe that if you don't believe you're doing a good job, you should not be selling or offering what we're doing to more people until you're delivering something valuable to every single client you already have. Because it's much, much more expensive to gather and when a new client, and that is to keep your current book of clients happy and retain them. That's incredibly important and something that you really should remember. If you are doing a great job of that, reach out to your current client. Say that we're looking to expand. We're looking to provide what we provide to you, to more people, to your peers, to your competitors. Whatever it may be in, its competitors can be a slightly gray area and whether or not you can discuss that with your current clients that you are looking to expand with those types of businesses? If it's right, mentioned it. If it's not right, don't mention it, but peers, we know we're looking to work with more of your peers. We want to get on the market and we want to expand our business and do the good things we're doing for you. For more people, you're truly doing a good job and your current clients, as long as you can guarantee their service levels won't be affected. You can feel pretty comfortable with the fact that they're not going to react badly. In many cases they will go, okay. Yeah, we've got a few people in mind that we'd want to introduce you to that. I think you'd be valuable. You'd be valuable to them, I should say. And if you're getting these warm introductions for your current clients who have already told their peers that you're credible, You're good, You're halfway, then you've got a warm maintain and you've got a really good opportunity to go in there, deliver your pro proposition, your proposal, whatever it may be. And it's a lot easier to reach out to a current client and ask for an introduction. That it is. Because we're older that we've gone through so far around research, reaching out, how we reach out composing really intricate enticing messages for color prospects. It's much easier if you can get an introduction. It's much more natural. It's much warmer, so much more pleasant experience for both ends. So bear that in mind. 8. Follow Up and Project: Sorry, that was today's lesson. It was broad. The basics of cold prospects approach. And to finish, it was finished with the task homework, everyone loves it. But there is one final message, which means in very well actually to the project. Follow up. Follow up is vital in approaching prospects. One called col, one cold email, one called LinkedIn, isn't going to get your sale. If you reach out 20 before, I'm wondering, 20 people the next day, 20 people are following day using all different methods. Your success rate will remain. The key is the follow-up. The key is checking back in. The key is to give temporary me. Now, the key here is responding to their applies. The key is getting those meetings booked. The key is after going off to go into those meetings, following up via email, via asking for feedback on how that first meeting, when I'm going to base your project on that, I'm sure you're all out there looking to win new clients. You're working on prospects, you've got your list, you're already reached out to them and your current ways, whatever that may be. We all have different ways of reaching out to prospects. Pick ten of them that you haven't been able to get through to yet? Not once you've worked and worked and want to follow it up with and they're not interested because they get to a point when you have to accept that this set individual prospect isn't interested. But those that you maybe haven't done enough in case you haven't built enough engagement with follow up with them for about ten of them. Consider the methods that I've gone through today. If at the same as what you're already doing, tailor your approach a bit more. Given piece of insight rather than kind of come talk to you about my product. If you're only doing cause give LinkedIn and go. If you're already doing emails, why don't you follow up on those emails by making a cool. But pick ten and consider what method will work best for you and give it a go. And then let me know in the group play on if you've seen a better success rate and that's success rate doesn't mean a sale. It means engagement. Did you manage to get through it? If you manage to talk to them, you get a conversation. I wish you the best of luck. I'm looking forward here about your feedback. And hopefully I will get with another lesson next week. Thank you very much.