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Inbound Prospecting at Events: How We Made ...
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My name is X and I’m here to sell you Y” feeling we often get in these situations. I left the booth with a solid new lead and a commitment to continuing our conversation further. Victory! Step 5: Follow up after the event to continue the conversation. Of course, continuing the conversation starts with timely and relevant follow up. And I didn’t waste any time. I wasn’t going to let the positive experience we had at the booth fade from memory, which so often happens at events, where we meet with and talk to so many different people in the day. I sent a follow-up email that evening, as soon as I returned to my hotel room. It went something like this: Great to meet you Hi Ms. Prospect,I hope you had a great rest of the week at the ACME Expo and your travels back were uneventful.I really enjoyed having the chance to meet with you to learn more about what Your Company has to offer in the Industry space -- a growing area of focus for our customers -- and to introduce you to our agency and the work we've been doing with augmented reality and mobile marketing.I wanted to follow up with you to see if we could take you up on your offer to introduce us to the folks on your marketing team. I know you mentioned there are a lot of things you're working to update, and I'm thinking that with the launch of your new app, strategies for integrating print and mobile to increase the value of both is a timely conversation for us to explore.Please let me know what we can do or provide as a next step to help you make the appropriate introductions. Perhaps we can line up an introductory call within the next week or so to get the discussion started.Thank you again for your time at the Expo. I’m looking forward to speaking with you and your team again soon.Emilee The Outcome After this email, we secured a phone call with the contact and the rest of her marketing team. “By doing the right kind of research up front, I could present a customized solution straight from the start because I already had an understanding of their challenges and opportunities.”
February 23, 2016 “A lot of the times, we’d learn through the sales cycle that, while our new contact was a huge fan and very much interested in working with us, they weren’t the real decision maker.” Companies who matched this criteria became my #1 priority since I knew they had at least heard of us before and had some level of awareness. Most prospecting tools help you to find companies that are a good fit. But they ignore one critical element -- are they interested in your business? The Prospecting tool within Sidekick for Business allows you to not only find people who are a good fit, but those that are interested. This helps more marketers and sales professionals like myself more quickly and accurately narrow prospects to qualified leads: See this explanation of the Inbound Prospecting Matrix in more detail here. Step 2: Prioritize leads based on website activity. Once you have a lead list of companies that are (1) a good fit and (2) have visited your website, you’ll want to prioritize that list. I sorted our lead list by the number of page views a company had made to our website. A company that visited our site multiple times OR had visited multiple pages on our site was prioritized higher than one that had only visited once. Those who had visited the most were, obviously, my main focus, as I could assume they’d be more interested in a discussion, further along in the sales cycle, and hopefully, down the road, most likely to close. I then crossed referenced my prioritized list against the type of page views companies had made so I could create some correlation between how interested the company might be (i.e., pageviews) and what services or solutions they might be interested in (i.e., multi-channel marketing vs. augmented reality). In the end, I had narrowed down my massive list to only the 10-15 companies that appeared most interested and most likely to close, and I had a good idea of what to talk them about, what examples to reference, and what samples to bring. Step 3: Research goals and challenges of those 10-15 companies. With my nice solid list of 10-15, it was time now to dig into their businesses further.
February 23, 2016 “The sales cycle from an introduction at an event to a phone call or meeting and from a call or meeting to a proposal and close was simply too long, and the conversion rates weren’t where they needed to be.” Companies who matched this criteria became my #1 priority since I knew they had at least heard of us before and had some level of awareness. Most prospecting tools help you to find companies that are a good fit. But they ignore one critical element -- are they interested in your business? The Prospecting tool within Sidekick for Business allows you to not only find people who are a good fit, but those that are interested. This helps more marketers and sales professionals like myself more quickly and accurately narrow prospects to qualified leads: See this explanation of the Inbound Prospecting Matrix in more detail here. Step 2: Prioritize leads based on website activity. Once you have a lead list of companies that are (1) a good fit and (2) have visited your website, you’ll want to prioritize that list. I sorted our lead list by the number of page views a company had made to our website. A company that visited our site multiple times OR had visited multiple pages on our site was prioritized higher than one that had only visited once. Those who had visited the most were, obviously, my main focus, as I could assume they’d be more interested in a discussion, further along in the sales cycle, and hopefully, down the road, most likely to close. I then crossed referenced my prioritized list against the type of page views companies had made so I could create some correlation between how interested the company might be (i.e., pageviews) and what services or solutions they might be interested in (i.e., multi-channel marketing vs. augmented reality). In the end, I had narrowed down my massive list to only the 10-15 companies that appeared most interested and most likely to close, and I had a good idea of what to talk them about, what examples to reference, and what samples to bring. Step 3: Research goals and challenges of those 10-15 companies. With my nice solid list of 10-15, it was time now to dig into their businesses further.
Companies who matched this criteria became my #1 priority since I knew they had at least heard of us before and had some level of awareness. Most prospecting tools help you to find companies that are a good fit. But they ignore one critical element -- are they interested in your business? The Prospecting tool within Sidekick for Business allows you to not only find people who are a good fit, but those that are interested. This helps more marketers and sales professionals like myself more quickly and accurately narrow prospects to qualified leads: See this explanation of the Inbound Prospecting Matrix in more detail here. Step 2: Prioritize leads based on website activity. Once you have a lead list of companies that are (1) a good fit and (2) have visited your website, you’ll want to prioritize that list. I sorted our lead list by the number of page views a company had made to our website. A company that visited our site multiple times OR had visited multiple pages on our site was prioritized higher than one that had only visited once. Those who had visited the most were, obviously, my main focus, as I could assume they’d be more interested in a discussion, further along in the sales cycle, and hopefully, down the road, most likely to close. I then crossed referenced my prioritized list against the type of page views companies had made so I could create some correlation between how interested the company might be (i.e., pageviews) and what services or solutions they might be interested in (i.e., multi-channel marketing vs. augmented reality). In the end, I had narrowed down my massive list to only the 10-15 companies that appeared most interested and most likely to close, and I had a good idea of what to talk them about, what examples to reference, and what samples to bring. Step 3: Research goals and challenges of those 10-15 companies. With my nice solid list of 10-15, it was time now to dig into their businesses further. “Doing some careful prospecting and my homework before the trade show made the introduction and subsequent conversation so much easier than at past events.” My name is X and I’m here to sell you Y” feeling we often get in these situations. I left the booth with a solid new lead and a commitment to continuing our conversation further. Victory! Step 5: Follow up after the event to continue the conversation. Of course, continuing the conversation starts with timely and relevant follow up. And I didn’t waste any time. I wasn’t going to let the positive experience we had at the booth fade from memory, which so often happens at events, where we meet with and talk to so many different people in the day. I sent a follow-up email that evening, as soon as I returned to my hotel room. It went something like this: Great to meet you Hi Ms. Prospect,I hope you had a great rest of the week at the ACME Expo and your travels back were uneventful.I really enjoyed having the chance to meet with you to learn more about what Your Company has to offer in the Industry space -- a growing area of focus for our customers -- and to introduce you to our agency and the work we've been doing with augmented reality and mobile marketing.I wanted to follow up with you to see if we could take you up on your offer to introduce us to the folks on your marketing team. I know you mentioned there are a lot of things you're working to update, and I'm thinking that with the launch of your new app, strategies for integrating print and mobile to increase the value of both is a timely conversation for us to explore.Please let me know what we can do or provide as a next step to help you make the appropriate introductions. Perhaps we can line up an introductory call within the next week or so to get the discussion started.Thank you again for your time at the Expo. I’m looking forward to speaking with you and your team again soon.Emilee The Outcome After this email, we secured a phone call with the contact and the rest of her marketing team.
Companies who matched this criteria became my #1 priority since I knew they had at least heard of us before and had some level of awareness. Most prospecting tools help you to find companies that are a good fit. But they ignore one critical element -- are they interested in your business? The Prospecting tool within Sidekick for Business allows you to not only find people who are a good fit, but those that are interested. This helps more marketers and sales professionals like myself more quickly and accurately narrow prospects to qualified leads: See this explanation of the Inbound Prospecting Matrix in more detail here. Step 2: Prioritize leads based on website activity. Once you have a lead list of companies that are (1) a good fit and (2) have visited your website, you’ll want to prioritize that list. I sorted our lead list by the number of page views a company had made to our website. A company that visited our site multiple times OR had visited multiple pages on our site was prioritized higher than one that had only visited once. Those who had visited the most were, obviously, my main focus, as I could assume they’d be more interested in a discussion, further along in the sales cycle, and hopefully, down the road, most likely to close. I then crossed referenced my prioritized list against the type of page views companies had made so I could create some correlation between how interested the company might be (i.e., pageviews) and what services or solutions they might be interested in (i.e., multi-channel marketing vs. augmented reality). In the end, I had narrowed down my massive list to only the 10-15 companies that appeared most interested and most likely to close, and I had a good idea of what to talk them about, what examples to reference, and what samples to bring. Step 3: Research goals and challenges of those 10-15 companies. With my nice solid list of 10-15, it was time now to dig into their businesses further. “Doing some careful prospecting and my homework before the trade show made the introduction and subsequent conversation so much easier than at past events.” My name is X and I’m here to sell you Y” feeling we often get in these situations. I left the booth with a solid new lead and a commitment to continuing our conversation further. Victory! Step 5: Follow up after the event to continue the conversation. Of course, continuing the conversation starts with timely and relevant follow up. And I didn’t waste any time. I wasn’t going to let the positive experience we had at the booth fade from memory, which so often happens at events, where we meet with and talk to so many different people in the day. I sent a follow-up email that evening, as soon as I returned to my hotel room. It went something like this: Great to meet you Hi Ms. Prospect,I hope you had a great rest of the week at the ACME Expo and your travels back were uneventful.I really enjoyed having the chance to meet with you to learn more about what Your Company has to offer in the Industry space -- a growing area of focus for our customers -- and to introduce you to our agency and the work we've been doing with augmented reality and mobile marketing.I wanted to follow up with you to see if we could take you up on your offer to introduce us to the folks on your marketing team. I know you mentioned there are a lot of things you're working to update, and I'm thinking that with the launch of your new app, strategies for integrating print and mobile to increase the value of both is a timely conversation for us to explore.Please let me know what we can do or provide as a next step to help you make the appropriate introductions. Perhaps we can line up an introductory call within the next week or so to get the discussion started.Thank you again for your time at the Expo. I’m looking forward to speaking with you and your team again soon.Emilee The Outcome After this email, we secured a phone call with the contact and the rest of her marketing team.