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5 Simple Steps for Prospecting Your Way to Selling Success
aslantraining.com
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“If you want to get someone’s attention, don’t talk about you, your solution, or attempt to invent a new creative approach. Just lead with what’s on their whiteboard. Focus on what they are working on, one of their initiatives, or what they care about.” If you can get super specific, that’s best. Here’s the truth:if I show you a picture of you, you will look at it. Every time. If I show you a picture of me, you will ignore it, especially if I’m a stranger. Why does that happen? A little neuroscience… Marketing experts argue that we get anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 messages a day. Regardless of the number, it’s a lot. We are more and more overwhelmed with information than any other generation in history. Therefore, the brain employs a filtering system called the Reticular Activation System (RAS) to act as a gate between your subconscious and conscious mind to determine what messages get through. To make sure your messages land, you’ve got to make sure they get through the RAS. In short:if you want to grab the prospect’s attention, you need a key to that gate. Here’s the good news: there are only two criteria the RAS uses to determine if a message gets noticed. The first instance is that the message contains something you know you need. For example, you’re more likely to notice cars on the way to work the day after you decide to buy a new car. The second instance is something you don’t understand or is out of the ordinary, like a baby talking about investments or an ostrich in sunglasses with a yellow coat selling car insurance. If you pay attention to the ads that grab your attention, you’ll see they always fall into these two categories. You either have a perceived need, or your brain was trying to make sense out of something that just doesn’t fit. Bottom line, capturing someone’s attention is about alignment, not selling. To get noticed, don’t try to change beliefs or sell. Instead, you should align your message to what they are already thinking. If you sell IT services and your prospect’s whiteboard has an action item to “reach out to IT services,” it’s easy. With an email that says, “Hey, are you looking for IT services?” you’ll get their attention.
For the past 25 years,we’ve been studying what I (and most sellers) believe is the most difficult aspect of selling: prospecting or “cold calling” as some may remember. Whether you’re an account manager or biz development rep, hunter or farmer, your income and value are based on the revenue you create. Whether hunting for new accounts or hunting within existing accounts, we all need to prospect. I’m here to help. My audacious goal is to make prospecting easy, to remove the mystery, and to make it less stressful on you and your potential customer. What follows is a step-by-step approach to getting more meetings. Step One: Get Their Attention So, you’re about to write an email, or maybe you’re one of the remaining few who still use the phone for prospecting. Or maybe you’re about to craft a message to connect with a prospect on LinkedIn. Perhaps, if you are very advanced, you use a company likeVidyardto create custom video messages for your prospect. Where do you begin? Do you lead with… Your best product or solution? Your most compelling benefit? A case study with some impressive ROI? Something super creative, like the “you don’t know why I’m reaching out, so you will have to respond to find out” strategy? Or maybe you go with a mutual interests approach, i.e., “I also went to Wesley in 1995”? Scratch it. They don’t work 98% of the time. This is why we hate prospecting — it’s like a 9th-grade boy in high school trying to get a date — just a whole lot of rejection. You want to get someone’s attention? Here’s what ALWAYS works. Picture the person you are about to engage. See them sitting at their desk or cubicle. Got the picture? Now, picture the whiteboard in their office. What’s on it? If you want to get someone’s attention, don’t talk about you, your solution, or attempt to invent a new creative approach. Just lead with what’s on their whiteboard. Focus on what they are working on, one of their initiatives, or what they care about. “If you can get super specific, that’s best.” But, for the other 98% who don’t have that on their whiteboard, the email will remain unopened and deleted. Therefore, to convert the disinterested, lead with a problem that’s on their whiteboard that, if it exists, will require IT services. The more specific the description, the higher probability your message will be noticed. For example, instead of saying, “Companies that are expanding often struggle with…” consider leading instead with, “As you plan to open up seven new locations in the Midwest…” The second message can’t be ignored because of the details. RAS demands it. Here’s another approach. The other day, I got an email that began with the title of an article I wrote. The seller showed me my “picture,” and I looked at it. Does “looking” guarantee a response? No, and we’ll discuss getting a response in Step Two, but it does promise getting noticed. You may be thinking, “What if you don’t know what’s on the prospect’s whiteboard?” If you lack intel from an insider, make your prospecting message relevant to the role. You can focus on what people in similar roles have on their whiteboard and what their top three challenges are. My advice is to hit up Google and learn everything you can about the person, their role, or even their company in general. These details can help you hone in on the details that make your prop successful at getting through the RAS. But what if you know nothing about the person or the role you are attempting to reach? Stop prospecting entirely. Go to school on the decision makers you serve. Hit the books and get some good background work in. In this case, you need to slow down in order to speed up. Otherwise, you’ll have to live with less than a 2% success rate with your prospecting. There’s one more benefit to leading your prospecting efforts with what’s on the decision maker’s whiteboard.
And this benefit ensures not only that the curiosity of your prospect will be piqued, but that you will convey something important about you personally. Not only does this grab their attention, but this approach demonstrates you are that rare person, and furthermore, that rare salesperson, who is more interested in the others than themselves. These are the type of people strangers will meet with and give away an hour of their valuable time. If you understand and implement the principles offered in Step One, you will get the prospect’s attention. As the suit guy says, “I guarantee it.” Like unexpectedly jumping out from behind a door, there are some predictable things you can do to control eyeballs when facing obstacles to prospecting. The next step is a bit more challenging: How do you move from being seen to creating a desire to give up precious time to meet with a stranger? Step Two: Answer the Question, “Why Meet?” Why meet? Answering this question is one of the prospecting challenges you will undoubtedly face. As you will see, the answer to this question is simple to understand but difficult to execute. The best answer requires two components: You know something they don’t. You offer something they can’t get. Let’s tackle them in order. 1. You Know Something They Don’t Decision makers, the real decision makers, don’t meet with sales reps. They delegate the tasks of sifting through vendors to someone else. So how do you tackle one of the most common obstacles to prospecting? Don’t be the typical sales rep who only offers information the decision maker can find with Google. Tell them something they don’t know about the best way to solve their problems. Think of it this way: If you were speaking at a conference toa room full of decision makers, what tidbit of wisdom, best practice, or principle could you share that would be so surprising and important, everyone would write it down? “One more thing: you need to accomplish this in 100 words or less.” By focusing on the prospect’s problem, demonstrating you have unique expertise needed to solve their problem, andoffering a benefit no one else can, you’ve overcome these obstacles to prospecting by developing the best possible answer to their question, “Why meet?” Now that you already know how to capture the prospect’s attention and the best answer to the question: “Why meet?” Next, we need to move this total stranger from “this looks interesting” to giving up their most precious resource: time. The best way to navigate this barrier is to remove it. Reduce the risk and ask for a brief phone meeting — a very brief meeting. Step Three: Ask for a 3-Minute Meeting If you’re not in a committed relationship, imagine the following scenario: you’re single and hanging with a few friends at a bar. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of a person you would like to meet, a “prospect.” Without much thought, you walk over, introduce yourself, and within seconds, ask if they are interested in going out to dinner. What’s your success rate? Probably very similar to the average success rates when prospecting via the phone: dismal. If your success rate is low, the problem may not be how you positioned the meeting, but your recommended next step. Don’t ask a stranger to invest a big chunk of time. Justask them for about three minutesto determine if it makes sense to “date.” This not only reduces the resistance to engage, but it also allows them to see you as human, with the expertise to solve their problem, and not a commission breathing sales rep. Putting This Prospecting Method to the Test We’ve tested this approach with sellers making what I believe is the most difficult prospecting call:calling cold prospects about life insurance. The sellers who proposed a three-minute phone meeting were eight times more successful than those who asked for an appointment.
For the past 25 years,we’ve been studying what I (and most sellers) believe is the most difficult aspect of selling: prospecting or “cold calling” as some may remember. Whether you’re an account manager or biz development rep, hunter or farmer, your income and value are based on the revenue you create. Whether hunting for new accounts or hunting within existing accounts, we all need to prospect. I’m here to help. My audacious goal is to make prospecting easy, to remove the mystery, and to make it less stressful on you and your potential customer. What follows is a step-by-step approach to getting more meetings. Step One: Get Their Attention So, you’re about to write an email, or maybe you’re one of the remaining few who still use the phone for prospecting. Or maybe you’re about to craft a message to connect with a prospect on LinkedIn. Perhaps, if you are very advanced, you use a company likeVidyardto create custom video messages for your prospect. Where do you begin? Do you lead with… Your best product or solution? Your most compelling benefit? A case study with some impressive ROI? Something super creative, like the “you don’t know why I’m reaching out, so you will have to respond to find out” strategy? Or maybe you go with a mutual interests approach, i.e., “I also went to Wesley in 1995”? Scratch it. They don’t work 98% of the time. This is why we hate prospecting — it’s like a 9th-grade boy in high school trying to get a date — just a whole lot of rejection. You want to get someone’s attention? Here’s what ALWAYS works. Picture the person you are about to engage. See them sitting at their desk or cubicle. Got the picture? Now, picture the whiteboard in their office. What’s on it? If you want to get someone’s attention, don’t talk about you, your solution, or attempt to invent a new creative approach. Just lead with what’s on their whiteboard. Focus on what they are working on, one of their initiatives, or what they care about. “To get noticed, don’t try to change beliefs or sell. Instead, you should align your message to what they are already thinking.” But, for the other 98% who don’t have that on their whiteboard, the email will remain unopened and deleted. Therefore, to convert the disinterested, lead with a problem that’s on their whiteboard that, if it exists, will require IT services. The more specific the description, the higher probability your message will be noticed. For example, instead of saying, “Companies that are expanding often struggle with…” consider leading instead with, “As you plan to open up seven new locations in the Midwest…” The second message can’t be ignored because of the details. RAS demands it. Here’s another approach. The other day, I got an email that began with the title of an article I wrote. The seller showed me my “picture,” and I looked at it. Does “looking” guarantee a response? No, and we’ll discuss getting a response in Step Two, but it does promise getting noticed. You may be thinking, “What if you don’t know what’s on the prospect’s whiteboard?” If you lack intel from an insider, make your prospecting message relevant to the role. You can focus on what people in similar roles have on their whiteboard and what their top three challenges are. My advice is to hit up Google and learn everything you can about the person, their role, or even their company in general. These details can help you hone in on the details that make your prop successful at getting through the RAS. But what if you know nothing about the person or the role you are attempting to reach? Stop prospecting entirely. Go to school on the decision makers you serve. Hit the books and get some good background work in. In this case, you need to slow down in order to speed up. Otherwise, you’ll have to live with less than a 2% success rate with your prospecting. There’s one more benefit to leading your prospecting efforts with what’s on the decision maker’s whiteboard.