Optimize Your Business Processes with the Best Strategic Prospecting Process in Australia

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good morning everybody and welcome to uh the webinar for strategic prospecting some of you um uh well most of you will be watching this um as a recording and so um thank you for watching and I'm apologies again for the tech issues that we had and the timings um um I was just explaining to one of our participants that um I use a tech in the UK and uh my EA was out of the country so yeah one shouldn't do these things on their own but anyway here we are now and thank you for watching this recording and being part of this who am I intentional influencing um we're all about bment so we're bringing people's potential to reality we mainly work with sales lead businesses um to help um encourage good Improvement of processes um and help people strive for continuous growth obviously because we want people to achieve better results I love sales I'm very passionate about it had a 35 Plus year career in sales and um LED High performing teams for around 25 years so uh work across a variety of different Industries um I'm a generalist not a specialist when it comes to uh your industry but what I do know is that B2B sales or b2c sales still have the same approach that is attached to them today we're talking about um about uh strategic prospecting which is obviously the first part and most sales process and so what I want you to get out of today is that you'll feel more refreshed and more confident on bonding prospects how to research them how to be prepared um a little trick of AAA and brick which I'll tell you more about shortly um and really just to help you increase your conversions of course to sales um and really what we really want to get down to is how you actually make appointments with people um and how you physically make those calls so what I want you to do now is just take a little minute and write down the one thing that you really hope to get out to today and share in the chat if you wish um otherwise um I can um you share it with your manager or share it with anybody but it's just really good just to write down what you want to get out of today one of the things I don't know is that we all have a reticular activating system and if you ever buy a red car all of a sudden anyone everyone has a red car so just make sure that you write it down what you want because chances are if you go looking for it you'll find it so I'll just give you a moment to do that nothing happens until a sale is made doesn't matter what organization you work in whatever it is that you do whether you whether you produce whatever it is that you do nothing happens until a sale is made and that's why we as sales people or sales leaders whoever you are watching this uh needs to be really aware um of making sure that our sales team are working to their best best possible practices and so hence why some of you are here today to talk about vment selling in a complex Market we are in a complex market right now and there's many reasons why what happens in a complex Market but today I want to talk about the lack of focus on generating new sales over the years um as business has gone well depending on um where you are in the country um you know things some Industries have still done really well but what they have done is failed to um create a lack of focus on generating sales and just waiting for sales to even come to them through their marketing or through um through referrals but not actually genuinely going out picking up the phone and making those cold hard calls so uh that's some of the things that I am actually seeing it's important that you also understand some of the things that you're seeing you will also know that things are taking longer sales Cycles are really long at the moment uh B2B sales it's taking a lot longer I've even found that in my own business um and uh also so that people are expecting more out of their company now and therefore more out of their salese um so you know I always hear how hard selling actually is but so is buying I don't know the last time you bought anything um the decisions that are out there the choices that you actually have so ask yourself how easy do you make it for your customers to actually buy from you and I've always said that the answer lies in a sales model that is the way your customers want to buy buy instead of the way we want to sell to them so think about your own process do your company have a process if they don't there's also another webinar that's available I can send to you and so you know what we've got to do is kind of you know re-engineer the way in which we've always thought it with the way with which we've sold and the way which we thought is a normal way of doing things right so when did you look at your last way you your team or your selling style actually was and are we really relationship focused or we actually challenging in a proactive way in which the way in which we sell and I'll tell you more about that later and really important that we also have products and services that are remarkable to our customers one of the reasons people buy off people and this research is done out of CB out of the US um they researched around 5,000 customers um and 25 around 25 companies and what they found in that research was that 53% of people bought because of the sales experience and that's you the sales person so company and brand product and service those sorts of things were 19% and the price to Value ratio was only 9% so that means that it's down to you as the salesperson to give a remarkable experience from your person to the person from the time you pick up the phone to the time you deliver and redeliver if if appropriate so you know some of these follow-up stats you know these are particularly disturbing to me um that you know on the right hand side there you'll see sales statistics 48% of sales would never follow up with the Prospect and 80% of sales are made on a fifth to 12 contact so so many sales are not actually happening and I don't know about you but if you go and put a whole lot of time and energy into being in touch with people you'd really want to follow them up right you'll see there on the left um on average sales people tend to follow up five to seven times um so uh and then but in the industry variations you'll see there it's not uncommon for B2B to do 7 to 10 whereas bet to bet to see might only be three to buy now these are just stats that um are available at a research company out of the UK but you know the fourth step down there on the right hand side only 10% of sales people make more than three contacts so what I want you to do is just think about that and do you make more than three contacts do you actually continue to follow people up interesting question that only you can answer right but just think about it if you're only it three times and what it's the research is saying 7 to 10 or 3 to 5 or whatever it might be you need to follow up a little bit more so how do we get into this um this strategic uh um prospecting first of all we need to understand how to strategically account manage our our list of people that we have so I categorize people into five categories high value customers um which is people you want to be working on suspect people you suspect you might call so they were leads or suspects what you want to turn into targets or prospects they'll let in tune either become casual with you or they'll become high value customers spending on a regular basis and then there's the definite NOS which I'll talk to you about shortly um so ideally what we want to be working on is we want a long list of people which is our suspects and our leads and moving sort of 10 to 12 depending on your industry might be 50 might be two depending on your industry into our Target this is where we're specifically working on them researching developing the relationship um and and we have a methodology following these through because we want these people to become high value customers right and so so that's where we start with and that's what we're talking about today is suspects and leads targets and Prospects and how we actually get to them okay and the Strategic account list management you'll see there the definite NOS um you can pass them on to a contact with a warning label send them an email a note and tell them that you're not going to work with them anymore for me I never ever give up after I have given somebody a proposal until they tell me no but when it comes to prospecting I continue on and continue on until they're actually a bit rude to me and then I'll break them up and they go into my definite no pole so it's really important as we're going through defining our strategic ACC list management is that we really make sure we set goals and objectives um we develop good account plans uh and we monit monitor progress but in the beginning for us today we really want to focus on that strategic prospecting so um really important uh that we stay focused on that today finding the right prospects so how do we go about this I mean there is so many different ways finding a prospect and I even begin to imagine what industry you're actually in um so um you know really uh you'll know where the best place is to find things but you know it's really important to understand why we even doing this if you don't grow your portfolio or your a customer base or your client list or whatever it might call you we have something that is called SE pinch out the bottom so we all know the good old sales funnel right and if at the bottom of that sales funnel things are constantly falling out the bottom we've got to keep popping everything in the top and that's why we Prospect you know that right because you're a salesp person but what we've got to do is make sure we do it in the right way you know we can a whole lot of different places where we can find people one of the things are really important we decide when we're going to do it for me prospecting is always on I'm always available for prospecting but sometimes I'm not in the right space to actually do it so I need to find myself the right space um and for me it's quiet it's um I make sure it's the right time of the week or day I wouldn't find somebody on a Friday afternoon for my particular business I find a Tuesday morning and a Thursday morning work really well for me um I find Monday is quite an odd day to prospect because people are often setting their week up and by Friday they're done but you'll know when the right time is and you just got to keep track of it right one of the things that we have to do is watch our conversions and we have to watch what works for us and what doesn't so um then there's the how I mean we really have to focus on um Industries categories or vertical and so what I mean by that is that sometimes depending on what it is that we're selling or the time of the year the Cadence that you create around it is what is really hot right now for your business who's buying and especially in a challenging Market we need to just pay attention to what to to what our customer base is doing when things are a little challenging and the last thing is who who do you actually want to have in your portfolio who do you want to work with who's your ideal customer for me my ideal customer is a business that sort of has around 35 to 50 sales people they might have a couple of sales managers they might not have a um a set methodology they might not have a learning and development program um and so and they could be any industry I don't mind um but they got to be good people I like to work with good people so I know who I want to bring into my portfolio so right now I want to ask you where do you currently go to look for prospects where else could you go and who should you have called Already excuse me good thing to recap on so what's with found these prospects and we've decided okay we're going to use our strategic account list management we're going to take 5 to 10 to 20 to 30 whatever feels right for you I tend to think that we can't really work on any more than 10 personally and we're going to take those people and we're going to move them into our prospecting so we've got them we've bound them we've moved them into the prospecting now the first thing that I do is I run them through my tripa a which is aord align access now what does that mean access means do I have access to the decision maker or at least the influencers before I make the call because without the decision makers and the influencers the conversations that you're going to have will be just interesting right very hard to uh get decisions out of people who don't have that decision making power so first of all check the access second of all align do they align to your business can they align to your business what your product and service offers can they actually align to that do the two of you line up and then thirdly afford it's really important we don't make too many ass assumptions on behalf of our customers but what we have to do is work out can those people actually afford or can they do they have the capacity to grow to be able to afford your product or service so run them through the AAA sometimes if they've got couple of them you might want to go for it um but I tell you that the main one is access so to get access we really need to understand who the person is we need to be talking to and thank goodness we're all only one Google search away from being smarter so it's very easy for us to um to have um you know be able to Google and sort out who the marketing manager is who the production manager is who who the CEO is whoever it is that you need to speak to so we do the AAA and the other little thing that I wanted to teach you about is a brick and so we create a brick which is a business reason I am calling now why do we do that it's really important that we make a call and we're going to I'm going to run you through how you make a call shortly that we actually get to the point of why we're calling remember you people you're calling often have might have heard from several different suppliers over the past couple of weeks I went to an industry event a couple of months ago and they had some customers up there and one of the customers told all the sales people about 150 sales people in the room that they get between 15 to 20 calls from people like them every month so you have to be really real and you have to be relevant to prospect because you really want to stand out um from the crowd so business reason I'm calling um we'll touch on shortly as we go through it these are the two things that little tricks that I make sure I keep up my sleeve so I when I'm preparing for um a prospect make sure I run them through the AAA and then I think about as I'm preparing what would be the reason I am calling them so then we move into research and preparation and I'd have to say that mediocre sales reps uh really leave this out and what happens is that we burn we burn out and we waste opportunities you really need to think about the other person at the end of the phone how you can be different how you can be more relatable but most important how what can you do to make a difference to to their business or if it's a b2c customer how can you make a difference to that customer please don't be noising their day don't be irritating and make sure before you do you find the person that you need to speak to right so what would research look like so research really looks like um we make sure that we visited their website we might have if it's a um B Toc Prospect we might have looked at their socials we might have looked uh at LinkedIn we might have connected with them on LinkedIn I always connect with people on LinkedIn I find it a really good way of when at least when I call they've kind of heard my name before um so that's just one thing that I always do uh I use LinkedIn because it's a business um connection um as opposed to I try very hard not to use Facebook as a connection to people unless I really can't get a hold of them and then therefore I might use messenger so T make sure you've really thoroughly checked out people's businesses before you actually get on the phone and call them right so making the calls I get asked this one all the time that you know it's okay yep die get it it's all very well do this that and the next thing else but how do we actually make the phone call so I have what I call um the marshmallow bulldozer how did this come about so around um 30 odd years ago um I was a 35 years ago I was a salesperson for a medical insurance company and when I joined I was given um basically the instruction that a few leads come through but you need to get on the in the phone book and just call through people so it was a b Toc play right so I was asking to go on people's homes by the time I got to about letter A or letter B or C I realized I was actually pretty darn average at making these calls and thought I need to stop something I need to create something different and so I decided after really thinking about what had gone wrong because I went back through my notes of what people had said and and how many people you know I had about a one to 20 ratio of making calls and getting appointments and I thought I'm going to go broke so when I really looked at it what I worked out is when some of the calls were being made as I got distracted and I might started talking about the product um or I might have um you know started talking about their own issues and so I worked out that the people that I got the time to go and see were the people where I focused only on making an appointment and going to see them so that's where I created my marshmallow bulldozer which basically meant I had 20 seconds to get out who I am where I work for and what the business does um and so that would go something along the lines of hi I'm D muy from intentional influencing we work with sales to oh you'll see down there I've actually written my Breck but we work with people to bring their potential to reality and then I follow up with we haven't spoken or we haven't met before now I do this because I don't know about you but I get so many phone calls and people might say oh it's hi hi it's D mury calling from intenal influencing how are you today I think God who is she who is she and you're running it through your brain trying to work out who that person is so I always State we haven't spoken or we haven't met before funny I had a call and I thought it was one of the people that had done um coaching sessions with me in the last six or seven years I get this call and I and I can't remember the guy's name but he said hi it's so and so from wherever he was from I didn't quite catch it he said we haven't met before and I thought it was a bit of a joke because I thought maybe if I've been through my sales training turned out it was an investment company out of the US so turns out I'm not the only one that sees there so I don't ask people how they are until I tell them who I am where I work for what my business does um and tell them that we haven't spoken yet and then I just get on with it how I today and I don't even pause and well pause to respond to them that's good great then I hit them with the reason I am calling and the reason that I just continue on with that instead of polite chitchat is that I need to get to the point why I'm actually calling um so the reason I'm calling as I work with sales teams all over the country developing their team through accountability devel and development to increase Revenue creating High performing behaviors so I say that all the time right or I might say um I've noticed the other reason I I do is because I I look at um for my business I look at uh seek and trade me and see when lots of sales people are being employed and so that I would call them and I would say hi the reason I'm calling today after I've done my first but the reason I'm calling today is that I noticed that you've employed several salespeople lately or I've noticed that you've recently employed a new national sales manager and thought that it might be a good opportunity for me to come and talk to you um and discuss how you develop your sales team so I do adapt it but that's M the one there if I'm just doing pure cold calling that is the main thing that I do actually say it positions the fact that I work with teams all over the country because I do um I talk about accountability because salespeople one of the areas that um they need to be focusing on is holding each other and their managers holding them to account and themselves holding them to account so the accountability word works for me um to and to increase Revenue as another little piece and then High performing Behavior so in your business reason you're calling make sure you are positioning yourself as well and pulling out those key words that really you know Inspire what people want now if you're selling um a one-off opportunity for somebody then you're selling an or maybe you're selling an experience it's really important that you talk about the transformation that people are going to have I always think whenever I don't make a sale I think I didn't obviously put across enough of a transformation that people might be able might be going to have when they work with me so whatever it is that you selling need to understand and it is a bit of an overused word but it's a very true word how do what was the transformation how do how did people how do I get them from where their current state is to where they really want to be so that's why we have to do all of that research beforehand and make sure that people are really really understanding who we are what it is that we do and so make sure you go back to that how can you be different how can you be more relatable all right and also make sure you are ringing to find the right person in the business so when you ring you are saying their name hello Mary hello Bob um it's D Murphy calling um so make sure you've got that person's name so you can go straight in back way back many years ago when I sold B2B I would ring up and I would do like a teley marketing thing to find the right person because that was before we had the internet and um we could um we could Google search businesses and and you know who the right person was we might need to be speaking to if you're cold calling um betc um then you need to be pretty quick and get to the point right because I don't know about you but I get a lot of those calls from investment people or insurance people or experienced people um and you really need to position yourself pretty quickly um especially with that the reason that I'm calling it's really important that you that you get that out really really quickly and the transformation that people might want that people might have as a result of working with your business so how you make the call so you know hopefully you've noted down some of your own ideas of how you might be your marshmallow bulldozer why do I call it that because we don't want to be so smmy that you know we've got all these slick answers to people when we call them right um I don't even have a script be on that but what I do do before I make the call is I write out a set of objectives that I really want to achieve and I said that in one of the earlier slides so you have written somewhere what it is that you want to achieve for me I always have get the appointment and make sure when I get the appointment that I've got the right decision makers or access to the decision makers when I do this so you know get prepared write your objectives down get prepared have the right person have the business reason I'm calling and I have I still have my little script of who I am and what it is that I do because you don't want to get tripped up right you want to sound confident but we don't want to sound too slick when they say this we say this but you've got your first p your first 20 seconds is ready there and ready to go trust me it has helped me on so many occasions um where I've where I've been a bit thrown off when someone's said sorry who are you again and it throws me off my little script where I can go straight back to it again and I and I'm ready to go so you know always make appointments um it's really important unless you're selling um B Toc um but if you're selling B2B always try make appointments if you're selling B Toc you've got to do that transformation piece remember you've really got to tell people what your product or service will actually do to help them um and so um make appointments face to face is good zooms zoom's fine belly to belly where you're actually right in front of them uh whichever way you want to actually do that make the appointment make sure you're aligning all the way make sure you're finding out the measures of success with them expectations both ways um one of the things that I always say is that we really need to make sure that we're completely aligned um around expectations you're going to do XYZ before this day or they're going to send you this before this day um expectations are always lined up right and you must always finish every call every step of your sale with the next steps always leave with what comes next never leave a prospect not knowing what's happening I'm going to come back to you with a proposal that talks about XYZ I'm going to send you XYZ I'm going to be calling you back tomorrow with the answer to that question you ask me whatever it is always next steps and no surprises do what you say you're actually going to do do what you say you will do make sure you do right people don't like surprises unless they're in a little nice shiny box make sure you are always always doing what you say you will do you're delivering and don't throw random things out to people you know because otherwise you you lose trust so for me I align all the way talk about what's going to make them happy um you know what what their measures of success might be um what the expectations are both ways from them and then I design a proposal that is completely remarkable to them um for for them and when I deliver it there no surprises because we've talked about it we're aligned about it all the way wrong long five to 10 times before you get a result sometimes try different ways I am not weird to picking up the phone is the only way of doing things it is my preferred way for the first Contact it shows respect that you're taking the time to do it uh but text works really well for me I get often get responses from Texas um especially when I'm following up um hey did you get the proposal we talked about the fact that you would give me a call um how you going with it I often get correct responses with that which is great uh I use LinkedIn messenger um uh if I have to I'll use Facebook Messenger but I try really hard not to pop in I've popped in to see people before um it's not my preferred way because I think it's a little bit rude especially if you know someone's like a CEO behind the scenes you know they're not don't really like you sort of surprising them too much but you'll know that because you would have already had a bit of a chat to them um and so when you actually get the opportunity to to follow up with people you know try different ways you know just be unique again be persistent if you can't get a hold of them now this is before you've given somebody a proposal because we don't give up we've given them a proposal you've taken your time to tell them what your product or service is so why shouldn't they give you at least the expectation you should have is that they should at least give you a no um and then I break up and I send break up emails um really only to people that I really haven't connected with and how that works is that um I say um um I've been trying to get a hold of you now um by text by email by phone you would have seen all those things what we did discuss was me coming to talk to you uh you seemed very keen at the time to learn more about how you can make your team more High performing B there's one little thing in there um however um it appears that you don't wish to speak to me if I've read this wrong then um please certainly reach out I get a lot of response from that um as I'm yeah sorry sorry sorry I've been busy yes I do want to talk to you because my final line always is should you want to speak to somebody into the future around creating greater Revenue through high performing behaviors with your sales team then feel free to give me a call and it's a little bit of that sort of another we nudge to say hm what happened to you I thought you were keen on growing and developing your team so I do that from a breakup point of view so you know that best practice followup um this this is this is again it's purely researched um so initial followup I personally um I always do an initial followup after phoning somebody so if I phone and got an appointment with somebody usually within the hour I will send them uh an email thanking them for um their time I'll send them an appointment I always keep control of the sale he he who um loses control loses control so always keep control of the appointment if you're making appointments subsequent followup should be should be spaced out you know not quite so frequent um try different things as I see you know make sure there's value every time you call um any additional information often after about two days two or three days I'll send somebody an industry email or something that I've seen or I've got white papers that I seen around handling objections um driving a driving a team I I often send those sorts of things out and say just while you're waiting I thought while I was waiting to hear back from you I thought you might be interested in this um it's important to be persistent and but not pushy uh and remember that you know there that is these people's time so you need to be meaningful and relevant and keep track of the calls that you make like I can't tell you where you're successful and where you're not right and just monitor what's going on and follow up ingly with the customer but then also adapt your style of what's happening what what you're doing is not not working for you where are you falling down in in this process like what's going wrong for you could even be as simple as you're not even picking up the phone or it could be as simple as you're not connecting with them in a meaningful way or it could be as simple as you don't position yourself in who you actually are could be S simple as you're not really that visible in the marketplace you so you need to get visible whether that's your business or whether that's you personally how do you get visible you get yourself on LinkedIn you know you're you're you're making sure that people understand who you are what it is that you do check out my LinkedIn and connect with me I really encourage you to so make sure you really are monitoring adjusting your approach right this is the one question that I ask every single time this is my Ultimate Sales question and so if you have got somebody that you've been trying to follow up with and not getting any with try this one what will it actually take for you to work with me or what would it take for you to for us to work together however I'm feeling is what I say and then I close my mouth there an old saying in sales he who speaks first loses right put your proposal out there ask your ultimate question whatever it is and close your mouth so it could be as simple as uh when you're making an appointment I'd like to come and see you and discuss um your business further with you when's a good time for you close your mouth um um or you might say um I've sent you that proposal what will it take for you to work with me close your mouth or you might say I'm in your area tomorrow seeing other customers and I'm really Keen uh to pop by and see you somewhere between two and four what what works best for you and close your mouth we have two ears one mouth for a really good reason and you should use them proportionately so that's my Ultimate Sales question and you just adapted for yourself right um what might might be the ways in which you want to say those words but that's that's what works for me I always say that confidence is the decision to try and you know prospecting picking up the phone all these things it's just the decision to try that's all it is you know don't feel uncomfortable around prospecting it's you've got an amazing product or service and if you don't believe in it then it's pretty hard to sell but I'm sure wherever you work you believe in what you do and you want to share the magic of what you do and you want to help people get better see the transformation that your product or service can do so confidence is purely the decision to actually try to do something different right try something different pick up the phone make some LinkedIn connections make some send a note by pigeon post but you know think about this if you decided to put in six months pure focus and prospecting for your business over the next six months so we're not quite six months before the end of the year so let's call it over the next four to five months that you really put a strong emphasis on prospecting and bringing new people to your business or your portfolio and think about the fact that that's going to be quite hard work but you're going to try try and then think about the transformation that you as a salesperson might have and where if you wind the clock for 12 months 2 years 5 years how much further you might be ahead in your selling and most those people I work with get a bit of commission right so imagine what the impact financially would be if you just worked consistently and had the desire and the confidence to try this prospecting it's not hard you shouldn't be frightened of it I still get a little bit about it and I'm okay with that I don't mind going in with an edge that I'm not too cocky and not too confident but I do keep my notes I do hft my scrubs I do use my marshmallow Boulder Dozer I do do my research I do all of those things I still do that and I've been doing this for 35 plus years that is my consistency and my desire to succeed so just imagine if you put a focus in this for the next four to five months and just made the decision that you were going to try where would you end up and just to close out today look thanks so much for joining me what I really want to do is um just to um to for you to take away the one thing that you're going to work on change or adapt and write it down and what was your key takeaway you're welcome to share it with me if you want my uh contact details there although uh in the strange automation that ended up happening you should have my contact details anyway I'd love you to connect with me on LinkedIn so just to recap what we talked about today was we talked about the fact that we all need to continually Prospect we have a certain amount of loss seage whatever you want want to call it out of our portfolios or or we might just be constantly in a new business we might have oneoff products that we're constantly selling or offering right if we're in that particular space then we need to sell in a more we need to sell in a more compellent way because there'll be lots more calls than just making appointments right so we talked about finding the right prospects so that's who the people are you want to work with and where we actually find them so work out who your key target market is and who do you want to sell to and then make a long list of those names then decide the 10 people that you're going to focus on for this week and start researching them and getting prepared for that call do the brick do the AAA run them through all those things uh write your script out write your objections out get really ready for what it is that you want to to do on that call um make sure you think about ways of how you can increase your sales and conversions so are you aligning are you setting expectations are you following people up within 24 hours are you doing all the sales Cadence things which is a constant consistent approach to it are you doing all those things every single time okay and we also talked about the fact of how you might make some phone calls um and remembering the fact that absolutely nothing happens until a sale is made and so for you the most important thing is that you that you at least do something today to make sure you're adapting and changing for betterment and remember what I said if you were consistent over the next four to five months what change would that make in your life and how would you feel better thanks so much for joining me today I really appreciate you participating um and this is recorded I'm going to stop the recording now uh enjoy and do check me out on some of my socials