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Six Ways to Build Your Company's Contact List for Sales Prospecting

2/19/2017

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EP Huddle #50
Contact List
​Engaged Prospect is often asked two questions regarding contact lists and leads. 1) People mistake our work as an inside sales outsourcing company as simply giving our clients a list of contacts that they can call and try to sell to. That's not what we do. Learn More. 2) We're also asked, "how do you get your contact database to prospect for new business for your clients (or for yourselves)?" Here's how.

Building a contact list and finding the right targets is one of the most important things a company can do for its salespeople. Many companies require the sales team builds a list themselves. While this is sometimes the only way to generate new contacts, this activity is also a time commitment that takes salespeople away from having conversations and selling.

​
Here are six tips for generating contact lists to help drive conversations and new business.

  1. ​Keep all records in a database (CRM and other sales technology discussed further - click here). A good sales CRM will help you keep track of your prospect lists, understand your opportunity pipeline and be able to effectively forecast upcoming sales. Your CRM will also help you schedule follow-up tasks, plan call and email campaigns and connect your sales team to the marketing data that allows for effective business outreach. All CRMs are different. In our experience, most newer businesses buy into a subscription of a CRM that they've heard of through their network. Spend time learning about the specifics of each CRM before you commit. When launching Engaged Prospect, we vetted over 20 different CRMs before we chose the right one for our robust needs (in addition to already having experience working with 5 CRM companies earlier in our careers).
  2. Join a list subscription service and generate targeted contact lists based on demographics, decision making titles, etc. Examples of these services include Hoovers.com, Data.com, Lead411 and EmailListUS.com and egrabber.com These tools can be expensive. Make sure you're properly vetting each vendor to make sure it fits your needs and budget.
  3. Generate inbound marketing leads through advertising (Google AdWords, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and marketing such as outbound email activity.
  4. Build landing pages for each specific message and campaign. Landing pages are important to help drive lead generation and to customize your message specifically to your audience to help create interest. Look here for an example.
  5. Use your internal team to build contact lists from target prospect websites, LinkedIn, etc. DO NOT have your sales team spend more than 5% of their time generating contact lists.
  6. Find an outsourcing partner, intern or freelance admin to generate contact lists. Companies like UpWork can provide temporary workers to generate contact lists for a small hourly fee.

As a team:
Discuss with your marketing and IT teams how you can better develop contact lists for your sales team. Talk with your sales team about their own contact generation. Ask them how much time they're spending "harvesting" leads from online websites. If the answer is more than 10% of their time, you need to implement the above six steps. Too much time away from actual selling is costing your company a lot of money.

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Does Inside Sales Work in Relationship Businesses?

2/12/2017

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Does Inside Sales Work in Relationship Businesses?
EP Huddle #43

We hear it all the time. Inside sales doesn't work in a relationship business. "We're a handshake and a hug kind of selling organization".

Some companies don't emphasize prospecting for new business, because their client base is built on relationships. In most cases, however, this is incorrect. Even relationship driven sales need prospecting, and there's no better way to prospect than to utilize an inside sales department to help drive qualified opportunities and set the stage for a solid relationship with a customer.

Think about it this way. Relationship sales are valuable, and many profitable businesses have been created on solid relationships. But those relationships had to have started somewhere. Was contact first made at a tradeshow? Was a networking event responsible for the introduction? Did the customer (now friend) first hear of your company on a radio commercial or via your website via Google? Regardless of where the relationship is now, it started somewhere as a cold or lukewarm introduction.

Prospecting has a place for helping to build relationships. Prospecting calls and emails can lead to a conversation. During the conversation, a relationship begins to form.

Prospecting also has a place for helping to weed out potential customers who aren't a good fit. Some of the most important data an email marketing campaign can provide is the list of people who've unsubscribed from your campaigns. They don't want to build a relationship, and that's fine. You'll get the same information from people who tell you on the phone they aren't interested. The data the salesperson permission not to spend time trying to build a relationship with that prospect, and can instead focus on prospects who might be open to new ideas and forming new relationships.

As a team:
Write down a list of 10 or 20 of your most profitable customers. Where did they come from? You will likely have a mixture of sources such as referrals, tradeshows, cold calls, etc. Figure out what that mix is. I bet you have a good number of clients who did not come from direct "hug and handshake" sources at first. They became that over time. 

Write down a second list too. Write down the top 10-20 relationships in your book of business. Complete the same exercise and figure out how those relationships started. There was a time before you were invited to his daughter's wedding that you didn't really know him. How did it all start? I bet you'll see many of them came from the activity of simply prospecting to find new business.

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Using Collateral to Grow Revenue

2/8/2017

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EP Huddle #39

Using collateral throughout the sales process is a great way to help drive new opportunities into the pipeline, convert opportunities into sales, and engage new customers to ensure maximum usage and engagement. Here are a few key ideas for utilizing collateral effectively to drive revenue.

Prospecting:
  • Use videos, photos, case studies, one-page product overview documents and use case examples of how your solution helps prospects
  • Get people to sign-up for newsletters and share valuable lead nurturing collateral via monthly newsletters
  • Track prospect activity (on your site and through your email campaigns) and share relevant content to match their interests
  • Give them free content to help nudge them to the next phase of the sales process, but don't give away too much information that will eliminate the need to talk with the sales team
  • Find out where bottlenecks exist in your prospecting funnel and match collateral to those bottlenecks (i.e. if prospects are hesitant to have a meeting with you because of preconceived idea of your product, provide an FAQ doc or other content to overcome these objections)

Opportunity Conversion:
  • Create collateral to highlight how your solution can help your customer. Be specific based on the type of customer, etc.
  • Share information in advance, based on what you know about the customer (be proactive in sharing references, showing case studies, giving pro-forma templates, etc.)
  • Share product updates and use case examples with accounts in the pipeline. Continued communication will help convert your opportunities
  • Share collateral with qualified prospects that will help them envision what it will be like to do business with you (showcase various reports they'll have access to, introduce them to other similar clients in case they have questions, etc.)
  • Offer an on-boarding checklist so they know exactly what's needed to partner with your firm

Account On-boarding:
  • Share videos and quick tips for how to best use your product or service
  • Provide checklists so they know exactly what's expected of them, and what they should expect of you and your account management team
  • Create collateral for everyone to know what departments are responsible for what actions, and how to contact those departments
  • Invite your new customers to on-boarding training. All client departments that have anything to do with the partnership should be invited, and the training should be customized for their job functions
  • Provide monthly training sessions (webinar or live) to help on-board new employees or employees who take roles that are now working more closely with your company. You want everyone to be in-tune with your partnership

As a team:
Take inventory of what you already do. What is missing? What information can you create to further assist prospects, qualified opportunities and new customers? Who in your organization can create these documents or videos? If you need to outsource some of this to a designer or a marketing firm, have you vetted these companies yet? If not, plan to get a few different quotes and scope of work proposals to ensure you're choosing the right partner who can help you with all of your collateral needs.
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