Sales 2.0

Articles on sales prospecting

Off-Road vs On-Road Prospecting

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Prospecting is hard. There’s no need to make it even harder.

I’ve run dozens of experiments over the years on how to get through the door and start working with a new account. In every experiment, I’ve found that the number one factor that influences a successful outcome has been a human relationship.

The smartest piece of content has never beaten a warm introduction from another person. In my own experiments, I’ve found a referral of any kind (not necessarily from a client) to be 3.25 times more effective than a cold approach (based on time spent–it’s even more effective in terms of conversion rates.)

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Reps need to self-source leads

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According to recent research from SalesLoft best-performing senior salespeople (like Account Exectuives) need to self-source around 48% of their pipeline–rather than having leads come from a sales development rep (BDR, SDR etc.) or inbound via the efforts of their marketing department.

This uptick in the need for AEs to self-source deals has likely been driven by economics, the need to “do more with less”, but is I trend that may continue as AI tools free up AEs from admin tasks.

If AEs are going to self-source their deals, I believe they are going to have to be good at certain skills.

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Sales climate warming?

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We may be entering a “new, new era” of selling—an era that takes us back to good old-fashioned relationship selling.

Up to this point many of the tools available to sales teams have encouraged volume-based sales techniques, like mass emailing and cold calling. But as more and more salespeople use these tools, buyers have become inundated with low value communication. Inevitably connection rates and conversion rates have dropped quickly.

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AI-Powered Selling and the Social Graph

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In the near future, savvy salespeople are going to greatly enhance their sales by leveraging AI. One of the mechanisms for this improvement will be leveraging the “social graph” more effectively.

It’s always been true that a referral beats any other lead, with referrals converting to customers 50% of the time, according to Joanne Black. AI will help us use our “social graph” to find referrals without spending too much time on research. Up to this point, this kind of research has generally been too time-consuming for the average salesperson.

The best tool today for this research is LinkedIn. LinkedIn can show us who knows who. Unfortunately, this connection data is not reliable, with the system showing people knowing many more people than they actually do in “real life”. In my research, I find that less than half the connections someone has on Linkedin are people they really know.

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Call low

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I used to do it.

I would get to the office extra early and I’d start dialing before 8AM.

I wanted to become a rock star sales dude and I was mentored by my boss that the trick was to call CIOs (Chief Information Officers) early in the morning.

At that time of day, the stressed out CIO would be in the office but his assistant would still be fighting their way through the New York subway.

Ingenious! [Read more…]