Prospecting is one of the many things salespeople can do wrongly when it’s one of the most important aspects in your sales process that you have to precisely master. Today’s episode is just oozing with strategies, tips, insights, and whatnot that will not just blow you away but also blow your sales up, of course, provided that you apply these into your own process.
Our guest today is Mark Hunter, the ultimate sales hunter who helps companies find and retain better customers they can close at full price.
Mark is the author of the book, High-Profit Prospecting, an incredible book that helps you understand your prospecting process so you can go after the right people, using the right way, at the right time.
Here are the highlights of my conversation with Mark:
Reasons for not closing at full price:
- Prospecting the wrong person.
- Giving away discounts and doing stupid stuff in the prospecting phase
- It’s not for you to determine the value, it’s for your customers to determine the value
The telephone still works!
People have stopped using telephones but this strategy actually still works.
#socialmedia without connectivity is social stupidity
- If you just put out stuff on social media and do only that, you might starve to death before getting enough business.
- You have to turn social selling into social connectivity.
- Find ways to have one-on-one conversations.
- Sales is still relationship-oriented.
- Sales today is about bringing value to our customers and it starts with who we prospect.
Strategies for finding the right prospects:
1.Find prospects who will see value in what you have.
Warning: People who immediately asks your price are not prospects. They only want to take your price and play it off against somebody else’s price.
You can not win on price.
- Ask them questions. It’s about them, not you.
Ask questions that engage both you and the customer in the discussion. Sending 1,000 emails is being stupid 1,000 times. People don’t want to hear about how good you are. They want you to ask them something about them. Share something about them. Create and expose the need they have.
- Earn your right, privilege, honor, and respect to talk with them again.
Your goal on prospecting should be to connect with your customer and be able to earn the right, privilege, honor, and respect to be able to talk to them again. How? Find out one more piece of information and get the ability to move to the next level of the discussion.
- Move them from being a suspect to a prospect.
Set prospects up as customers by helping them see and achieve a result that they did not think was possible.
- Use social media as a telephone in a different format.
It’s about creating those relationships. You can get tremendous amount of business right off LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook conversations. Your presence on social media is your resume. You have to be out there but it’s still that one-to-one conversation that’s critical.
- Bucketize your prospects.
Any salesperson is probably going to wind up with 4 or 5 different prospecting processes depending on who they’re going after. You can’t take one style and use it for everybody. The processes may be similar but the cadence, format, and language may be different.
- Segment your prospects by industry by day.
Dedicate a day to doing just a particular market segment (ex. hospitals, clinics, etc.) Segment your time to become more efficient and gain a tremendous amount of insights.
Ways to successfully get into executives not on social media:
- Make a deep dive into Google search.
Not all big people are on social media but these people are still out there. Google them out. All you need to know is their name.
- Begin providing them insights.
Provide insights that they will see are of value.
- Create a level of confidence and trust.
The more senior you are in an organization, the lonelier you are. They are usually guarded in every conversation they have. You then have to come in by way of their level of trust and confidence
- Connect with them through a side door.
Connect with them through non profits or other organizations that they’re in. Get involved in that organization or a trade association or attend an event they’re speaking at. When you engage with these, they then see you in a totally different light.
The 12×12 Strategy
Contact your prospects 12 times using 12 different means. For example, send them something every month like an email or a personal message.
- Call them at the top of the hour.
Pick up the phone and call them right at the top of the hour. Senior level people are in meetings all day long. The one time they’re probably not meeting is right at the top of the hour. So call them between 50 minutes and 2 minutes into the hour.
- Send them an email at 6:15 on a Saturday morning
Senior level people are fighting fires all week long. During the week, they’re working in the business. On the weekend, they’re working on the business.
Send an email that consists of a condensed version plus 3 bullet points. No links, no attachments, no images, nothing.
When the CEO sees this at this time when they’re working on the business, they will usually read it and respond back to you.
- Don’t wait for Monday until your respond back to them.
Make sure you respond an hour or two later. This tells them that you’re working on a weekend and you’re geared in the business just like them.
- Speak their language.
The further up in the organization you go, the more strategic the conversation is. (The lower, the more technical). The worst thing you can do is bring up specs, performance rates, etc.
You never want to upstage or embarrass the CEO. But at the same time, you never bow down and kiss their ring.
- Make sure you provide a strategic value.
If you don’t have a strategic value to provide, don’t waste your time going after a CEO. Know the level of entry that makes sense because your time is your most valuable asset. Use it in the most effective manner possible.
Mark’s Major Takeaway:
The greatest thing you have is your own time. Use your personality to sell. Let your personality come through when you prospect. At the end of the day, your goal is to earn the right, privilege, honor, and respect to be able to connect with your customers again by just learning one new piece of information.
Episode Resources:
Connect with Mark at www.TheSalesHunter.com.
Check out Mark’s books:
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