Sales Tips for Prospecting:How to Email, Attract and Call Prospects (part2of3)

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Sales Tips for Prospecting: How to Email, Attract and Call Prospects (Part 2 of 3) by Ralph Barsi

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How can you improve your sales prospecting results? I recently returned from an action-packed Inside Sales 2013 Frontline Conference in Boston, which featured over 20 Inside Sales experts leading general sessions and lively panel discussions. Based on key points from my presentation, I started a blog series on sales prospecting and below is Part 2 with Tips #4-6. In case you missed Part 1, check out How To Eliminate ?Cold Calling? From Your Vocabulary.

TIP #4: Send Pre-emptive Emails

Rather than cold calling first, inform your prospect that you plan to call during a certain time frame. This helps you both to prepare and respond effectively through a number of beneficial action steps, as shown below:

Action Steps For Your Prospect

    Prepare for your call, now that they know in advance
    Reach out to executives mentioned in your email, to confirm if you?re legit
    Visit Google and gather some intelligence on you
    Respond with a better time for you to call
    Indicate no interest in taking your call (hopefully explaining why)
    Forward your message to a more appropriate person
    Ignore your message (this happens if emails are irrelevant or too long)

Action Steps For You

    Prepare, prepare and prepare for the call
    Identify three talking points for your call (Learn more about 3x3 research here)
    Craft two brief emails: Reconfirm the call or offer more value if they don't respond
    Schedule the call on your calendar so you don't miss the opportunity
    Save the email as a template for other prospects, especially if it's successful

TIP #5: Attract Prospects

Jim Rohn, the renown inspirational speaker, once said that "success is something you attract by becoming an attractive person." If you bring value to the marketplace, you will become valuable. Your prospects will seek you out vs. the other way around. Your reputation will precede you.

Here are specific tips on how to develop an attractive personal brand:

    Host a webinar with industry experts and share best practices
    Present a relevant topic at your industry association meeting
    Start a blog and write useful articles for your target audience
    Create an educational film with peers and share it on YouTube
    Record a podcast and invite your best customer to join in an episode
    Tweet (and retweet) powerful articles, videos and status updates

TIP #6: Make Rapid-Fire Calls 

If your organization manages a large volume of inbound leads, you no longer need to manually dial your contacts. Technologies offered by companies such as ConnectAndSell, ConnectLeader and InsideSales.com manage the dialing for you.

In the film The Pursuit of Happyness, homeless stockbroker Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith) finds a way to get through large lists of phone numbers ? and he never hangs up the phone! He also calls CEOs and gets right through the gatekeeper. Watch this film and get inspired to call prospects!

How will you implement these tactics to connect with your prospects? Feel free to share your experiences below. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for TIP #7 in Part 3 of this blog series!