Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com

by Aaron Ross

Step 1. Get Clear On Your Ideal Customer Profile The simple most important thing you can do to make this program effective is to spend time getting clear on who your ideal customers are — both the kinds of accounts and the types of contacts in them. This is where most companies fall short from the start, by targeting the wrong prospects, at the wrong levels, going after too many kinds of companies, or not speaking in‘their language’. Step 2. Build Your List How can you build a database of the above kinds of prospects? Do you already have a list in-house? Can you buy one? Or do you need to build one from scratch…? Most companies approach and sell too low. Do you have decision-makers (or their bosses) as well as lower level people? How targeted is your list? Is it cluttered with non-relevant companies or people? Resist any temptation to throw in lists of random prospects just because you have them—there is an opportunity cost to marketing to poor-fit prospects. Responses from people who don’t fit your customer criteria will just end up wasting your time and cluttering your database. Step 3. Run Outbound Email Campaigns Don't make this mistake: companies are too dependent on cold calls. Phone skills are critical, but use calls as the second step in prospecting. Begin with email, and then use phone to follow up to people who respond. Simple email templates can get you an 8-12%-plus response rate even from high-level prospects. Send outbound mass emails or mass