Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling (Jeb Blount)

by Jeb Blount

The first step in creating familiarity is through persistent and consistent daily prospecting. Each time you call, e-mail, meet face to face, drop off a business card, and leave a voice mail, you create familiarity. This is one of the core reasons persistence pays off.

The real secret to generating referrals is: Give a legendary customer experience. Ask.

“People will forget what you said or did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

Speaking allows you to showcase your knowledge. It also gives you tremendous visibility and credibility. And because so few of your competitors do it, it will set you apart, enhance your personal brand, and create a greater sense of familiarity with your prospects.

Warning The information in this chapter comes with a warning. It is easy to spend all of your time creating familiarity. If you do this in place of other prospecting activities, you'll wake up a month from now with an empty pipe and a screaming, pissed-off boss.

Sales is a blend of art and science. The art is influencing people to make commitments. The science is influencing the right people. —Jeb Blount

Five Objectives of Social Prospecting (Outcomes) The Five Cs of the Social Prospecting Process (Effective) Social Prospecting Tools (Efficient) Personal branding and building familiarity Connecting Engagement tools Inbound prospecting via education and insights Content creation Creation tools

Trigger-event and buying-cycle awareness Content curation Curation tools Research and information gathering Conversion Distribution tools Outbound prospecting via direct engagement Consistency Intelligence and data tools

The bottom line is people don't want to be pitched or “sold” on social media. They prefer to connect, interact, and learn. For this reason, the social channel is better suited to building familiarity, lead nurturing, research, nuanced inbound prospecting, and trigger-event awareness.

Facebook,

YouTube,

The social channel is mesmerizing and addictive. It is designed to be that way, to hook you so you keep coming back for more.

When you spend your entire day on social media, don't think for a minute that it is any different than parking yourself in front of a TV screen.

Does my presence online support my efforts to build my reputation as a sales professional who solves problems and can be trusted? Does it help people become familiar with my name and brand in a positive way?

As we've already established, the thing that makes prospecting so hard is you are interrupting someone's day and that interruption creates immediate resistance

Prospects meet with you for their reasons, not yours. You must articulate the value of spending time with you in the context of what is most important to them.

One of the truths about human behavior is people tend to respond in kind.

Nonverbal communication includes: Voice tone, inflection, pitch, and speed Body language, facial expressions The way you dress and your outward appearance Sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and the words used in written communication—e-mail, text messaging, and social messaging

A simple definition of confidence is “a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something.”1 Enthusiasm is defined as “a strong excitement about something; something inspiring zeal or fervor.”2

Cuddy's research demonstrates that “power posing,” physically standing in a posture of confidence, even when you don't feel confident, impacts testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and that influences confidence.5

Smart Calling, Art Sobczak

Focuses on a business objective that is measured: You'll get their attention when you focus on a metric that impacts their performance. Disrupts status quo: The status quo is powerful. People abhor change and will only move from the status quo when they feel they can significantly improve their current situation—increase sales, reduce costs, improve efficiency, reduce stress, and so on. Offers proof or evidence: When you can provide information about how much you have helped prospects in similar situations, you gain instant credibility.

“I'm helping several restaurants in town with significant savings on supplies. I thought we could meet so I can spend time learning about you and your restaurant to see if what we offer might be a fit.”

New Sales. Simplified.

you need a compelling message that works most of the time with most of your prospects. It has to be quick, direct, and persuasive, but it cannot sound like a cheesy script. It's got to be natural and authentic.

When the researcher gave a nonsensical reason like, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copier? Because I have to make copies,” the person still said yes 93 percent of the time.

To develop a bridge specific to your prospect, you will first need to determine the objective of your prospecting touch: Are you attempting to get more information to further qualify the opportunity, decision-maker role, or buying window? Do you want to set up an initial meeting? Are you seeking an introduction to another person?

People make decisions based on emotion first and then justify with logic.

Emotional value: You connect directly with them at the emotional level—typically by relating to painful emotions like stress, worry, insecurity, distrust, anxiety, fear, frustration, or anger and offering them peace of mind, security, options, lower stress, less worry, or hope.

Insight (curiosity) value: You offer information that gives them power or leverage over other people. Most prospects worry about maintaining their competitive edge—either as a company or an individual. They're anxious that there may be something in the marketplace that they are not privy to. Unknowns are disconcerting—especially if a competitor has a best practice, information, system, or process that they don't.

Tangible (logic) value: Executives and contacts in technical and data-centric roles will value data and case studies. How much, how many, and what results can you deliver, have you delivered, ...

Start by answering these questions from your prospect's perspective: What would cause you stress? When do you feel stress? What makes you worry? When do you worry? Why do you worry? What creates anxiety? When do you feel anxiety? How do you feel when you run out of time for important things? How do you feel when you don't have enough money to accomplish your goals? When does this happen? How do you feel when you don't have enough resources to accomplish your goals? When does this happen? How do you feel when you don't have the knowledge to accomplish your goals? When does this happen?

How do you feel when you fail to accomplish your goals? When do you get overwhelmed, and how does it feel? What impacts your peace of mind or sense of security? How would it feel to have limited options? What is causing you to feel frustrated or stuck? What makes you mad? What causes you to feel distrust? What causes you fear? What causes you anguish? How do you feel when ______ happens? What might you want to know? What unknown would make you worry? What information would you fear getting into your competitor's hands? What might a competitor be doing that would make you want to do it, too? What information would you believe might give you a winning edge? What would cause you to be curious? What might be stealing your time, money, or resources?

Telephone prospecting is the most despised activity in sales. Calling and interrupting people you don't know is uncomfortable. You get a tremendous amount of rejection.

your call must be structured so that you get to the point fast—in 10 seconds or less—and sound like an authentic professional

Get their attention by using their name: “Hi, Julie.” Identify yourself: “My name is Jeb Blount and I'm with Sales Gravy.” Tell them why you are calling: “The reason I'm calling is to set up an appointment with you.” Bridge—give them a because: “I just read an article online that said your company is going to add 200 new sales positions

over the next year. Several companies in your industry are already using Sales Gravy exclusively for sourcing sales candidates and they are very happy with the results we are delivering.” Ask for what you want, and shut up: “I thought the best place to start is to schedule a short meeting to learn about your sales recruiting challenges and goals. How about we meet Wednesday afternoon around 3:00 PM?”

Identify yourself. Say who you are and the company you work for up front. This makes you sound professional. Say your phone number twice. Prospects can't call back if they don't have or you garbled your number. Give your contact information up front and say it twice—slowly. After they hear your name and company, they may not care about the rest of your message because based on their situation, they can infer what it is about. Tell them the reason for your call. Tell them why you have called. There is nothing more irritating to a buyer than a salesperson who is not honest about their intentions. After you give your personal

information just say, “The reason for my call is…” or “the purpose of my call is…,” then tell them why you are calling and what you want. Transparency is both respectful and professional. Give them a reason to call you back. Prospects call back when you have something that they want or are curious about. Curiosity is a powerful driver of behavior. When you have knowledge, insight, information, special pricing, new or improved products, a solution to a problem, and so on, you create a motivating force that compels your prospect to call you back. Repeat your name and say your phone number twice. Before you end your

message, say your name again slowly and clearly and always, always s...

In sales persistence always wins. Always.

Hook: Get their attention with a compelling subject line and opening sentence/statement. Relate: Demonstrate that you get them and their problem. Show empathy and authenticity. Bridge: Connect the dots between their problem and how you can help them. Explain the WIIFM. Ask: Be clear and straightforward about the action you want them to take, and make it easy for them to do so.

You have about three seconds to grab your prospect's attention—hook them. In that three seconds, your subject line must compel them to open the e-mail and the first sentence must entice them to keep reading. Kendra Lee, author of The Sales Magnet, calls this the “glimpse factor.”

“If I give you what you want—my time—what's in it for me?”

Develop the habit of researching prospects and becoming aware of trigger events that are impacting them and opening up buying windows.

Proof your prospecting e-mail before you send it. Read it once. Read it twice. Step away from it for 10 minutes and read it again (you'll be amazed at what you catch using this process). Print the really important e-mails and proof the hard copy.

The probability of your text message converting—compelling your prospect to take action—increases exponentially if your text comes after contact through another channel.

a text message sent alone converts at 4.8 percent. That same message, sent after a phone contact, increases conversion by 112.6 percent. Why? The Law of Familiarity.

The goal is simple: Give your prospect a reason to engage you in a conversation. You increase this possibility by making them feel important.

Identify yourself. Never take for granted that your prospect has your information saved on their phone. In most cases they don't, and when you send a text message they won't know who you are. As a best practice, include your name and company at the top of the message. Message matters. What you say and how you say it carries impact. Be very careful that your tone is not misinterpreted in a negative way. Use complete sentences to avoid sounding abrupt, harsh, sarcastic, or flippant. Be direct—be brief. Say exactly what you mean in clear, precise, well-written sentences using good grammar and spelling. Remember that this is a professional message. Keep the text to one to four short sentences or less than 250 characters when possible. Avoid rambling, run-on sentences. Do not use emoticons (little smiley faces)—be professional. Avoid abbreviations. Avoid using abbreviations on text messages to prospects. Abbreviations like LOL, OMG, WTF, and others don't come off as professional, and the person on the other end might not understand what you mean. Likewise, you should avoid acronyms and slang. Use transparent links. People are extremely suspicious of shortened hyperlinks. Just like with e-mail, when you send URLs to prospects that link to articles or other resources, send the entire URL so they know where they are clicking. Before clicking “send”—pause and read it again. Make this your rule when it comes to text messages (and, frankly, all written communication). Know your numbe...