With prospecting being the most challenging part of the entire sales process and many businesses competing for leads — how do you ensure your company stands out and succeeds in meeting with the prospect?
53% of marketers spend more than half of their budget on lead generation. Yet, most of them struggle to ring up traction and are stuck in the mire with an empty calendar and a dry lead pipeline 🙇
The million-dollar question is: What are they doing wrong?... Followed by: How do we get more meetings with our prospects? Read on to know:
The most common mistakes while conducting a meeting with a prospect
Top tips to land more prospect meetings
The grand secret we use at The Scalelab to land more meetings 🙃
5 Common Mistakes While Conducting A Prospect Meeting
Before moving to the solutions, let’s discuss the problems that most businesses face while prospecting and getting meetings.
1. All me, me, me. Nothing you.
Most business pitches talk about their company and not the prospect. They are just focused on selling the product, instead of trying to understand the prospect's problems.
This tops our list of mistakes because your prospect doesn’t care about why your product or service is the best or what features it has. They receive these kinds of outreaches daily. They need to feel that you understand precisely what their problem is and that you care about them as individuals.
2. Sorry, what was your name again, Ms. Prospect?
Oh, the horror! But, it’s true. Forgetting a prospect's name or using the wrong one can happen, with negative effects...
Today's sales experience is not what it used to be a decade ago. A flat-out billboard with a slogan may have worked magic then; but now, your prospects demand personalization. Your pitch, communication collaterals, and channels need to be customized to each prospect. And it all starts with the name and company name :)
3. I’m bald. I don’t need your comb!
As silly as it sounds, this is one of the most common mistakes during prospecting. Fail to zero in on your ideal target prospect, and your whole lead generation and sales process go down the drain. It's like getting the wrong ingredients for a recipe.
Statistics say 22% of salespeople struggle with qualifying the prospects according to accurate buyer personas. Without the right data to define your ideal customer, you're just blindly pitching the ball in the dark, hoping to get a strikeout. Unfortunately, it just never works.
4. No proof. You… poof!
The first question that goes through your prospect's mind is — why you. Why should they even listen to you?
In order to get, you first need to give.
Do you have something that can add value to their work immediately? For instance, at The Scalelab, we know a lot of sales and marketing people struggle with writing compelling emails that will generate actual results. So we offer free templates to add immediate value to their work, which also showcases our expertise.
5. Just giving up after one try…
In other words, this means: Not following up! You cannot get a meeting, earn your prospect’s trust, and close the deal in one go.
Your prospect is being bombarded with emails, calls, text messages, instagram, facebook notifications all day. You're not on their priority list and they might not even open the majority of their notifications unless it really catches their attention.
Surprisingly, only 8% of salespeople follow-up.
All of this makes sales prospecting sound bleak, doesn't it? But at The Scalelab, we've been constantly improving the art of landing sales meetings left, right, and center. We've condensed all the information for you into these 6 actionable tips. Happy prospecting! 🙌
6 Surefire Ways To Land More Meetings With Prospects
1. Define your ideal prospect.
Understanding your target audience is at the heart of all effective business strategies. That’s why more than 90% of the top-performing companies effectively segment their target customers using buyer personas.
Who do you think will benefit the most from your product? — that’s the way to get your million-dollar answer.
With powerful analytics and assessing the right set of data, building your ideal customer from scratch shouldn't be difficult. For instance, you can look at your historical customers and draw similarities on data points like:
Which industry do they belong to?
Which department do they work in?
What's their seniority level?
What is the typical company size
What are their goals, personal as well as professional?
What problems do they face in their business?
We usually suggest to draw 2-4 personas so you can adjust the targeting and messaging for better results.
2. Be where your prospects are.
If your prospect is on Wall Street, you don’t roam around in the jungle waiting to meet them in a wildlife safari. So, while building your ideal buyer persona, you need to zero in on the communication channels your prospects use more frequently and know where to find them. Consider:
Where does my prospect spend most of their time?
Do they use any social media channel? (LinkedIn? Twitter?)
Do they read and engage on blogs?
Which cold outreach medium is preferable: email, LinkedIn or call?
3. Have a multichannel approach.
Relying on just 1 channel to communicate with your prospects or even find leads is a critical error. Data says that it takes at least 7-8 touches to get that initial meeting with your prospect. By connecting with your prospect on multiple channels, you guarantee 3 things:
There's a higher chance of them remembering you.
You'll be able to build a relationship with them, brick by brick.
They'll be able to trust you more with their money.
We recommend combining Email and LinkedIn in your cold outreach in order to not only appear on multiple channels but also to be able to connect with a prospect and build your profile.
Also, with the newly imposed LinkedIn restrictions, you can only send up to 100 connection requests every week (as opposed to 150 every day previously). This simple change in policy put a spanner in the lead generation strategies of several businesses.
Thus, an omnichannel approach for lead generation and prospecting works to ensure steady lead flow.
4. Be specific and speak to their needs.
Now, this requires some experience and understanding to know what your prospect needs for their business. And how you can be a valuable addition to their life.
So, address the exact problem that they might be facing, and how you can help them solve it by using the exact phrases and terms that they need to hear.
Don’t do this:
❌ Avoid ranting about your company and how great your product is.
❌ Don't use complex jargon, unless the term is directly related to their industry/field.
❌ Don't go on and on about the features of your product/website.
Instead, do this:
✅ Remember: it is about them, not you.
✅ Open your email with something interesting about them. Mention their services, something they wrote, a LinkedIn post they published...
✅ Call out a challenge you know they face.
✅ Keep it short, sweet, and simple. They don't have any more than a couple of minutes for you. Respect their schedule.
✅ Write the way you would speak to someone in person
✅ 125 words max and max 2 lines per paragraph.
5. Guide them with the specifics.
Not every feature of your product or service might be helpful for your prospect. So, instead of bombarding them with all the 22 things, speak about the specific 2 things that will solve your prospect’s immediate problems.
Be razor-focused on your prospect, their problem, and your specific solution to that through your product or service.
Offer something that clearly adds value to their work. A demo doesn't solve anyone's problems.
Again, instead of selling, focus on developing a relationship with your prospect by understanding his/her preferences, and problems. And providing specificity in your pitches.
6. Be Human.
The two words above make all the difference between you and the robotic teleprompter message that plays when your prospect is on another call. And trust us, nobody likes listening to a robot. It's dull, boring, and quite frankly, sleep-inducing 💤
Your goal is to form a connection with another human. Behind Business to Business deals there are always Human to Human relationships.
So, divert away from the standards. Make your conversation more human. Induce inflection, tonality, and personality into your approach. After all, the mode might be digital but the prospect is still human.
A great way to do this is by hyper-personalizing your emails and messages. This way your prospect knows that you’re not copy pasting the same message to everyone — making them thereby feel more special :)
Wrapping Up…
Everyone can prospect, but it's about doing it right. The key is to know who you target, where they're to be found, what they're expected outcome is and how you can add value.
Tweak it, turn it, retool it… until it gets your lead pipelines filled to the brim and your calendar with prospect meetings. And remember, you're talking to humans.
Happy prospecting 😎
Team TSL