How to Effectively Prospect and Engage Potential Customers

‍Before you kick it off, prepare adequately

If you don’t want your prospecting to be a nightmare, check these off your list:

• Lead list uploaded to your CRM (yes, you should have a CRM)! Ideally with a full name, LinkedIn profile, job position, department, e-mail, phone number (and any other relevant contact info) for each prospect - we’ll tell you why later in this article
• A CRM that can send email sequences and tracks e-mails.
• A set of email sequence templates (at least 3 e-mail touches).
• Call scripts ready (if you already know the typical customers’ objections have a list ready also).
• Sales process defined.

Next, we can move on to social media, which has become an inevitable part of our work life. 

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The first step of prospecting: working on your online presence

The preparation phase covers LinkedIn. It’s quite the topic, so let’s take a look at it in greater detail. Your LinkedIN profile gives you credibility and it’s often the very first interaction with your brand. Make it look professional.

> Get a professional profile picture.

Tip: Unlock it for the public, have a neutral background, wear what you’d usually wear to work, have an open body posture and smile.

> Get a headline telling people what you do and where.

The headline has to be on point and BS free. Remember, if you send out a connection request, you will be accepted based on your headline, profile picture and personalized message, so do not underestimate these sections.

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> About that "About" section:

It should be targeted at your audience.

If you’re working with startups, mention cooperation with other startups or cool projects you’ve done. If it’s corporations, mention big players and any flagship projects.

‍Use your audience’s language and focus on what matters to each of them. Moving further down, describe what you do and fill in the other fields (education, projects, skills...) so it is complete.  

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The second step of prospecting: strengthen your LinkedIn network

Now, back to where we suggested having prospects’ LI profiles uploaded in the CRM. To have a trustworthy profile, you also need to strengthen your network. Start inviting relevant people (same business or industry as yours) in it even though they’re not your targets now (they can be later, and these connections broaden your reach). Then, invite the desired people.

For both targeted and non-targeted growth of your network, use a sales prospecting automation tool such as Dux-soup (or alternatively Octopus CRM).

It can work solely with LI, sending a connection request to people listed by your LI search, or you can simply upload a list of specific LI profiles. In both cases, the automation tool will be sending connection requests while you’re busy working on something else.

If you’re not a tech person or you prefer the “human touch”, the other option would be to grow your network manually. This, of course, is way more time-consuming.

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Acceptance results using Dux-Soup 

We measured some of our connection activities within the HR industry on Linkedin. The acceptance rates were:

50 % - request with either a blank or a general non-personalized message 
75 % - request with a personalized message

So, it’s your call. Should you have a very narrow scope of people to reach out to, the better way could be doing this manually. If you care about the volume of sent requests, try automation.

Remember, many factors influence the acceptance rate, like your job position and the job position of the other party.

The same applies to whether you’re from a known or unknown brand, etc. 

Once people start accepting your invitations, LinkedIn automatically places your recent activity at the top of their feed.

This way, it tests the connection’s relevancy; gives the other side a chance to see what you’re up to, and ‘disconnect’ if they don’t like what they see. For this purpose, have some valuable content prepared and post it right before you start connecting.    

Conversation starters

Once connected, you’re usually able to see the person’s phone number on their profile. You might need it later. Also, use anniversaries, birthdays, promotions, etc. as a conversation starter.

Engage with your prospect’s activities; comment on posts and articles to make yourself visible. And now it's the time to get your hands dirty!

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We promised “Where” to prospect

We strongly advise using more than one channel. Your targets need to see the same message on various channels, so, ideally, use as many as possible to make your product unmissable. 

These are channels we like to use in SALESDOCk:

• e-mailing
• cold calling
• LinkedIn

However, when picking channels, be reasonable; is your target group modern enough to be on LinkedIn? If not, don’t bother with your LI profile in the first place.

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How to prospect and How the channels fall in one place 

Cold E-mailing

E-mails are your first activity of prospecting, especially if you’re reaching out to a high number of people. Even though e-mailing might not be the most effective channel, it’s the easiest one effort-wise. E-mailing harvests the low hanging fruit.

With automation, you can reach out to 500 people within a week, and out of the 500 leads, you can get around 20 meetings. To have an approximate idea of what to expect, our best result in email -> meeting conversion rate is 12% for the entire sequence. 

What’s the goal of e-mailing, anyway?

To get them on a call. Even if you schedule a formal meeting, suggest you have a short introductory call first. Why? Tell them you would like to prepare better.

Read about cold e-mailing in detail in this article.

Cold Calling

This lets you disqualify people without wasting hours on a pointless meeting. If you see that this solution is not the right one, tell them. Or if you’re worried it might be pricey for a specific segment, ask them about their budget allocation by “We cost approximately XXX. Is that something you plan to spend on XYZ this year?"

When e-mailing, in many instances, you just won’t get a response. Not responding doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interested in your product. It means you should start calling them, provided you have their phone number.

Even though you’ll ditch your call script after several calls, have it ready together with the objection list. Brace yourself; getting through gatekeepers will require some determination. Generally, we stop prospecting by having done 8 touches (emails, calls, LI requests/messages combined).

There is always a portion of leads that are very costly to get to. The gatekeeper won’t put you through, emails won’t be delivered, their zero LI presence, etc. For this group, our prospecting style won’t work. 

Read about cold calling in detail in this article.

TIP: Warm up by calling your mom before you start calling potential clients! :) You’ll make her happy. 

We like this article by HubSpot on what are the Dos and Don'ts of prospecting. Check it out!

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‍The final takeaways

Getting a new product on the market can be challenging. However, with a little persistence and our set of key tips, you’ll manage it in no time. Remember to exploit all the appropriate channels.

Having an awesome website is great, but show who stands behind the ideas - give your product a face by fine-tuning your LI profile. Have most of the work done by automation tools, and once it comes to emailing and calling, do not give up after one “not interested”! Like our colleague likes to say, “They kick you out the door, you get back through the window.”

If you need some guidance, let us know, we'd love to help!