Category: lead generation strategies

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How to Use LinkedIn for Cold Prospecting – Anniversary Episode #260

Pat Helmers Sales Babble Sales Podcast

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How to Use LinkedIn for Cold Prospecting – Anniversary Episode #260

Pat Helmers Sales Babble Sales PodcastToday is the 5th anniversary of Sales Babble! Congratulations!   It’s the sales podcast  that talks divulges  selling secrets for non-sellers.  Here it is 2019 and I’m still talking about the very same subject. I just can’t help myself! Today we’re going to do something special, which we often do on these anniversaries.   We’re going to do a solo episode to chat about something that’s recently been on top of my mind; how to  use LinkedIn for cold prospecting.

New Startup Client

I’ve been working with a client since October. It’s a start up and we’re trying to understand how to break into the market and add value. We began by building a value proposition in doing a ton of market research to understand exactly the problems and desires that challenge them. My task is to create a process for business development and scale that up into a sales team. We’re getting ready to start hiring and I know exactly how I’m going to train them because I’ve been doing it myself. It’s been really fun selling.

This is how we use LinkedIn for cold prospecting. Because we’re a startup, we don’t have any existing customer to lean on. We are at square one.

Slideshow on LinkedIn prospect

To make it easy to we have slideshow that describes  exactly what I’m doing how I’m approaching prospecting. We use this tool hunter.io to discover emails. This is my tool kit: LinkedIn,  Hunter.io,  Gmail and a telephone. That’s all!

Our goal is to find target companies, then decision makers, then reach out to them a dozen times or so until they agree to meet for coffee or a chat. This is how we use LinkedIn for cold prospecting.

How to Prospect and Generate Leads

Here are past episodes to keep the conversation going. Listen now!

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How To Grow 10K LinkedIn Connections with Jess Tiffany #250

Jess-Tiffany-sales babble

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How To Grow 10K LinkedIn Connections with Jess Tiffany #250

Jess-Tiffany-sales babbleOur guest today is Jess Tiffany, public speaker and author of the book  Growth Hacking: Strategically Grow Your Business Connections from Zero to 10K in 365 Days. Jess has over 18K LinkedIn connections in LinkedIn and leverages those connections daily to grow his digital marketing agency, book sales and speaking engagements. Now get this, he grew nearly half of those in just one year. In this episode Jess will share his process on how to grow 10K LinkedIn connections with practical advice on how to take action.

Grow Connections from Connections

The process for growth is really quite simple. It’s not a hack. The three steps include:

  1. Leverage the relationships you have
  2. Add new people strategically based on what you want to do
  3. Grow your business

But before we start,  this is question we must all ask. Why are you on LinkedIn?

If you’re trying to keep up on friends and past colleagues, that’s all well and good. But if you’re trying to build a business you need a different approach. Consider the people you wish you knew. Who are your ideal clients, dream mentors, possible employers, possible hires you want to meet in the future. Now is the time to take action. Build it BEFORE you need it.

Over 10K in One Year

Jess currently has over 18K LinkedIn connections. This is how he did it and recommends:

  • Personalize your messages
  • Have your profile stand out
  • Professional photography
  • SEO your LinkedIn
  • When they look at your profile they will see value
  • Send 10-30 invites a day, religiously

Personalize Your Reach

When you reach out grow your LinkedIn connections,  personalize your message. Answer

  1. why you want to connect
  2. what’s your purpose to connect

Use the term “open to connect”.    For example are you oen to connect with other top business professionals.

The less “pending” connections you have the less likely you will be put in LinkedIn Jail (Blocked from sending too many spammy connection requests). When you personalize (I see you’re in Boy Scouts too) the more likely they will connect. Then start a conversation.

Engage in LinkedIn Posts

Jess recommends not only posting but engaging in other’s post to build up some familiarity. Both Jess and I met this way. It was through a common conversation via comments in a post that we started communicating. Then we took the conversation offline onto a phone call and then eventually to this podcast episode.

Take Action Tips

Set aside some time every day. Use search tool and look for people with a common interests. Use the QR code to connect with people in the real world. Click the Find nearby and in LinkedIn and get large groups of people to connect with you quick!

How To Find Jess Tiffany

This is Jess’s book:  Growth Hacking: Strategically Grow Your Business Connections from Zero to 10K in 365 Days

Jeff’s speaker page:  https://jesstiffany.com/speaker/

Resources:  

Social media:

Social Selling

Let’s keep the conversation going. Check these other episodes out today!

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Webinars that Work with Todd Earwood #246

Todd Earwood Sales Babble

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Webinars that Work with Todd Earwood #246

Todd Earwood Sales BabbleTodd Earwood is the founder and CEO of MoneyPath. Todd believes in using webinars as powerful sales tools that will engage customers for years to come, and he helps his clients do just that through Webinar Works. In this  episode Todd and I discuss what it takes to build effective webinars that work. In a world where there is more work than time, we consider the possibility of using automation to tease out highly qualified prospects.

What’s new About Webinars?

A webinar is a video sales presentation made over the web. The presentation maybe live or automated. The webinar can be augmented with technology to advance interest in a product or service. In either case a webinar is a way of getting leads to self identify interest. If a visitor spends a long time on a webinar, they are a hot prospect. This is how you can make webinars that work.

Keys to High Quality Webinars That Work

  • Webinars should private, don’t publish on social media
  • Target a very narrow persona, may only have 1 or 2 people show up
  • People are strongly motivated to avoid pain, not so much gain. Be mindful of your focus.
  • Hook on a persona. For example consider this headline “Top 5 mistakes and pitfall that Z make regarding Y topic”
  • Arm sales with snippet content.  Make separate blogs posts and videos for each mistake and consider it a reusable asset
  • Have two people host the webinar
  • Have polls – leave a comment or use a tool
    • Do you agree? YES or NO or THE POPE IS CATHOLIC
  • At the end of the webinar ask, which question was the most interesting for you?
  • Then ask “now that you’ve been educated on this topic, what’s your next step?”
    1. research
    2. love it going to hand it off
    3. love this topic I need to learn more now

Build  a webform poll on the video page… people will  click it.

Segmented Follow Up: Follow up with ALL who show up. Break up the signups into groups by interest; follow up who didn’t show up and offer to have them watch the replay.

How To Connect with Todd Earwood

5 mistakes entrepreneurs makes working out an idea

Webinar Works is for you if…
You want to use a turnkey, proven process to drive leads
You think creating content is too much work, much less a webinar
You wish there was a new way to target old prospects or dead leads
You want to discover from first-hand companies who have used this system

Get your assessment here:  https://www.webinarworks.co/salesbabble

Lead Generation Strategies

Let’s keep the babble going. Here are past episodes on lead gen. Listen now!

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How To Generate Leads with LinkedIn Posts with Kevin Appleby #245

Kevin Appleby Sales Babble

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How To Generate Leads with LinkedIn Posts with Kevin Appleby

Kevin Appleby Sales BabbleSince August, Sales Babble has been a member of a group managed by our guest Kevin Appleby.  The group has been commissioned to leverage and promote Linkedin posts.  LinkedIn posting is a way of marketing your profile and your brand. If you post great content, more people will connect with you. When you can grow your connections, you widen your pool of prospective leads. If you’re you’re looking to grow your authority to get a job, get promoted or earn new customers, this is the episode for you. Learn how to generate leads with LinkedIn posts.

LinkedIn’s Goals

LinkedIn wants visitors to stay within the LinkedIn ecosystem. If there is a post that others find engaging, they will promote it to your first degree connections. It will show up more often in their feed.   LinkedIn doesn’t want anything that looks salesy. It want’s posts that are commented and liked.

How We Do It

Kevin has a simple 5 step process for promoting posts on LinkedIn:

  1. Become a member of a back channel Whatsapp group
  2. Write a “quality ” post (see details below)
  3. Post on LinkedIn
  4. Post on Whatsapp that you posted on LinkedIn
    • Two groups: one for links of  the post, one for chat about the post
  5. Friends in the Whatsapp group will “like”, “comment” and “share”  the post within an hour

What Makes for Quality Post

It’s critical that the post contains value to  the reader. The post should be an example of your skill and knowledge. The post may also be used to deepen an understanding of your personality. With that said, this isn’t Facebook. Remember to stay professional when you generate leads with LinkedIn.  Make sure:

  • The post  stimulates comments, likes and shares.
  • Skip the links or pictures elsewhere(LinkedIn wants you to stay in LinkedIn)
  • Ask  questions to stimulate conversation. Make it easy for readers.
  • Share links in comments if you want to reference some content
  • Use #hashtags to brand your posts

Take Action

Network on  LinkedIn like you would live….ask questions, comment, like and share.   Don’t forget to look for the tag #salesbabble

Sign up for Linked Professionally here 

Folks heads up, this is an affiliate link. But as sales professionals appreciate the fact that Pat may profit from this venture 🙂

How to Find Kevin Appleby

Kevin can be easily found across the internet!

  • linkedin.com/in/kevin-appleby-295417a

Join the New Slack Channel

We’ve created a new slack channel title “Sales Babble”.  Click the Babble Me button and request access. 

Social Selling Secrets For You

You too can leverage the internet for lead gen. Listen today:

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The Day Marketing Held Sales Accountable with Darryl Praill #243

Darryl Praill Sales Babble

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The Day Marketing Held Sales Accountable with Darryl Praill #243

Darryl Praill Sales BabbleOur guest is  Darryl Praill. Darryl is the Chief Marketing Officer of VanillaSoft, and a high-tech marketing executive with over 25 years’ experience. In this episode Darryl and I have a raucous conversation discussing the how marketing and sales departments commonly engage (or better put, fail too). This engagement commonly involves finger pointing, name calling and other bad behaviours. Darryl states that sales is not doing it’s job. Secondly, marketing should hold sales accountable for the leads it provides. In the end we find the topic is much messier.

Question Asked of Sales by Marketing

Answer the question….

  • Have you followed up on those leads?
  • What do you mean those leads were crap?
  • Why are you asking me for more leads, I just gave you a boat load of leads?

According to Darryl, too often sales fails to honor the leads it gets. Nor do they share what makes the leads of poor quality. He believes there should be a set of Mutual Rules of Engagement e.g., when sales gets a lead, they will follow up.  There should also be a dialogue describing what makes a good leads and how quick and vigilant sellers will work on the leads.

Issues with Lead Follow Up

What happens today:

  1. 48% of new leads never get contacted
  2. <2 call attempts are made
  3. Average time of follow up  35-60 hours
  4. 1 hour is the optimal time to follow up
  5. 8-12 attempts is optimal

So it begs the question, if sales it not doing it’s job the day should marketing holds sales accountable? Darryl believes it’s not all sales fault, it’s technology issues. CRMs for marketing are very different systems then CRMs used by sales organizations. If only they worked better.

How To Find Darryl Praill

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Cadence: 7 Drivers of Profit with Pete Williams #241

Pete Williams and Cadence Bookv3

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Cadence: 7 Drivers of Profit with Pete Williams #241

Pete Williams and Cadence Bookv3Pete Williams  is this episodes guest and  author of the book Cadence: A Tale of Fast Business Growth.   By a tale,  I mean exactly that. Pete tells a story about struggling business owner of a bicycle store who meets mysterious sensei  who slowly reveals the 7 drivers of profit.  Profit is a key motivation of all for-profit companies.  When sellers focus on profit, it’s easy to make a case for your product or service and close sales.

Seven Drivers of Profit

According to Pete, profits can be gained when any of the following drivers are improved. If you focus on these drivers, one by one, they will collectively add up to fast business growth.

Drivers mentioned include:

  • Number of suspects
  • Number of prospects
  • Number of conversions
  • The  average item price
  • The average number of items per sale
  • The number of transactions per customer
  • The product/service margins.

First focus on having a 10% improvement on each of the profit driver. Because of this the effort will compound to a doubling of profit.  Given these incremental improvements, there will be a collective 2X effect.

A 2x gain in profit would great, right?  That’s a good start? With more improvement couldn’t even be greater?

Take Action Advice

Of  the 7 drivers of profit, consider Conversions. Focus on turning leads into suspects and suspects into qualified leads (prospects).  You will get more bang for our buck working you leads efficiently.

How To Find Pete Williams

Pete is easy to find across the web. As such here are further links regarding fast business growth:

www.PreneurGroup.com | www.PeteWilliams.com.au
Mobile: +61 4 1853 2814
Email: pete@preneurgroup.com

This is his new book:www.CadenceBook.com

How To Grow Sales

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Leadsology with Tom Poland #220

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Leadsology – Science of Being in Demand with Tom Poland #220

Today we meet Tom Poland the author of the #1 international best selling book Leadsology®: The Science of Being in Demand. Tom shares the process he uses to get prospects to self select and qualify themselves. We talk about simple marketing techniques, sales professionals can use to find great prospects.

For Tom a highly qualified lead is someone who

  1. Searches and finds your link,
  2. Knows your fee/pricing,
  3. Books a sales call,
  4. Views you as the only (or small set) legitimate choice(s).

These KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are most indicitive of sales conversion rates (for Tom typically 50%).  The trick is to filter out unqualified leads prior to the meeting. Prospects self select.

Creating an Experience

The marketing experiences of the prospect includes:

  • Preselection – only prospects with a set demographic criteria that self select via content marketing
  • Lead Magnet – could be some information of value, commonly a pdf worksheet, essay, or maybe a webinar or live event. He calls this a “honey pot”.
  • A buyer is the intersection of an Ideal Client and a Marketing Message (Value Proposition)

Other Peoples Networks

Leadsology is dependent on the process of leverageing other people’s networks:

  • Find people with similar, but not exact clients
  • Get introduced because it’s free easy fast and simple
  • For partnerships you need: Rapport Respect Relatability Reciprocity 
  • Build networks by sharing your networks.

Take Action Advice

  1. Do some marketing!   Anything!   Don’t wait to be discovered.
  2. Do the Five Day Lead Challenge
  3. Purchase the domain BookachatwithYOURNAME.com to make it easy for people to book a meeting.

How To Find Tom Poland

Tom can be found all over the internet:

Click here to get the #1 international best selling book “Leadsology®: The Science of Being In Demand”

Lead Generation Strategies

Here are past episodes on lead gen. Enjoy!

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Debunking Sales Myths with Mike Schultz #216

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Debunking Sales Myths with Mike Schultz #216

Selling has changed tremendously in the last 10 years. But prospecting has changed even more. Previous  research suggests that 57 percent of the purchase decision is complete before a customer calls a supplier.  This gives sellers the false impression that buyers don’t want or need to talk to them early in the buying process. They do! Mike Schultz visits Sales Babble for clarifying and debunking these sales myths with advice based on hard research.

Some Common Sales Myths

Rain Group is a sales research institute just completed a study on prospecting. They talked to 488 buyers, asking them what  is the process they have used for past purchases.

They study found it’s a sales myth that buyers don’t want to talk to sellers, eg. 67% sale done digitally. But this should slow sellers down.  71%  of buyers said they want to talk to sellers at the early part of their research. They want context. With too many choices it becomes to difficult for buyers to choose “Its the ‘paradox of choice” according to Barry Schwartz.

  • Myth cold calling is dead. Greater than 50%  of buyers prefer to be contacted by the telephone. It is second only to email. Of the buyers researched,  57% have had the seller reach out to them on the phone.
  • 82% of buyers take meetings with people they don’t know but have talked to on the phone.
  • Buyers need inspiration, start with your existing clients.

What Winners Do

It’s a myth that buyers don’t want to hear about capabilities and only benefits. The #1 content buyers want is features and capabilities. It’s buyers primary research on their industry. They want descriptions of the capabilities in context. They desire content customized 100% to their business  Not mass mail merges.

Great Sellers WAVE

  1. Winners Mindset – The Mindset of a winner is strategic,  not tactics only.
  2. Attraction Campaign – multistep and modal approach to reach out and connect to buyers. The number of attempts to reach a prospect should be 8 (not 3).
  3. Value – Get prospects to say wow that could be worthwhile (to have a call, meet, agree to demonstration or buy).
  4. Execution -Winners do all the tactical parts. They take action to turn around objections. They exercise executive functions to stay focused in a noisy world.  They have the ability to concentrate and focus for prospecting (which is the hardest thing to do).

 

Cold meetings that have a value approach will turn deals into wins. When sellers focus on value, 96% said it was influential. They want to be educated and collaborative >90%.  Yet the meetings must be interesting and add value. Most sales meetings are not valuable to most buyers. If they are impressive they will buy  things.

Take Action Plan

To get good at prospecting you have to make it 100% of your focus.   Attack it like you’re going to make it work. Build an  attraction campaign.

How To Find Mike Schultz

Website: https://www.raingroup.com

Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/mike_schultz

RAIN Group Twitter: https://twitter.com/rainselling

RAIN Group Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RAINGroup/

Mike LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeschultz50/

RAIN Group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rain-group_2/

Mike mentioned that we was happy to share a copy of the report with the audience:  5-sales-prospecting-myths-debunked

How to Prospect and Generate Leads

Here are past episodes that talk about the mindset for lead generation.

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How to Generate Referrals Without Asking with Stacey Brown Randall #206

Stacey Brown Randall Sales Babble

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Stacey Brown Randall Sales BabbleHow to Generate Referrals Without Asking with Stacey Brown Randall #206

Leveraging business referrals is a powerful way to grow your business. Unfortunately the process is poorly understood and followed. The majority of the people are uncomfortable asking clients to do something that would help their business. They’ve been told to just get over their shyness and ask for a referral or reference. Since there are few alternatives, most  people just skip it all together. In this episode Stacey Brown Randall preaches against outright asking for a referral.  She shows an alternative process on how to generate referrals without asking.

Build a Referral Network Stay Top of Mind

If you have a business reflect on your loyal and happy clients. Place them in your referral network. If you’re working for a startup, it will require old school networking. Work with people you know from you past. Ask them to keep you top of mind. Adhere to a process (see below) and overtime, referrals will happen.

Five Step Referral Process

In the interview Stacey walked us through the five step process on how to generate referrals without asking. This will will be covered in her new book:

  1. Know whose referring you and your referral sources. Build a list (24-36 sources)
    • Warm lead, introduction, word of mouth buzz, referrals ( 4 different types of prospects)
  2. Have a follow up / thank you process once you receive a referral
  3. Outreach with touch points to your referral network. Go deeper when interacting with them. Use language that will cause them to think of you and generate referrals. Beyond keeping in touch. Know something about them e.g. Fathers day, something personal. Maybe a host a network lunch, bring two people in your network together. This is the Secret Sauce.  Build out a year long plan.
  4. Automate the year long plan with process by building a calendar, on a cycle. Work on it each week.
  5. Track the plan and tweak as you learn what’s working and what’s not.

Take Action Plan

Focus on step 1 and build your list of referral sources (who should and have sent business to you).  In your CRM, make sure to include with your list of clients,  who referred them. This way you have a means of thanking and honoring your network.

How To Find Stacey Brown Randall

Stacey’s new book is Generating Business Referrals Without Asking   It’s coming out Fall of 2018  Preorders will start in March.  The book delves deep in the 5 steps and provides supplemental material.

Website – www.growthbyreferrals.com/salesbabble

Click on the link to get the four reasons you don’t get referrals and next how to generate referrals without asking.

Join Stacey’s free Facebook group – Referrals Without Asking and learn more:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/referralswithoutasking/

You can find Stacey in Social media

 

Business Development and Lead Generation Strategies

Here are past episodes to continue this week’s conversation. Enjoy!

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How to Find Sales Leads with Twitter with Madalyn Sklar #199

Madalyn Sklar Sales Babble

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Madalyn Sklar Sales BabbleHow to Find Sales Leads with Twitter with Madalyn Sklar #199

Sales Babble listeners are always asking about social selling and using social media of discover new leads. Sales people are ALWAYS looking for new leads.  We know that LinkedIn can be alot of help, but what about Twitter, what about Instagram or Facebook? Is Snapchat worth your time?Today we ask AND answer those very questions. My guest Madalyn Sklar and I review each of the social media platforms and Madalyn shares advice  on how to find sales leads with Twitter and common do’s and don’ts for Social Selling.

Social Media Social Selling

Sales is sales. Just like finding leads at a networking event or referrals, social selling is no different except for the venue!

  • You can find leads in all social media!
  • Your ability to find leads depends on two things:
    1. Knowing who you’re selling to
    2. Understanding the social media venue

How to Find Leads with Twitter

  • Be consistent
  • Tweet everyday
  • Tweet 5 times a day
  • Check notifications people who respond
  • Check DM inbox and look for leads  1 lead /20 spam
  • Create lists: customers, competitors, prospects
  • Find ways to join conversations
  • Participate in Twitter chats
  • Hosts #twittersmarter every Thursday 1PM EST
  • Engage with people, just don’t post about you and your business

How to Find Leads on Instagram

  • Use hashtags
  • People search for hashtags to find a common conversation
  • There is a lot of spam, engage to discover who’s real

How to Find Leads on LinkedIn

  • Repost blogs on LinkedIn Article platform (former Pulse)

How to Find Leads on SnapChat

  • Can’t really find leads on Snapchat, according to Madalyn, it’s not worth her time
  • Redundant with  Instagram Story’s, Facebook too.

How to Find Madalyn Sklar

Madalyn is ranked #1 Houston Social Media Power Influencer. You can find her here:

Go here to get her Twitter Secret Sauce – FREE online course videos and handouts

Lead Generation Strategies

Many past episodes share advice on how to find leads with social selling. Listen now!