“A growing body of evidence suggests that the single greatest driver of both achievement and well-being is understanding how your daily efforts enhance the lives of others.”
― Tom Rath, It’s Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life
BetterProspecting™ Step 5, Time for Customer Outreach: How did we get here?
We’ve covered the foundational steps to support outreach. We’ve picked accounts that matter to the business (ABM 1). Our research is done to identify the prospect’s pain points and to know how our solution will help their business; to ensure we are relevant (ABM 2). We now know their business in depth. And, we’ve looked for the people at the prospect company that should care or at least be aware of the problem we solved; and we’ve learned as much as we can about those people (ABM 3).
With the advance work, we have a less than 2% chance of a positive result from a cold call. Without the advance work, that’s largely (e.g., 98%) a waste of time and money for our business.
Start with a focus entirely on them, not us. It’s not about what we want or what our research shows. It’s about them. Our outreach messaging (ABM 4) has to be contextually relevant, personalized and point to the value prop; even if indirectly by way of highlighting the problem we know we can solve.
Our outreach isn’t truly “business to business”. More accurately, it’s human to human. To optimize the likelihood of interest, our starting point is the potential customer’s pain point. It’s not about us and what we’d like. Effective outreach is about starting that exchange of value and building trust.
To be relevant to the receiving person, we best start with an acknowledgement of their business, their challenges, their personal professional growth and willingness to partner with others to create a more effective business.
Outreach as part of ABM isn’t a once & done activity. It is part of a long-term sales, business development and marketing strategy designed to cultivate the right accounts and the right people at those accounts as long-term customers.
How do we deliver more effective outreach?
ABM is a proactive strategy to connect with our most highly desired customers; once we’ve completed the previous four ABM steps, it’s time to reach out and connect with our most valued contacts.
We strive for an initial conversation that leads to an enduring connection. Start with the individual at the prospective customer, their business, their pain points and industry relevant information. How do we help the customer connect with resources, information and solutions that will help them? Start with being relevant to them.
We won’t open or talk about our product/service unless the prospect asks us. Their time is valuable and to rise above the market noise, we don’t start with “us” or our products or any sense of urgency about getting the prospect to hear our pitch. We start the connection by focusing on our customer’s priorities, challenges and needs.
Ask: “Are {x} and {Y} also your business priorities? Those seem to surface from our other industry contacts as the top issues to be addressed to help a business thrive in this market. Is it the same for you and {company name}?” We’ve been outside looking in (until we gain more traction in the market). Now is the time to hear firsthand from the inside, what actually matters. We either verify what we have learned from our research or we directly improve our understanding of what actually matters to our potential customers.
ABM Stage 5 delivers the highest return on investment which is personalized social outreach, targeted email blasts, direct mail, followed by timely telemarketing and nurturing campaigns for the marketing qualified leads and prospects that aren’t yet actively in the market for our solution.
We open communications with a personalized note with a specific offer designed for that target account. This does not mean the age-old “limited time offer if you commit today” offer, but instead something of actual value that we can deliver to your prospect. Can we send over a relevant third-party industry study (assuming we secured the license rights for redistribution)? Are we hosting industry renown experts for a webinar that people in the industry will want to attend? This isn’t about a product sales message at this point, it’s about putting our sales rep in a position of relevance, value and expertise and our company as a relevant force in the market.
We’re creating alignment with the prospect about the challenge to be solved, perception that we are an ally in the industry that has the expertise and solutions to help and we’re socializing the optimal solution to the challenge, which we consequently know aligns with our product or service.
Decide which outreach channels will serve you best so you know that the right message reaches the target account at the right time. This is the time to invest more in our digital presence and use LinkedIn, Facebook for Business, Twitter and other outlets to establish our credibility as a resource on the problem we solve. And it’s time to rely on the content cluster (ABM 4) that we have created to support this customer segment and their particular problem that we solve.
The team determines the ideal interactions for our ABM accounts and associated budget for each. Our company focuses on the following outreach communication vehicles:
- LinkedIn connections
- Field events
- Direct mail and email campaigns
- Human outreach (Account executive, sales development representative, executive)
- Account advertising
- Offers: e-book, webinar with an industry expert
- Demo unit on loan
- Web personalization
With ABM we are fishing with a spear not a net, this is the time our sales and business development teams initiate the contact with the people at the accounts that will make a material difference in our business.
How do we measure outreach effectiveness?
Tracking the outreach is critically important. Ultimately, it’s about solving the problem for the customer and winning not only revenue but a long-term business engagement with the customer. The key elements to measure outreach track the expected pathway to forming a committed business relationship. It starts with that first connection whether it’s LinkedIn or a business card exchange at a meet-up during a trade show. The typical next step is an exchange of email addresses so communication can freely flow over company domain email.
What’s next depends on your deal flow: is it a non-disclosure agreement or an online conference call for discovery from the prospective customer? The initial engagement and re-engagement based on value provided (relevant webinars, relaying contextually relevant industry studies, e-books, etc.) follows the customer journey for the campaign. (More on ABM 6 – Customer Journey next month.)
Measurement of each active engagement with the date of the interaction helps us measure our progress toward closing on terms with the prospective customer. And by measuring we can gain insight into deal cycles, recurrent impediments to closing that can be improved upon or altogether eliminated: all the key metrics that let us improve the customer experience, accelerate our deal cycles and increase deal revenue size.
Next steps for customer outreach?
Outline the plan in terms of duration, themes, succinct statement of the problem you solve, budget, and resources allocated. We want the content in place before outreach begins, as the content reinforces the value of the connection and conversation. It establishes common ground, relevance and trust. And further, it provides value to the recipient. We move our opening with the prospect from asking for time to talk, to giving information and insight to our prospect.
Our next ABM article will focus on Step 6: Sustained Contact, That will be published in mid-June . Please drop us an email here at support@betterprospecting.biz if you want a notice about when our new ABM blogs are released.
Thanks to Simran Preet, Harshdeep Singh, Betty Ledgerwood and Murray Vince for their suggestions and edits. Any errors or omissions are solely mine.
BetterProspecting.biz offers templates to guide the account selection process for B2B sales. BetterProspecting.biz also offers ABM business analyst research and support, training and coaching for the sales team to help better focus resources, time, effort and staff on developing the customers that matter most to the business.
Resources
It’s Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life – Kindle edition by Rath, Tom. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Cold Calling Is Dead, Unless You Follow These Rules | Gong.io
