“Success strategy for after you Prospect”

Prospecting is extremely important in sales, especially when building a healthy pipeline. Every salesman wants a strong pipeline because it presents the opportunity for more closed deals.  The larger the pipeline = more closed deals, more closed deals = more money for you and the company. Boom! Everyone’s happy and you’re a hero. But wait... Corey, what do I do after the prospecting part?  This is where being an entry-level greenhorn inexperienced salesman like myself can be tricky.   It’s like driving to a desired destination, there are turns and sometimes it can be a long bumpy road until you get there.   These turns can be 1.) Identify Target Accounts 2.) Email Campaigns 3.) Who is the decision maker? 4.) Identify Pain Point

5 Things You Can Do

1.      

   Target accounts:

Having a segmented list for who to prospect can help you in many facets of sales.  Prospecting not only helps narrow it down companies who are best fits or in other words “Target Account”.  Target Accounts are companies that you want to turn into customers.  What are the dream accounts you wish to work with?

 There are many ways to identify potential target accounts, including:

• Historical Deals - What are the biggest deals customers have closed recently? What do those accounts have in common (e.g., industry, revenue, employee size, geo)
• Logos - Are there any companies you would like to do business with but aren't?
• Website Visits - What companies are visiting the customer’s website today?
• Current Deals - What open deals in CRM would the customer like to move faster?
• Automated Evaluation - Set up an ideal customer profile (ICP) workflow or set up a company score to evaluate fit. [Caveat: This only really makes sense if you have thousands of accounts that you review on a recurring basis, requiring an automated approach.]

2.       Campaigns

When you identify your target audience then you must strategize and provide content that they can relate to.  Utilizing email campaigns can put you at a great advantage when targeting a specific target audience.  Email is always effective because it is a direct line of communication.

 Things to keep in mind when making a successful email campaign are:

•         keep it short and sweet, it needs to be straight to the point.
•         Make it easy to read, you want it to sound personal and not like it came from a robot.
•         Send video through email.  Most people are much likely to watch than read because it takes up less of their time and it feels more human.  
•         Lastly, provide CTA’s (call to action).  Your main goal is usually to set up a meeting so provide an option to click on your meeting link as a closing message.

It’s rare to talk with a decision maker in your first conversation especially when you are a talking to a dream account. You’ve done all the hard work of finding your ideal buyer and you had a conversation with them but now it’s time for them to talk it through before they decide.  The question I like to ask when this happens is “other than yourself, who else needs to be involved in this process so we are not going back and forth?”. Your next step after this is to schedule a meeting with everyone involved in this decision-making process.  

4.      

   What is their key pain point?

This is self-explanatory and I don’t need to beat the tail on the head, but this is the most important thing when talking to your ideal customer.  If you don’t identify the pain point, then you’re wasting their time by moving forward. Ask them every question until you strike a nerve to where you know exactly what their pain is and then expand on it.  The majority will tell you what

their pain is before you meet with them, but it is key to make this a priority in each conversation you have with an ideal customer.  

In Closing

As 2022 has begun, we are all setting big goals to be successful. Don’t get overwhelmed by them, take it step by step because remember there are turns.  My goal for this year is to learn as much as possible to eventually master my craft so I can look back to see how far I have come.  My goal for this article is to motivate you to go after your dream accounts successfully for 2022.