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Fanatical Prospecting — Chapter-10: Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid
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10 Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization. —Calvin Coolidge When you get into the office in the morning and begin your prospecting block, which prospects do you call or touch first? Last year I was hired by a company to develop a prospecting training program for their sales organization. The sales team was missing its number and the CEO was looking to my firm to help him reverse this trend. My first step was to sit and watch the sales team make their morning prospecting calls. The team worked in a comfortable modern office environment and had a top-tier CRM that was packed full of prevetted prospects and contact records. They also had access to robust social media and business intelligence tools that 84
offered deep insight into their prospective customers, and these tools were integrated into the CRM. The director of sales expected his sales team to be on the phones qualifying and setting appointments starting at 8:00 AM. I introduced myself to the team and then took a seat in the corner and observed. In particular, I kept my eye on the sales rep in the cubicle closest to me. After an hour of watching this rep, I asked him a simple question. “When you pick up the phone each morning, how do you know which prospect to call first?” He looked confused by my question, and I could see the wheels turning as he searched for the “right” answer. Finally he replied, “I don’t know. I just login to the CRM and start calling.” It was clear from the team’s sales results that collectively they shared the same philosophy. There was no rhyme or reason to their prospecting pattern. They just showed up in the morning, opened up their CRM, ran a rudimentary filter to pull leads for a specific geographic location, and called the first prospect that popped up. They were wasting a huge amount of time randomly dialing through their database. No plan. No objective. No qualifying methodology. The result was a miserable prospecting experience, a weak pipeline, and desperation appointments and demos set with poorly qualified prospects just to get any kind of win. Following the phone block, I gathered the team together and drew a triangle (pyramid) on the whiteboard in the training room. I asked the question again to the entire group, “When you pick up the phone in the morning, how do you decide which prospect to call first?” Blank stares, until one of the young reps said, “I usually pick a city or zip code in my territory, create a list, and start by calling the first prospect on that list.” I followed up with, “Is it possible to sort that list in a more meaningful way?” Crickets. Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid 85
“Okay, let me ask this a different way. Ideally, if you could call any list of prospects, which ones would you want on your list?” They were thinking a little harder now. Finally someone blurted out, “The ones most likely to buy?” “Bingo! That is exactly right. How might you identify the prospects that have the highest probability of buying?” I asked. Someone blurted out, “Prospects who have a budget.” Now they were thinking. Someone else, “Prospects who have expiring contracts with competitors.” From the back of the room, “Prospects who were referrals.” “Large prospects.” “Prospects with more than 50 employees.” Then more. “Prospects who called us or filled out one of our web forms.” “Prospects who came to our booth at the last trade show.” “Prospects that are fully qualified but we’ve been unable to set an appointment with them.” They were finally getting it. Walk Like an Egyptian: Managing the Prospecting Pyramid Salespeople who struggle with prospecting view their prospect data- base as a square. In other words, they treat every prospect exactly the same. For this reason, they attack their database randomly—with no system and no objective. There are several problems with this approach. First, it is statistically inefficient. When your first call and subsequent calls are made merely by chance, you might call a prospect who is ready to take action or you might not. However, because only a small number of your prospects will be in the buying window at any given time, the statistical probability that you will call poorly qualified prospects is high. 86 Fanatical Prospecting
The result is ineffective prospecting blocks that make you feel like you are getting nowhere, far more rejection, and low pro- ductivity. Your sales results, income, confidence, and self-esteem all suffer. Top performers have no interest in hunting and pecking for opportunities, so they design their lists to make prospecting blocks efficient and effective. They segment their prospects by potential or size of the opportunity and the probability the prospect will convert into a sale. They organize their prospecting block to get themselves in position to win with highly qualified prospects who are in the buying window. Top performers view their prospect database as a pyramid. ■ At the bottom of the pyramid are the thousands of prospects they know little about other than a company name and perhaps some contact information. They don’t know if the information about the prospect is correct (and there is a good chance that it isn’t). Action: The goal with these prospects is to move them up the pyramid by gathering information to correct and confirm data, fill in the missing pieces, and begin the qualifying process. ■ Higher up the pyramid, the information improves. There is solid contact information, including e-mail addresses. There may be information on competitors, product or service usage numbers, the size of the budget, and other demographic information. There may also be contact information for deci- sion makers and influencers. Action: The goal with these prospects is to identify the buying window and all potential stakeholders. ■ Moving higher up, potential buying windows have been identified. There are complete contact records for decision makers and influencers, including social profiles. Action: Your focus at this level is to implement nurturing campaigns to stay in front of confirmed decision makers in anticipation of an identified future buying window. Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid 87
■ Further up are conquest prospects. This is a highly targeted list of the best or largest opportunities in your territory. There will be a limited number: 10, 25, 50, 100. Action: The focus for conquest prospects includes nurtur- ing and regular touches, stakeholder identification, buying window qualifying, monitoring for trigger events, and building familiarity. ■ Closer to the top are hot inbound leads and referrals. Action: These prospects require immediate follow-up to qualify and/or move them into the pipeline. ■ At the tip-top are highly qualified prospects who are moving into the buying window due to an immediate need, contract expiration, trigger event, or budgetary period. Action: These are your highest-priority prospects and should be on the top of your daily prospecting list. The goals is to move them into the pipe. The key to leveraging the prospecting pyramid philosophy is a systematic daily focus on gathering qualifying information that identifies buying windows and stakeholders and moves prospects up the pyramid based on that information. Figure 10.1 The Prospecting Pyramid (Organizing Prospecting Blocks) 88 Fanatical Prospecting
Powerful Lists Get Powerful Results Being a more efficient and effective prospector begins and ends with an organized, targeted prospecting list. A high-quality prospecting list is like a track for your prospecting train. It eliminates wasted time hunting and pecking for qualified prospects and helps you focus on a specific objective within a particular prospecting channel. The sad fact is most salespeople are working off poorly con- structed lists or, in many cases, no list at all. Some companies try to provide lists for their reps, but most don’t, and the ones that do usually do it poorly. Building effective and robust prospecting lists requires consist- ent effort and discipline, which is why salespeople don’t do it. It’s so much easier to open up the CRM and just start calling the first prospect record you find. This is a wake-up call. The quality of list you work from during each prospecting block has a more significant impact on the success of the block than any other element except your mindset. When you build powerful lists, you get powerful results. Lists should be constructed based on the following filters (or other methodologies depending on your unique situation). Use these elements in combination to structure your prospecting lists for maximum impact. ■ Prospecting objective: set an appointment, gather information, close the sale, build familiarity ■ Prospecting channel: phone, e-mail, social, text, in person, networking ■ Qualification level: highest qualified at the top of the list—least qualified at the bottom of the list ■ Potential: largest opportunities at the top of the list—lowest potential at the bottom of the list ■ Probability: highest potential probability to achieve your objective at the top of the list—lowest probability at the bottom of the list Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid 89
■ Territory plan: day of week, postal code, street, geographic grid, city ■ Inbound leads ■ Conquest prospects ■ Decision maker/stakeholder role ■ Industry or market vertical ■ Customers that purchase a specific type of product or service ■ Seasonal customers ■ Inactive customers ■ Leads from a recent trade show or conference Some of these filters can be automated in your CRM, while others may require manual decisions. Automate the process as much as possible with preset filters, views, and reports to make it easy to pull lists based on your prospecting objectives. There will only be a handful of prospects in your database at any given time that are in the buying window, and you’ve got to get in front of them before they buy or the window of dissatisfaction from a trigger event dissipates. Start each morning with a prospecting block focused on a list of these top-of-pyramid prospects while you are fresh, feeling your best, and motivated. Because these prospects are in the buying window it will be much easier to convert them into an appointment, demo, or sale. Starting your day by calling the prospects on the top of your pyramid will deliver early wins. These wins give you confidence and motivation to attack the remainder of the sales day. Once you have exhausted your high-potential prospects, focus your prospecting activity on qualifying and nurturing activities with conquest accounts. Follow that by focusing on qualifying the hundreds or thousands of prospects lower on the pyramid. If each day you start at the top of the pyramid and set quality appointments early, you will have time left over to systematically qualify the other prospects in your database moving them to the top of your pyramid. Over time, you’ll experience more 90 Fanatical Prospecting
successful prospecting blocks, a dynamic prospect database, and a full pipeline. Tomorrow morning when you get ready to make your pros- pecting calls, take a look at the first name on your list and ask yourself, “Is this the best prospect to call?” Then, get familiar with the filters and sort tools on your CRM program and build your own prospecting pyramid. Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid 91