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Written by: Tony J Hughes | tonyhughes.com.au
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Iron Mike Tyson
It's not click bait to get views: it's the most important question in modern selling, today. And it's the exactly the wrong question: dead wrong. Flagrantly wrong!
You need to be a master of New School and Old School methods to have a fighting chance. Let's do some math a caveman can master:
The net-net of all this is channels are never mutually exclusive in their efficacy, just like combination therapy in skincare or high-intensity training in working out require a blended approach.
With the 3rd path above, you're looking conservatively at 6 to 9 connects out of 100 calls which is worlds better than option 1. Now if you get a warm referral inside the organization on one of those connects, you are 5 times more likely to close based on number 2. If you then do that math, you have a 40% higher likelihood of opening an opportunity on a 100 call prospecting block which is about 2, full 2-hour calling blocks of TRIPLES stacked at intervals.
You're looking at setting 1 meeting in 4 hours - maybe -, versus opening 1 qualified opportunity every day or 48 hours. You only need about 3 qualified discovery meetings per week to build out 1.5 - 3X pipeline over two quarters.
So that's the secret math and it's simple: You can fully ramp like this without the need for an SDR and I can train you on how in my new book, COMBO Prospecting.
It may seem like you need much higher volume or conversion from calls to meetings, to opportunities converted, to hit your number. That's why you need very strict criteria for who you call upon which I talk about below. This is where systems like BANT or HubSpot's own GPCT come in handy. It's critical you get in high, qualify out correctly based on budget, timeline, compelling event and success criteria and are extremely protective of your time. Focus all your time at work on revenue producing activities and by no means ever, provide free consulting.
Social selling alone is a great way to annoy a lot of people with personalized friend requests to network. Buyers don't want more friends, trust me. The majority of people in power are drivers that want to "get to the point."
Social networks are complete white noise: with thousands of channels, nothing is on. Sellers are looking for anything that fogs a mirror. Just because you sell to CIOs can't you acknowledge that under 5% are probably qualified right now: a) not interested, b) not in the buying window, c) just signed with a competitor, or d) most likely - do nothing (status quo).
The decision-makers that can buy your products and services are starving for "insight," signal in the noise. They're being interrupted so constantly by inanity that the first person to cut them off [you!] and knock some sense into them, laser focused on how they'll actually "make or save money" with your solution, will be a refreshing change... even prioritized.
This is not a scene out of the Last Supper or Reservoir Dogs, these are the preeminent sales thought leaders of our time that will tell you exactly what I'm saying in this article.
Kenny Madden coined it, "The Social Phone."
Blended prospecting approaches are nothing new, they're just rare. They are highlighted extraordinarily well in the words of Jeb Blount, Mike Weinberg, Anthony Iannarino and Mark Hunter. Social selling gurus have recoiled in horror in the corner of the octagon and cried fowl. But the truth is we're embracing their methods too, we're just making the argument that the previous techniques are just as relevant as ever.
Mixed martial arts is the best analogy. It's a ground game of grappling if you take away strength and speed. It's a game of social aikido or tai chi where one can use the opponent's own energy and weight against them. Metaphorically, your competitors are actually making your job easier, creating a lay up for someone that's actually delivering real strategic value.
Intel is only valuable to me if I can take action on it. InMails, Emails, Invites, Friend Requests, Facebook Messenger, Text Messages <<< This is all follow-up. This is all secondary or tertiary.
Selling is a full contact sport: it's a phone call and insightful conversation.
It's face to face. It's video conferencing. That's the definition of selling much like other more primal human interactions, there's only ONE real definition.
So do not delude yourself! Get In the Arena and listen to Iannarino's hit podcast.
By this time, you're either elated at the LinkedIn Changes, have invested in premier "pay to play" versions of it to sell at some level or are somehow not a fan. I'm guessing you're in the first camp. Regular LinkedIn is super noisy. You need the Sales Navigator feed so that you can prioritize just the prospects you're going after, aka what's relevant to them.
You need a prospecting plan that's only 50 accounts maximum per quarter. You need to get 6-9 people deep, multi-threaded in each account, per CEB. You need to hit up these people omni-channel. You need to leverage phone, social, email, text, video e-mail, Skype, BlueJeans, Twitter, [carrier pigeon, smoke signal, sky writing - do I have your attentino?] and especially Facebook Messenger.
An SDR recently commented on my thread that "Tony Hughes" only calls but they completely missed the boat. You've got to learn effective "smart calling" with Art Sobsczak and how to sharpen your "sales story" with Mike Weinberg, before you go and apply these same communication tactics to other mediums. Without a value proposition delivered to an Ideal Client Profile (ICP), you're dead in the water no matter what the channel.
The way to understand who you should be prospecting into by any avenue phone, social, events or referrals is to first go study your most successful clients. Which roles are the victim of the problem, the CEO of the problem, and what value is unlocked to the point of ROI, 100% pay off of the solution to the exceed point of 3-5X ROI. Bake this into an anonymized case study per vertical and go take this out to the entire market.
Steve Richard's research bears out that 3% of any market is looking to switch right now and 40% will entertain it. The reason TRIPLES work is you're "qualifying the buying window" as Blount so sagaciously states. If you're selling SaaS, chances are you're getting commoditized and facing stiff competition. You need to move exceptionally fast to a "no" to even understand if a need is open or to create one upstream of the buying process.
Pattern Interrupt is the reason Combination Prospecting approaches work. The majority of sellers follow-up twice in email only. If you show-up, building a quantified ROI-based business case, knocking on their bosses' door, chatting up multiple EAs, sending over several white papers and YouTube videos, touching their organization a dozen times in a week in relevant, customized ways - you're going to rattle the tree and the forbidden fruit will fall off.
I rest my case.