Our prospecting sequence isn't working, what should we do?, Tim Hughes

The other day, a CRO (Chief revenue Officer) reached out to me and said he wanted a call with me about prospecting sequences.

He explained he had a prospecting sequences with his sales team as follows

Day 1. Send a personalised email

Day 2. Call and leave a voicemail

Day 3. Call at a different time of the day, but don't leave a message

Day 4. Do not contact

Day 5. Call and leave a voicemail referencing the email you sent on Day 1

etc, etc.

The problem, that the CRO explained was that his prospects were blocking the salespeople.

The emails just went into "black holes" the CRO assumed that the clients were creating rules so the emails went straight into the wastepaper basic, not even being read. While open rates were terrible, they had got an email writing expert in to help them and still nobody opened their emails.

The calls, got blocked, as we know cell phones are so easy to block callers. They got in a cold calling expert, which was great when they actually got a call. But the rates of getting calls was going down. And nobody returned voices messages and yes the cold calling expert had been paid to help them with that.

Even the prospecting sequence that gets the salesperson to go onto social, the sales people are getting blocked. He went through with me what the team was doing on social media and he was doing two things by his efforts:-

1. Training the LinkedIn algorithm to ignore them.

2. Training the prospects to ignore them.

As you can imagine, simple mistakes but with big consequences. ""Post it" and they will come", does not work.

The problem with prospecting sequences

Prospecting sequences are all about dumbing down the sales process, to the point where anybody can do it. How many calls have you made? How many voicemails have you left? How many emails have you sent?

Problem is, that's not how business works today. It certainly isn't how people buy today.

Well you can do this, but like this CRO, you will find that, you will get blocked and it makes your business look ...... old fashioned.

This is the feedback that this CRO got when he called a prospect, "you are trying to sell a new AI (artificial intelligence) sales tool, by selling like a business straight out of the 1990s." Ouch!

So you employed all those A-Players and have now put them in cages

When I described the situation to a friend of mine, he said "let me get this right, they employed the best sales people, the A-Players in the market and then put them in cages like battery chickens by using prospecting sequences. How does that work? This is the age of innovation, surely these people should be on social having conversations. At least you can measure that."

Couldn't have put it better myself!

What is social selling?

Using your presence and behavior on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction.

It's not witchcraft, it's enabling your salespeople to work from home, (or the office) and create conversations with prospects and customers. Conversations on social media and conversations that convert.

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project