I haven’t yet spoken to a company that doesn’t. And I’ve spoken to a lot, 150 in the last 18 months!

So why do so many people within these organisations find excuses why a new approach won’t work for them.

My mind boggles. 

There’s several reasons why you’re struggling to grow pipeline, some might just resonate and others, well, it helps to have someone identify your blind spots…

1. You’re not consistent enough
2. You’re not giving it the time it needs to yield the desired response
3. You’re not consistently connecting with your target audience (daily) in all of your target or volume accounts 
4. You don’t have a dedicated relationship first pipeline growth plan
5. You’re not engaging with your target audience in a meaningful way, a way that is of value to them (daily)
6. You are measuring the wrong behaviours
7. You’re not publishing content 
8. You’re stuck following an outdated approach that no longer works and you don’t know how to change it

Notice I haven’t mentioned it’s because: 

• We don’t have a big content budget 
• My sales team is new
• Marketing aren’t doing enough events
• Product marketing haven’t designed good enough sales plays
• We don’t have an SDR team 
• Sales and marketing aren’t aligned 
• Our lead scoring needs updating
• Our partner network isn’t delivering like it used to
• The list goes on, and I've heard em all…

Thats because these are all excuses. At the end of the day, each and everyone of us can prospect effectively without a single penny or single iota of support from anyone else. How do I know? …because I do it myself, every day!

No excuses, the executive team, the senior leadership team, sales, customer success and marketing, all should prospect…

Disagree?

Good. Either way, we can have a healthy debate. Or continue what you’re doing and keep your fingers crossed.

Hope or luck is not a winning strategy, but you know that already.  

*warning - no silver bullet’s here. 

Successful prospecting requires incredible resilience and an innate ability to try many different things until you find the approach that works. 

It requires hard work and unwavering persistence, I don’t mean the kind of persistence that wears your prospect down, I mean persistence with the process, following the steps and activity levels that provide you with the yield you need to grow your business. 

Some have it and some don’t. The good thing is, whether you do or don’t the approach can be learnt and with ongoing coaching new found knowledge can be applied effectively. And once you see and feel success from your efforts, you’ll want more, you’ll realise this new approach is the way to go and so will your teams. 

Traditional outbound sales and marketing strategies no longer work as they once did as they were designed in a world with much less competition (a very different world than today).  

Yet B2B sales and marketing teams far and wide continue to act like Sisyphus, the Greek King and founder of Ephyra. Zeus punished him for cheating death twice by giving him an immense bolder to push up a hill only for it to roll down to the bottom after nearing the top, repeating this action for eternity. 

Are you happy with the value of your pipeline?

Can you see a route to your sales number?

Are you on track to reach the company valuation you need to exit?

Do you feel like Sisyphus?

It all starts with pipeline.  

It all starts with you!  

Social selling or digital selling or social influence all means different things to different people. Oh, we’ve tried that before. Oh, it didn’t work. No, that sits with marketing. We use an agency for influence marketing. We do that already…

If you did, pipeline wouldn’t be a problem for you. 

Whatever you call it (don't allow a name to confuse what this really is), there are a number of behaviours and activities, when followed as part of a methodology, will yield the results you need. 

30+ activities that span four areas:

• Digital presence
• Network curation 
• Stakeholder engagement 
• Content publishing 

I ran a test recently, targeting 300 C-Level contacts in a set of my target accounts.

• I connected with 102 (34%)
• I requested a call from all of them.
• I booked 22 calls (21%)
• This was run over a 6 week period. 
• I started learning this methodology in February (4 months ago)
• I started practising this methodology fully in April (6 weeks ago).

How many relationships could you develop from 22 new conversations?

Our world is changing at an unprecedented rate, our industry has seen more investment than ever before. Our mindsets have changed since the pandemic, our approach to work has changed. So must the way we develop pipeline. 

Since leaving the corporate world in 2020 I founded Supero. Our vision is to help MarTech companies accelerate growth and improve profitability. 

In 2022 we added a new string to our bow, we are pioneering a Social Selling & Influence program to enable our clients to bring consistency to pipeline growth and talent acquisition. It’s the only Social Selling & Influence program in the world to come with an official, globally recognised qualification from the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP), delivered by me and my team at Supero, supported by our partner DLA ignite (#1 influencer in Digital Selling). 

For a friendly chat and to learn more DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter Alex_Supero