Sales Brew: Following A Specific Outreach Method

Follow The Process

In order for your outreach sequence to be as successful as possible, you first must:

  • Build your ideal prospect persona
  • Understand the buyer’s journey
  • Choose the appropriate content

And more…

Play The Sales Brew:

Transcript:

By Alex Cole, Sales Development Expert for Anthony Cole Training Group

We strongly believe that “your process today is perfectly designed for the results you’re getting today”—and that includes your outreach attempts and strategy for prospecting. Hi, I’m Alex Cole and today we are going to talk about meeting your prospect at their step in the buyers journey using the ideal sequence and content.

Over the years, the power in the buying and selling process has shifted from the seller to the buyer. No longer is it about what you know or who you are connected with as a salesperson- it’s about being at the right place, at the right time when buyers need you most. To do that, we much first define and understand our ideal prospect persona and buyer’s journey.

When building your ideal client profile, you want to ask yourself these 3 questions:

  1. What is my target company size (employees, revenue, customers, other metrics)?
  2. What industries/verticals am I successful in?
  3. What geographic locations are ideal?

Defining what you’re looking for from the start will help you stay focused on your end objective and make targeting your ideal client in the marketplace much easier.
According to our partner and marketing expert, Hubspot, the buyer’s journey starts with the awareness stage- this is when a prospect becomes aware that they have a problem or pain that they want to fix. Once they start to research options for a solution and become committed to fixing the problem, they move into the consideration stage. And finally, after narrowing down their solution options and identifying the best fit for their needs, they are at the decision stage in the buyers journey.

So as salespeople, it is now our job to find our ideal prospects out in the marketplace. We need to use clues to determine who needs our help. Clues such as:

  • Finding the blogs they are reading or LinkedIn groups they are a part of
  • Following the thought leaders that they track on social media
  • Offering to contribute to their company blog

Once we have identified their stage in the journey, we now need to send/make available the appropriate content. In each stage, the buyer will be looking for different types of information. In the awareness stage, prospects are looking for educational content like:

  • Ebooks
  • White-papers
  • Research reports

In the consideration stage, prospects have clearly identified and articulated the problem they are facing and, at this point, are looking for content related to a solution. Content such as:

  • Webinars
  • Case studies
  • Podcasts

And finally, the buyers ends up in the decision stage after clearly understanding all aspects of their problem and the potential solutions for that problem. Now they need to determine the right vendor for their needs. Appropriate content for this stage in the process is:

  • Vendor comparison guides
  • Feature differentiator sheets
  • Granular product literature

There are lots of rules and steps to follow but here are a few best practices for defining your sequence content:

  • Before starting, take inventory of your existing content
  • Keep your outreaches short
  • Reference the buyer twice as much as yourself
  • End all emails with a question
  • Personalize the subject line and sound human and helpful
  • Adapt the content to your style and personize it to the buyer’s context

This process will take some work- no question. But once you have included the buyer’s journey into your prospecting process, you will see greater success with your outreach attempts and will close more business, more quickly at higher margins.

Need more assistance understanding the steps buyers go through when making a purchasing decision? Click here to watch our Sales Guy Unplugged video on “The Buyer’s Journey”!