Bucket your leads and spend the most time with people you’ve already reached. If you have too many, prioritize them further. Provide some reason to care about what you have to say (focused on creating value for them).

If you haven’t read our bucketing leads answer, start there. Once you’ve done that, you’ll understand the value of leads in each bucket.

A second conversation is by and large more valuable than a first conversation with a prospect. This is why you should focus more time and effort “staying relevant” with folks who already have responded to you in some fashion. 

“But what if they said No?”

When a prospect says No, it’s an opportunity to evaluate why they said it. Obviously, if a prospect is not qualified to buy from you, there is no value to a second conversation. But assuming they’re qualified and simply said no to your offer at the moment you extended it, now you have a good reason to figure out what is “relevant” to them.

For example, if I call a VP of Sales and propose that we meet over Zoom to discuss their current sales goals and how outsourcing the filling of Buckets 1 and 2 can benefit her SDR team, and she says no, that’s not a no to me forever. It’s simply a no to that conversation on that topic at this time.

In order to stay relevant, I’ll need to understand what she cares about in this moment. If I have the opportunity in that same conversation, it would be wise to ask what her top priorities are. The answer to that question gives me a way to stay relevant.

Suppose she says, “Well I just hired ten new SDRs so filling their buckets is less critical than getting them all on the same page with messaging and workflows.” I could then choose to follow up with free access to UpLevel (our best practices tool) to enable her reps. I could also send an actionable article from a third party that I think will help her solve for this. I could go so far as to send copies of our book, Outbound Sales, No Fluff, for the team so they have a strong foundation built on the fundamentals of outbound selling. All of these are potential ways to “stay relevant” with that prospect.

Remember, the most valuable prospects are those who are closest to revenue. So if Jim almost bought from us but went with a competitor, it’s worth even more time and effort to come back to him near the end of his agreement with the competitor to determine if we can provide more value before renewal. Staying relevant here might mean checking in on the success of their campaign and sending over any recent branded content that helps solve for other challenges or supports other goals of the team until renewal time comes up.

“But how do I do that at scale?”

The hard answer here is you often can’t. Trying to do everything for everyone all the time is like betting on every horse in a race. It’s foolishness and likely won’t profit you at all. So be smart about prioritizing those deals that are most likely to yield results. If you have to choose between following up with people who almost bought versus people who haven’t even held an introductory call, choose the former and delay the latter until you have no more of the former to follow up with.

Technology can be your friend here, but it can also be your enemy. For example, using Vidyard (one of our favorite tools) to send a personalized follow up with someone is way more engaging than a simple email. However, if you don’t personalize the video and instead try to apply a “following up template” video to all prospects, they’ll quickly see through that because it isn’t relevant to them. 

In the end, staying relevant is all about knowing (1) whom to focus on the most and (2) what they actually care about.

Learn more about using video effectively for sales in Vidyard’s playbook featured in our tool, UpLevel, plus get access to our book, Outbound Sales, No Fluff, to learn the fundamentals to help you sell more. Just sign up for free below and get instant access!