There’s been a raging debate for years about “quality versus quantity” in prospecting. There’s the argument against quantity, that if you do a lot of prospecting, you must be doing a bad job of prospecting.
What side are you on?
In this webinar, Rex Biberston and CEO of ConnectAndSell, Chris Beall, joined forces to provide sales prospecting techniques and an actionable plan for increasing sales activities and results. They covered why the “Quantity vs Quality” debate is over forever and how the top SDRs in the world stay in flow every day.
Here are some key takeaways:
1. The myth
Most reps think you can either do a lot of prospecting or be great at prospecting. Not both. In reality, that’s only true if you don’t adapt and refuse to listen to what your prospects are telling you. If the average dial-to-connect is 5%, for every 100 calls you’re making, you’re only connecting 5 times. That’s not enough at-bats to hit a homerun if you have such a low volume. The ability to adapt is crucial in balancing doing enough prospecting and being great at it.
2. Is pre-call research necessary?
Pre-call research is actually negatively correlated with success. This is due to the fact that there’s not only too many things to know, but the information you find could be irrelevant, inaccurate, and you can’t escape error. Even if you know what pain points a prospect might have (and you know you have the solution for it), you could still be wrong. Once again, this is why adaptability will be your greatest asset when having conversations. People generally don’t want to be told “I know all about you”. Start with a brief understanding of your prospect because they are in your target, then acclimate to what they’re saying so you can personalize the message.
3. How to do more prospecting
There are four main components that make up doing a lot of prospecting and being great at it:
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- Batch your work. Make a list, research one time, then never again. This includes sticking to one type of activity at one time. Separate process work and project work, and stop jumping around from activity to activity.
- Open with your follow up list. Why? Because it’s the good stuff, or your “money bucket”. It’s better than having no context at all because you’ve already had contact or conversations with them. This doesn’t mean “follow up after only one conversation”, but at any stage of the sales process (even after the ninth conversation).
- Eliminate excuses. You’ve probably thought at least once, “Mondays are a bad calling day” or “Nobody looks at email”. Those statements may be true to someone on your list, but excuses don’t belong in sales. Is having a conversation with someone you want to sell to ever a bad idea? No. There might be better times, but you’ll only find out the right time when you stop making excuses and let the prospect tell you when the right timing is.
- Leverage technology to streamline your workflow. Find what technology can help make you more efficient. The key to technology is that it must follow a process, otherwise it will end up being a waste of time if it’s causing more work or draining your money. For example, we’ve found some of the best tools for us that work into our processes are Salesforce, ConnectAndSell, and Outreach.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about high volume prospecting and if you feel like you can do a lot of it and be great at it. Let us know in the comments!
If you have questions or want to know about our next webinar, contact us here and we’ll fill you in on the details!