Best Practices in Online Prospecting

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Meet your prospecting host

Lindsay Brothers@LindsayBro

@LiveHive

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Brought to you by LiveHive

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Track and share content with prospects.Know who viewed what, when and where.

LiveHive.com.

Today’s plan

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1. Intro2. Methods3. Thought leadership4. Your Message5. Research6. Email7. Events8. Message boards9. Social networks

A. LinkedIn B. TwitterC. GooglePlus

10. Q & A

Let’s get prospecting!

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The average B2B sales professional just doesn’t have enough leads.

According to the 2014 CSO Insight Sales Performance Optimization Report, lack of qualified leads is the #1 barrier to sales effectiveness (46% of sales reps)

As a result, sales professionals need to spend time prospecting and growing their own lead list.

Methods of prospecting

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Fishing - Throwing out a line and seeing who

is interested

Hunting- Finding potential

accounts/companies and targeting key influencers

Know thy prey prospect

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Understanding your buyer is key to successful prospecting• Has marketing developed a buyer

persona for you to work from?• What do they like/dislike?• How are they measured?• What do they want to achieve?• What do they read?

Learn from your best sales.• What did they have in common?• Research!

• People post their interests on social media.

Thought Leadership

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Establishing thought leadership in the field you’re selling your product or service can lead to greater sales.

This is useful for hunting and fishing.

Thought leadership should be an entry point to a relationship. Thought leadership should intrigue, challenge, and inspire even people already familiar with a company. It should help start a relationship where none exists, and it should enhance existing relationships.

Daniel Rasmus

Thought Leadership: An Example

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Alexandra WatkinsCEOEat My Words

Effective thought leadership =

When I think naming,I think of her

Developing Thought Leadership

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How can you develop thought leadership?• Share useful, valuable engaging content• Don’t be too “sales-y”

• Educate, don’t sell• Produce and share your own content, if you

can• Ex. Writing articles on LinkedIn or

answering questions on Quora• Ask questions, answer questions, engage in

dialogue• Establish the reputation you would like to

have: Knowledgeable, helpful, intelligent, leader, and…?• You are the expert!

Finding Stuff to Share

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Thought leadership requires curation• Find and share interesting, valuable, useful

stuff• Infographics, articles, news, updates, comics

Send interesting content to leads to keep them interested.• Newsle• Google Alerts• Feedly, RSS Readers• Flipboard (app on your iPad)• Thought leaders on Twitter and LinkedIn• Industry blogs and publications• Company blog and competitors’ blogs

• Competitive information can help close deals

Developing a message

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If you’re sending messages via social networks or email, you need to be consistent in your wording and language.• Write in “you-focused” or “reader-focused”

format• Avoid “we” and “I”• People care about their problems and how

to solve them. Make it clear what you can do for them.

Be sure to include contact info, which can include a phone number, email and even something like YouCanBookMe.

Developing a message:CTA

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The Call to Action is THE most important aspect of the message.

What do you want the reader to do?• Visit the website?• Get on the phone?• Answer a question?• Connect you to a decision maker?

No more than ONE CTA per email or message

KISS – Keep it simple, stupid (or better yet, “keep it stupid-simple”)

Hunting: Targeted Company

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Research to find out if a company could be a target.

The company website and social media has valuable information.• Are they hiring the roles that would use your

product/service?• Is the company doing well?• Are blogs and press releases up-to-date?

• Staleness is never a good sign.• Will they be attending any events?

Targeted Company Website

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Look for crumbs.• Are there other companies

mentioned in blog posts? • Could be another target

• Named contacts?

Customers are often listed separately. • They can be a target as well.

Email Prospecting

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List building• If you don’t have enough leads, you can

build a cold list.• The success rate tends to be lowest here.• Very much fishing!

Lead Grabber, Sales Loft• A number of tools can help you develop a

list

You can build emails in something like MailChimp• Free for up to 2,000 contactsIf you’re using your email provider, you can develop templates to save time.

Email Prospecting

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Email must-haves:• Your message must be very CLEAR and to

the point• One CTA• Including your photo can also help• Contact info

Be sure to use a tool to track email opens!

Leverage Events

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Use events to prospect, even if you didn’t attend!

Social media prospecting for events• Twitter – find out the event hashtag

and reach out to those who attended• To warm up leads, schedule some

tweets using a Twitter tool and the hashtag, even if you’re not at the event

• Follow back attendees and create a connection

Events – Email & Virtual

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Find virtual events your buyer would attend.• Spread the word on social that you’ll

be attending.• If someone speaks or is otherwise

involved with the event, connect on LinkedIn.

Get the list• If you contact those in charge of the

event, there are often ways to get the list of attendees.

• Email attendees & relate your message to the event

WOW

Message Boards

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Where do people search for answers in your industry?• By answering others’ questions, you can

establish yourself as a thought leader.• Be where the questions are!

Quora allows you to answer questions under your own name and is searchable by Google.

LinkedIn groups now often function as message boards.• Which groups are your prospects in?• Contribute• Follow up directly with participants

PRO TIPYou can join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn and follow unlimited topics on Quora.

Social Networks

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Social selling – Leveraging your networks to sell• Also referred to as “Sales 2.0”

• According to Business.com, 55% of B2B buyers do research on social media.

• 70% of the buying decision is completed before the buyer talks to sales (SiriusDecisions).

Twitter and LinkedIn are great tools for B2B sales.

Not just for wasting time!

LinkedIn: Hunting

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LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for fishing and hunting!

Let’s get started with hunting• Which accounts are you attacking?

• Who do you need to go after?• If you don’t know their name, you can

search on title, company, skills, etc.• If you know them, find by name or email

address.• You can browse anonymously, but often,

there’s little harm in letting people know you visited their profile.

LinkedIn: Hunting in Groups

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You’ve found your prey. Now what?

Groups• Join the same groups as your prospect.• Contribute regularly to discussion and appear

as a thought leader.• You can appear in their newsfeed by

doing this, even if you’re not a connection.

• You can use the group as means of sending a connecting request or often, send a message.

LI Profile – Thought Leadership

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Your prospect will view your profile.What will it reflect?

Your thought leadership and personal brand should be reflected in your profile.• Summary: 1st person, personal, knowledge on

what you’re selling• If you’ve published anything, even a blog post,

include it under your current position.• Contact information• Sell yourself as an expert

LinkedIn: Fishing in Groups

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Back to groups…

If you’ve been contributing regularly to groups where you can find your target accounts, you can also do some fishing along the way• These are ideally groups where other

prospects will be active• If someone comments or likes what you post,

reach out!• Answer questions from others in the group

LinkedIn: Group Connection

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LinkedIn + Events

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IRL (In real life)…

When you’re at an event, simply connect with people on LinkedIn instead of taking their business card.• You’ll immediately start to appear in

their newsfeed with your thought leadership.

• You can follow up right away after the event.

• LinkedIn allows you to include notes on how you met someone, so you can stay organized.

Twitter

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Feels like drinking from a fire hose, but it can be a useful tool.

Events• Follow and contribute using the hashtag• Ask questions of others who are using the

hashtag• Create a connection due to the event, even if

you’re not attending

Casual conversation• Very easy and informal to reach out via Twitter• If your named prospect is on Twitter, don’t be

afraid to reach out

Twitter – More thought leadership

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Twitter can also be a place for you to develop personal brand and thought leadership.

If you are thinking about Twitter, ask yourself:• Are my prospects on Twitter?• If so, what hashtags are they using? • Do they participate in any Twitter chats?

You should generally tweet about 5 times a day, but if you can’t, the key is consistency and frequency • A tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck can help you manage.

4-1-1 Rule

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Feels like the forgotten social network• If you don’t have prospects on there, don’t worry

about it.• However, Communities are a great tool.

• Just like LinkedIn groups!• Based around something you have in common• Another opportunity for developing a

reputation for thought leadership

Ghost town?

Q & A

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Cutestpaw.com

THANK YOU!

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Now go for gold!