In an intensely competitive and oversaturated marketplace, sellers are amplifying their outreach efforts, inadvertently leading buyers to tune them out. Simultaneously, economic uncertainties are prompting companies to scale back their budgets, affecting team sizes, retention, and the decision-making processes of potential buyers.
To navigate these challenges, personalized and accurate outreach emerges as a valuable solution. Here’s why this approach is effective, along with seven practical tips on how to successfully implement it.
Why does personalized prospecting matter?
Effective prospecting has become increasingly critical due to the growing complexity of the buyer’s journey. With shifts in team sizes and structures, decisions now involve multiple stakeholders, ranging from six to 10 decision makers, each with distinct pains, needs, and priorities.
The intricacies of this modern buyer’s journey translate to more demanding work for sales teams. Connecting with a buyer requires a minimum of 18 touches, and sales representatives have only a 5% share of a buyer’s time throughout the B2B buying process. These heightened stakes elevate buyer expectations, making personalized and carefully considered content a prerequisite for engagement. Failure to meet these standards could lead to your company being ignored, blacklisted, or even facing social backlash.
The positive aspect is that prospecting has evolved into a more strategic endeavor. Leveraging data-driven insights and technology empowers teams to craft impactful outreach. Here are seven tips to assist prospectors in creating personalized content that resonates with the right individuals at the right moments.
7 prospecting for your outbound sales
While best practices may evolve within an organization and industry, the following seven tips have proven to be consistently effective in enhancing the impact of personalized outreach efforts.
Enriching lead data for better outreach
Prospecting faces a significant challenge in the form of data decay, where the quality and accuracy of data decline over time due to employee role changes and company shifts, leading to outdated email addresses and phone numbers. A recent study revealed that 55% of participants lacked trust in their data assets, estimating a 32% inaccuracy rate.
To combat these issues, lead enrichment becomes crucial. This process addresses data decay by supplying current contact information for prospects and includes gathering relevant details about an account, such as company size, job title, and location. Maintaining an updated and accurate database is key to ensuring precise outreach, resulting in more effective communication.
Personalizing based on intent and interest
Account-based prospecting involves a collaborative effort between sales and marketing to identify target accounts and tailor content to reach the key individuals within those accounts. In practical terms, this approach includes:
Creative Employee Introductions within Target Accounts: Collaboration between sales and marketing allows for more impactful outreach compared to a solo Sales Development Representative (SDR) attempting to establish connections. For example, joint brainstorming sessions can pinpoint the right people to target, leveraging everyone’s talents to create a creative campaign.
An illustration of this collaboration is seen in Docusign’s campaign. Seeking to boost traffic, they devised a targeted ad campaign for over 450 enterprise accounts. The messaging was personalized to the buying stage and industry, resulting in a significant increase in prospect engagement and sales pipeline activity.
Targeting Specific Accounts with Customized Content: Docusign’s successful campaign wasn’t built on one-size-fits-all messaging. Instead, they identified six industries they aimed to reach and developed tailored content for each. This included industry-specific images, logos, and testimonials.
Adding personal details to call scripts
Prioritization is a straightforward concept in theory: it involves the method sales teams employ to arrange their outreach based on the likelihood of engagement and the potential value of different accounts. However, in practice, effective prioritization demands more than just organizational skills. It necessitates that every team member understands how to engage in prioritization, blending best practices with research based on data.
Strategically, team members must discern which leads hold the most significance and establish a protocol for managing them. For instance, a website visitor who downloads an asset should be considered a higher priority than a completely cold outreach. Research tools, such as lead management software, play a crucial role in determining and ranking which prospects hold the greatest importance.
Using personalized data and case studies
Emphasizing the significance of creativity cannot be overstated. It serves as a fundamental element in personalized outreach, challenging the outdated practice of relying on templates. Creativity empowers sales representatives to establish a more authentic connection with prospects, transcending the conventional approach of merely inserting a prospect’s name. For instance, a personalized poem referencing a prospect’s favorite hobby and linking it to the product proves far more effective than a generic email lacking such personalization efforts. Creativity allows reps to explore different mediums, such as video, gifs, or even thoughtful gifts.
Concerning prioritization, while the concept is straightforward, its execution requires more than organizational skills. Each team member needs to understand how to engage in prioritization, blending best practices with data-driven research. On the strategic side, team members must discern the leads that hold the most importance and establish a protocol for managing them. For instance, a website visitor who downloads an asset takes precedence over completely cold outreach. Utilizing research tools, such as lead management software, becomes essential for ranking prospects based on their significance.
Personalizing proposals
It’s worth noting that, on average, Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) tend to give up on making contact after just 1.5 attempts. Considering that the recommended minimum number of touches is six, and it often takes 18 or more touches to establish a connection, perseverance should be a top priority for SDRs.
To enhance engagement, sales reps should diversify their outreach across various channels, including social media, email, and phone calls. This not only prevents outreach from becoming repetitive but also significantly boosts effectiveness. For instance, a LinkedIn post that tags a prospect is more likely to generate engagement compared to leaving another voicemail.
Segmenting warm leads and sending handwritten notes
Despite Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) engaging in repetitive processes, it’s crucial to recognize that these processes are not static. The marketplace, customer behavior, and business structures are subject to fluctuations, necessitating adaptability from sales teams to maximize their outreach efforts. The key to this agility lies in the continuous acquisition and utilization of information.
Sales teams should proactively seek feedback and incorporate freely given input to enhance their sales processes. This iterative approach involves recognizing patterns. For example, if SDRs consistently encounter challenges with data acquisition, the sales team should identify this as an opportunity to explore tools or strategies that can improve their processes.
Creating personalized prospecting landing pages
Sales, being inherently people-centric, requires a team approach where each member actively contributes to the ongoing conversation. It’s crucial for every salesperson to establish connections with relevant industry information and supportive individuals, even from a distance. Leaders, in particular, benefit from understanding the prevailing sales landscape. Additionally, prospects are more likely to engage with salespeople they are familiar with, especially through social media connections.
Companies and their sales representatives should cultivate a robust social media presence to engage with potential clients. Regularly writing posts on platforms like LinkedIn and actively participating in discussions can leave a lasting impression and potentially foster connections. Social media serves as a valuable tool for staying informed about industry trends and adjusting outreach strategies accordingly.
Beyond mainstream platforms, exploring online communities such as forums, professional organizations like Sales Hacker, and platforms like Reddit can enhance social selling efforts. These spaces provide insights into the latest industry trends, news, and valuable insights. Emotionally, they offer a morale boost by facilitating connections among sales professionals.
Reading diverse publications, including customer blogs, newsletters, and online news sources, contributes to staying informed and ensuring that outreach remains timely and accurate. Engaging with others facing similar challenges in these communities can empower sales teams and lead to collaborative problem-solving.