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Why Your Approach to Prospecting Will Make or Break Your Sales Process

When implementing a new sales process, prospecting should always be your first step.
The good news is that prospecting can be easy, especially if you look at it as a numbers game.

When implementing a new sales process, prospecting should always be your first step.

The good news is that prospecting can be easy, especially if you look at it as a numbers game.

The bad news?

Treating it merely as a numbers game (i.e. just sending more cold emails to more people) lacks both elegance and efficiency.

So, rather than taking the “spray and pray” approach, carefully consider what your prospect list looks like and personalize your delivery.

This all begins as soon as you pick up the phone.

Start by Holding Your Prospect’s Attention

As soon as you get a prospect on the line, your only job at this stage is to keep their attention for five minutes.

According to the analysis of 20,000+ sales conversations, if you’re able to do this, you’re twice as likely to book a meeting as someone who can only keep them on a three-minute call:

You’ll hold their attention by making sure you have something worth saying.

Come Armed with Words

When you’re prospecting, always come prepared with things to say.

In fact, this is the one time in the sales process when you can talk more than you listen.

In fact, an ideal talk-to-listen ratio is almost the opposite of what you’d want on a discovery call:

Prospecting calls aren’t about discovery. They are about selling your value to pique their interest enough for a meeting.

If it means you have to talk for longer bursts of time, that’s okay.

You can get away with “pitches” for up to 37 seconds:

Stats show that if your spiel is 25 seconds or less, you’re 50% less likely to book a meeting as a rep who talks for longer:

Successful reps have talking bursts that last almost 50% longer than their unsuccessful peers.

If you don’t do the talking, the prospect will, and your call will be less successful.

Prospects talk uninterrupted for 3.5 seconds on successful cold calls and for eight seconds on unsuccessful cold calls:

So, what should you take away from this?

Always polish your pitch, and get them hooked.

Don’t Forget About Your Opening Line

In order for any of this to work, you’ll need to have an opening line that will keep your prospect on the phone from the start.

An analysis of cold call opening lines showed which ones led to the most meetings held, not just booked.

One of the most popular opening lines,“Did I catch you at a bad time,” doesn’t cut it anymore.

In fact, it makes you 40% less likely to book a meeting.

Its dismal success rate of 0.9% isn’t much better than the 1.5% baseline you’d have without following the rest of the following cold call suggestions:

So what’s the best cold call opener?

“How’ve you been?”

Might seem awkward to say to someone you’ve never spoken with before.

But, it has a 6.6X higher success rate than the baseline, which is a difference worthy of your attention:

Why does it work?

Because it’s different, it interrupts patterns, which makes people pay attention.

Use it, and it will work.

Or, use the runner-up: “How are you?”

It’s pretty basic, but any version of it will do the trick.

The use of “How are you?” correlates with a 3.4X higher likelihood of booking a meeting compared to the baseline.

Even if it’s kind of boring, know that other people don’t have the same aversion to it.

They’ll just assume you’re being polite in saying it.

Because you are, right?

And once you share your desire to know how they are, the next thing out of your mouth should be some version of John Barrows’ “The reason for my call is…’.

You increase your success rate by 2.1X when you start with a proactive reason for reaching out:

Whether they admit it or not, people crave knowing why something’s happening — even if it’s a weak reason.

So, tell them why you’re calling, and always be sure you’re crystal clear.

Always Provide Value

At the end of the day, the biggest differentiator for anyone who has just called a prospect is providing value.

Look back at your ideal buyer profiles, then identify how you can help them.

Even if you’re certain your product/service can help them, try and elevate yourself above that.

Think about how you can you provide value to them today, in a genuine, human way.

You should even try going in with the mentality of thinking less about selling and more about giving.

If you offer something that is actually worth their time, your prospect will be more likely to move to the next stage in the sales process.

Chris Orlob is Senior Director of Product Marketing at Gong.io. – the #1 conversation intelligence platform for B2B sales teams. Gong helps you convert more of your pipeline into revenue by shining the light on your sales conversations. It records, transcribes, and analyzes every sales call so you can drive sales effectiveness, figure out what’s working and what’s not, and ramp new hires faster.

Written By

Chris Orlob is Senior Director of Product Marketing at Gong.io. - the #1 conversation intelligence platform for B2B sales teams. Gong helps you convert more of your pipeline into revenue by shining the light on your sales conversations. It records, transcribes, and analyzes every sales call so you can drive sales effectiveness, figure out what’s working and what’s not, and ramp new hires faster.

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