It’s a new age of prospecting.
Your sales team cannot sustainably call up prospects with no idea about their life, business, and problems and wing a conversation using a script.
You can still prospect using proper sales intelligence and context using any medium you choose.
Behavioral Intent Data is the newest sales intelligence. It is real time data at the individual level, telling you which executives are looking at which competitors and when.
The trouble is, nothing will ever be a silver bullet in sales.
Maybe this is a bronze bullet, but you can’t just call decision makers and ask them why they haven’t bought from X competitor yet.
In sales, nothing comes that easy. You have to work for your commission like you would usually with this data.
But with Behavioral Intent Data in hand, your sales team won’t need to employ useless tactics like guessing or using their “intuition” or praying for divine intervention to work out which prospects to reach out to and when.
Step 1: Examine your intelligence
At LeadSift, we’ve produced thousands of sample reports looking at different sectors and who is looking at specific players in those spaces, but this is an illustration what my team is looking at.
In this example, Alex Field is sharing MarTech content.
Big deal? Well, read the content he has shared.
It’s about MarTech that can offer very deep marketing insights.
Why did that interest him? It’s what his company offers, and it is what he as an individual is interested in.
What are the items your sales team should notice when you see this data?
- Who is engaging with what
- Their social profile links
- The content they have shared and its relevance to them as a person
- Job title
- Other stakeholders in the account
*Wait! Don’t carry on without learning how 27 world class Sales and Marketing pros engage buyers with innovative strategies! Get the eBook now…*
Step 2: Find common ground
The key part of this outreach is finding and playing on common ground you have with the prospect.
For Alex, if you’re a fan of marketing technology or have a marketing strategy wizard’s hat in your wardrobe, then that is perfect.
And if you don’t, that’s OK.
Find Alex’s Twitter link in your data. His Twitter bio mentions he is a Quarterback. Which team does he support? Which QB in history did he try and model his game on? If you like watching the NFL, then there is common ground for a prospecting conversation to draw upon.
If you’ve attended the same University as Alex, use that. If you know someone or follow someone who Alex has done some work with, if you see Alex likes their content or has created content with them, use that in your prospecting outreach.
Little nuggets of information and thoughts you can collect on this are helpful for your email subject line and opening words, something attention grabbing for a voicemail, and also a social connection message.
Step 3: Plot your messaging sequence
Looking at Alex’s social profiles, he appears to actively check his profiles and feeds daily or most days of the week at least.
Alex is LeadSift’s Growth Manager, which suggests that he will likely be occupied with numerous calls daily.
Perhaps the most efficient way to contact Alex first time is by email.
Now, having researched Alex for a few minutes and identified my personal common ground with him based upon his social profiles and the Behavioral Intent Data insights, this is an email I would write:
Could you craft a better cold email?
Next, I would follow up with a direct outreach via social media.
In the email above, I referenced the content that Alex has shared with James. It would be strange to not actually engage that content, wouldn’t it?
I’d like the post, then leave a comment that poses a question to both people involved with the post.
As an example, for this post, I would ask the following question in this comment:
“Hi @Alex Field @James Buckley, awesome video. That’s a smart strategy for standing out and being really authentic. Can you share a rough success rate and share any stories of prospects who responded really well to this strategy?”
My strategy with the message above is to tag both James and Alex so each person receives a notification.
I also want both people to see I liked the post as well; that’s two additional notifications. Then, the fact I have left a comment is also a notification.
Do you think I’m getting their attention? Maybe a little?
Leaving praise in my comment is a good way to get a response, and it was important to ask a question that both Alex and James could answer.
I can’t ask them for the names of people who they got an appointment with using the strategy mentioned in the post, but I can ask them roughly how many times out of 10 it works and if they’d like to share any success stories with it.
When I got a response from them, I would move to connect with them on LinkedIn, sending a personalized connection request that referenced our conversation, of course.
If we were already connected, I’d send a message to further the conversation from there privately.
Regardless of whether I received a response from this action or not, I would absolutely call Alex the day after I left my initial comment.
Key: What not to do
Each of the steps I have described above revolves around leveraging the information I have that Alex is interested in MarTech.
This is my initial starting point, and this is where your sales team needs to begin, as well.
Next, I used some more personal information and context about the lead, who is showing intent towards this particular keyword in order to make a personal connection.
Finally, I’m making an offer to have a valuable conversation about our shared interest.
The absolute worst practice I’ve seen many sales teams commit is to take the valuable insights offered by Behavioral Intent Data and call the prospect directly, and clumsily.
You can’t just take this data and call Alex saying, “Hey, I saw you’re looking at MarTech. Do you want to take a look at ours? It’s great at X, Y, Z!”
Successful sales prospecting doesn’t work like that.
Behavioral Intent Data provides your sales team with low hanging fruit to leverage and engage target prospects into conversation before they (target prospects) begin researching competitors and potentially get down the inbound marketing funnel (or worse, sales funnel) of another company.
Want to better understand the competitive advantage that Behavioral Intent Data provides?
Take some time on my calendar (or Alex’s calendar if you write him an email like the example above) and we will walk you through everything that Behavioral Intent Data is, and what it is not.
Because you’re somewhat interested in it if you read this far!