An integrated B2B sales and marketing process - part two of four

In part one of this series I introduced the process and now I want to focus on the first three steps, which are all about developing, prioritising and organising your list of prospects.

 

Step one: DEVELOP your list of prospects

 

Obviously as you read this you could already have a good prospect list, but if not a good starting point is to identify the names of some companies you would MOST like to be doing business with in the future. Setting a target of something like ten companies per salesperson might work.

 

It’s good to do this as a group activity as it also identifies if all members of the group share the same ideas about your ideal customer profile. For example, we recently completed this exercise with a company’s management team of six. Between them they came up with 52 different companies they wanted to do business with. These companies were spread across a wide range of market sectors, highlighting the fact that the company wasn’t focussed on who it wanted to target.

 

Once an initial list is formed it can provide the stimulus to identify other companies you would like to do business with, through looking at the names in your initial list from a sector perspective.

 

Step two: PRIORITISE your list

 

If you are one of the lucky companies who have an unlimited budget and no time issues then prioritisation will not concern you. If like most companies you are working to a finite budget, limited resources (manpower) and defined timelines then prioritisation of targets will become a critical activity.

 

 

In trying to prioritise, the following pointers may help:

• Are there companies you have identified where you have previously met contacts from the company - formally or informally? (This is where networking is really useful as it gives you the opportunity to directly meet contacts from a company.)

• Have you previously worked in a sector where you have gained experience of the nuances of the industry?

• If you have done work in a particular sector can you get names or even introductions from these people?

Step three: ORGANISE meetings

 

The key objective is to get in front of the buyers so that you can communicate directly with them, and in particular listen to their problems and offer an appropriate solution.

 

Obviously it’s important to get the name and contact details of the person you are looking to target. In many organisations the receptionist (or equivalent first point of contact) can be very reticent in giving out the name of a specific person. Often you will be told: ‘Just send information marked for the attention of the marketing manager (or whoever you are trying to contact) and it will get to them.’ This is very frustrating as it doesn’t provide the opportunity to follow up.

 

With this frustration in mind, here are three ways to get proper contact names:

• Visit exhibitions as they provide a great opportunity to meet people from an organisation – and to get their name and contact details.
• Look out for conferences as an opportunity to meet potential delegates
• Make use of LinkedIn and other online resources as a way to find people.

Once you have the person’s name do some basic research on them. The web provides a great tool for doing some ‘quick and dirty’ information gathering.

 

When you do your research try to identify problem areas that the company didn’t know it had. For example recently I found that on a prospective client’s website they had a faulty link on a critical page, an incorrect telephone number and content about their people that was out of date. Knowing this information showed the client that I was interested.

 

With the research done, one of the best ways to initiate contact with a prospect is to send them an introductory email. Some ‘rules’ about this email include:

• Never include an attachment on the introductory email (we will consider why in future postings).
• Take great care about the subject line to grab the attention of the prospect. If you know the person’s role then write something very specific, such as ‘A proven way to reduce packaging waste’ if that’s relevant to the person you are contacting. Where you have some kind of ‘in‘ with the person you can mention it, for example ‘Following our chat at last week’s exhibition’ or ‘John Smith suggested I contact you’. 
• Think carefully about the ‘from’ field.  ‘Karen Jones’ is better than ‘Karen’. Even better, in cases where you have the time and capability to do it, use something that will attract the recipient's attention, such as ‘Karen Jones – packaging waste consultant’.

For the structure of the email itself, consider this four-line approach:

Line 1 - Your opening line should be tailored and specific to the customer. Try something like ‘I noticed that...’.

Line 2 - Get quickly to describing what you do, but briefly and in a non-intrusive way.

Line 3 - Give some proof that you can really do what you claim. A good way to achieve this is with a link to an appropriate case study about how you have helped a customer.

Line 4 - Suggest an action. Something like ‘I am in the area early next week so a short meeting then might prove beneficial’ could work.

 

In many cases, you will need to follow up the email with a phone call in order to gauge how it was received and what else you need to do to secure a meeting.

 

In part three, I’ll look at the crucial next stage of identifying key information about the prospect, and in particular what issues they have that you could help to resolve.