1) Make sure you have a solid operational foundation.
People often go gung-ho into reaching out to lots of different prospects and they lose sight of what is actually important, which is taking a single prospect right the way from sourcing them to becoming a client. To do this, you need to have the right operational infrastructure, which is absolutely vital, whether that’s a CRM or starting out with a spreadsheet. It is important that you separate your lead generation away from the sales cycle because they are two separate things. Lead Generation cannot be seen as part of the sales cycle until you have secured a meeting with a prospect.
2) Find your USP (without any B2B jargon)
In every single kick-off meeting we have to ask the client what their USP is and usually, a lot of jargon is thrown about. You typically have a minute on a first call to hook a prospect in and they might have never heard of you before so you really need to get out how you differentiate yourselves from the rest of your competitors. Why is your solution the correct fit for the challenge of the prospect? This is key as it is the first impression prospects have of the company and typically they are very good at putting companies in boxes. It is about getting it right the first time so when that opportunity does arise, you are at the top of the pack.
3) Do your research: what are the challenges facing the industry and what solution do you have to solve them?
Research, research, research. Research is key to any targeted campaign and I cannot stress enough how important it is for Lead Generation, Business Development, B2B Sales, you name it. Remember that the prospects you are sourcing in your outbound outreach will hopefully become your clients, so it’s important to make sure that they are correctly targeted and aligned with the company’s strategy and direction. Ultimately, you are only going to be able to engage those clients if you have done your research, it is as simple as that.
4) Pre-prepare the answers for follow up questions
There should be no doubt in your mind that once you have pitched someone on the phone that they are gonna ask a series of follow-up questions that you either need to answer straight away or have very good explanations for. The key to this is to not try to answer questions that you don’t know the answers to. It sounds simple but it happens a lot, so have your answers ready. The way to do this is to have a wargaming session with other team members to establish what pushbacks you can expect to receive. This is a really important process when embarking on your lead generation. It’s about understanding the other side of the table before you start to try and engage prospects from your side. This way you’ll be fully prepared and establish yourself as a knowledgeable and reliable company from the word go.
5) Get an actionable next step on the call to win work
Once you have had a pitch meeting, you will not be at the top of their priority pile. It is your responsibility to make sure that you get the deal signed. To get there, you need a series of actionable next steps, and the only way to do that is to organise it yourself. The best way of doing this is to make sure that you reserve the last couple of minutes of every meeting to organise another time to speak. Alongside this set out the agreed next actions from both sides, when this will be completed by, and then you can come together again having done the groundwork and build upon this momentum. If you don’t pencil this time in, it is much harder to arrange later on.
Henry Regan
Managing Partner
Carbon Global