How ‘Work from Home’ Has Indelibly Changed Prospect Outreach Lists For Advertising Agencies
In a never-ending trickle-down effect, B2B sales professionals are consistently aware of the challenge March 2020 has had on closing business, and on quality prospect outreach lists.
But looking beyond the close, if you peel back the layers in the sales process –this goes all the way back to the first step:
Connecting with leads
For industries that were able to go remote and have in turn stayed remote, the pre-March 2020 baseline sales technique of ‘given me a lead, HQ phone number and address and I’ll setup the meeting’ is a thing of the past.
Yeah, maybe that prospecting technique was gone before March 2020, but any remaining stalwarts to that methodology have been kicked to the curb since working from home (WFH) became the new normal.
Fast forward to 2022 and that simple plan has become less effective as an outreach tool by a wide margin.
It’s more complex for advertising agencies in 2022-
- Does the corporate number have a real person on the other end?
- Are the automated prompts going to provide an option to connect to my lead?
- Is their phone line set-up to relay calls if they are WFH?
- Do they call in to check their VM?
- Do they even have a physical office space at the headquarters anymore?
The simple answer to all these is. . . MAYBE?!
Setting up your Director of Business Development with multiple touchpoints is not only the key to effective outreach in 2022 but if you aren’t doing it, you’re wasting everyone’s time
– from the higher-ups you report your outreach efforts to, to the prospects who are dialing into their VM to delete your message.
Plain and simple, here is the information you need to thrive in the ad agency business development role (which is where we put our outreach list building efforts at RSW and RSW/Lists).
Prospect Outreach List Priorities For 2022:
- ‘Must haves’ – Email & Direct or Mobile Phone.
- ‘Nice information to have’ – HQ City/State, LinkedIn.
- ‘If it’s there, why not?’ – HQ Phone, Revenue, Website.
- ‘Only if you have a mailing piece’ – HQ or Home Mailing Address.
- ‘Just for talking points’, a value add – Personal Social Media Account.
The goal is not just finding the best title at the corporate HQ anymore, its about finding a good title with the most touchpoints.
Put your time and energy into finding the information that works, not just what’s readily available.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
For further content to help you build more effective prospecting lists, the RSW list team wrote this eBook, which you can download free: The Prospecting List, Turbocharged: Pumping the Right Fuel Into Your New Business Engine
