You Must Do This For Prospecting Success-3 Takeaways Ep. 72

You will not experience prospecting success unless you prospect with intent. 

What does it mean and what does it look like?

Watch this episode to find out.

Welcome to “3 Takeaways”, your agency new business video series where we focus on one new business category and give you three takeaways to help improve your new business program.  

So let’s start with the definition of intent: it’s the act or fact of intending-don’t you hate definitions like that? 

But it’s then followed by one word:

PURPOSE. 

Prospecting with intent is prospecting with purpose. It’s avoiding generic, aimless, let’s see what sticks against the wall type of messaging.

So for our 3 takeaways, we’ve got 3 ways to help you purposefully prospect.

Let’s start with the tried-and-true email, and your first takeaway, which is:

Find a way to provide value in your emails. 

Let’s take a look at this email.

Quick read:

I hope this finds you well.  I am following up on my previous emails to confirm you received them. I figure one last shot to connect makes sense, as I know our services provide value. If you are open for a quick intro call to discuss, please let me know a good day/time and I’ll send an invite. If you are not the correct contact at Rsw/us-Outsourced Lead Generation for Marketing Services Firms, can you let me know who I should speak with?

There is no prospecting with intent here.

First-I don’t know what his company does.

His original emails are not underneath, and he never mentions it.

Second-he’s done no homework-we are not an agency, and a quick look at our site would show that.

Third-there is no value here, other than he says, and I quote, I know our services provide value. Trust me dude.

And fourth, and really just a pet peeve of mine-he’s just lifted Rsw/us-Outsourced Lead Generation for Marketing Services Firms from LinkedIn, because that’s not the name of our company.  

So what is an example of an email that has intent, or purpose? 

I got this the same day as the other email.

Don’t like overpriced business phones that are clunky and/or unreliable? We’re X Company: We’re helping agencies such as yours upgrade to uber-fast telecom service for as much as half the cost (99.9% Uptime, Videoconferencing, Call Routing & more) Does this sound good? All I’d need is 2 minutes or less to see if we’d we’re a fit. Is there a good number/time to quickly call/explain the details?

You can quibble with certain aspects here, and she did call us an agency, but this is short, direct, and has purpose in that I know exactly who they are, what they do, and how it might bring value to my world.

Alright, your second takeaway:

Don’t expect your prospects to do the work for you.

We’re going to look at voicemail now, here’s a recent voicemail that was left for me:

Hi there, reaching out about an email I sent you today, April first, titled “growth”-as soon as you get a chance, please reply to the email I sent, and this is Chris, from”-you get the rest. 

Tough to find prospecting success with no intent or purpose here.  

Never got an email with that subject line, no idea what you do, and you’re also expecting me to find that email, and I should send my reply right back over. 

Yeah, I’ll get right on it.

When you give zero reason, or value to inspire, or drive your prospects to respond, your prospects will not do that work for you.

To help flesh out what you should do, our last episode, episode 70, is all about leaving effective voicemails.

Your final takeaway is this:

Update your database.

How does this translate to prospecting with intent? 

It goes back to the earlier emails I just talked, and our company being called an agency. 

It’s not egregious, we do only work with agencies, but I would guess well over half of the sales emails I get, I shouldn’t be getting.

It’s part of doing your homework.

And doing that up-front homework, to ensure the backbone of your prospecting effort- your list, is made up of the right companies. 

Now, it does take some manual work, and I know there are some firms in our RSW database that shouldn’t be there, but we’ve put in an effort over the last year to get that cleaned up, and it’s still ongoing.  

But you need to take the time, even in manageable chunks, to get that done.

So, thanks for watching 3 Takeaways-we’ve got lots of new business content, just look for the resources dropdown on our home page at rswus.com.