Sales Prospecting Perspectives

I had a startling revelation last week.  What I’m about to share is something I don’t often admit out loud, but it lives and breathes and is a strong force within me.

My name is Maegan Kopka.  I am a 15 year sales veteran, and I HATE prospecting!

Ok, so I did not burst into a ball of flames like I previously thought may happen if I admitted that horrid truth.  However, in a meeting last week with Sales Consultant Cindy Littlefield of The Bridge Group, I felt myself having a bit of an outer body experience. Our teams were discussing the art of prospecting and the absolute need, in 2013, to be good at it.  Cindy really struck a cord with me when she said, “There are those who are great networkers, but that doesn’t make them good prospectors.  There is a big difference.” Wait.  I stopped, self-reflected, and realized Cindy just described ME. Dammit.

When you look at your sales pipeline (either as an individual or from a team perspective), how do you evaluate it?  Do you look at the quality of the leads and the probability of those moving to a next step?  Do you see a lot of activity and a healthy number of leads and believe that as long as there are prospects being called on, that will eventually bring in the revenue? The value of your pipeline is very subjective.  I say this because it is filled with prospects, leads, and opportunities, but the definition of what constitutes each stage varies from company to company and sometimes from management to sales person.   Since the criteria is subjective, we need to make sure we have objective metrics

Let’s discuss the idea of lead scoring within marketing automation and why inbound marketing embedded with a scoring system doesn’t quite make a sales qualified lead. Content is where it’s at nowadays, or should I say, Quality content is where it’s at. However, I’ve been reading content about the process of lead scoring, (guiding the prospect through the sales process, down the funnel so that you can then pass sales qualified leads directly to the sales people).  Now, understanding the scoring model of marketing automation systems, it can be a very useful tool.  It provides us a way to really dissect our prospects intentions, interests and feeling towards our company and our products.  It’s a bit of marketing voyeurism, to watch the journey and learn their preferences, all from a far, with a pair of marketing automation binoculars.  However, no matter the number of clicks, the specific downloaded content, or visits to related pages, how do you know if the prospect is truly ready to be contacted by a sales person? 

Last week I attended my first Boston Chapter AAISP meeting.  The topic was on content and how we can use content to help our sales process and become advisors to our prospects.  Through a show of hands at the meeting, when asked how many people are currently using content to drive business, I was very surprised that the overwhelming majority kept their hands folded on the table before them.  Cliff Pollen of Postwire and Visible Gains gave the statistic of 90:9:1 in regards to 90% of people read content, 9% share content and only 1% actually write content.  Amazing!  Here are some key points from the meeting and some reminders of how we can help our buyers.

Last night, the world watched as Felix Baumgartner, aka "Fearless Felix", leapt 24 miles from space, setting records for highest jump ever, fastest free fall and highest manned balloon flight.  According to USA Today “he reached 833.9 MPH, becoming the first human to break the speed of sound with just a high-tech suit.”   Of course, watching the video, with very well placed, inspirational music in the background filled me with feelings of awe and amazement of this man.  This man who was crazy enough to voluntarily jump out of his protected space cocoon, not knowing if today would be the last day of his life or not.  He was fearless, filled with passion about his task at hand, and pushed himself to his limits to be the best.

I was reading an article in Women’s Health Magazine the other day, about choosing a “Stylist.” (aka- who is going to be in charge of making that mane of yours into a vision of perfection)  It talked about having honest conversations in your journey to make sure your stylist’s “vision” was the same as your own.  What is your stylist’s definition of bangs for example?  Are they wispy and few, or thick and straight across?  Men, when you want a little more “length” on the top and buzz around the sides and bottom, does the stylist still “shemp” you on top?  I’ve personally been frustrated more than once over my vision of what my haircut would be (because, obviously, I communicated it very specifically) vs. the too short, off color style that I just paid $160 bucks for.  HOW does this happen?  I, the paying customer, described in tedious detail what my “vision” was.   Problem being visions or definitions often leave room for interpretation, which is why all parties involved need to have honest conversations to make sure our visions are, in fact, aligned! This is not an easy task; you don’t want to make the guy or gal with the scissors feel like you don’t have faith in them!

Last week I was speaking to Sue Hay, CEO of BeWhys Marketing, about Marketing and Sales and the animosity between the two groups.   I have worked in Sales the majority of my professional career and more times than not, found myself thinking: “This message is not resonating with my prospect”, “This is a terrible lead,” or “This prospect was never going to BUY!  What a WASTE of my time!” and finally,  “Marketing doesn’t understand my goals as a salesperson.” WHY?  Because it all comes down to the fact that these two groups have different goals for their organization and each thinks their prospective customer needs different things in order to buy.  This internal breakdown is clear: “I don’t TRUST you to deliver what I need to achieve MY goals.”  And it goes both ways.