Viewing: Lead Generation

Let me ask you a question… If you were your ideal prospect, and knew nothing of your product or service, would you buy? When I pose this question to CEO’s from all over the globe, the knee-jerk answer is, “Yes! Of course I would!”  But that’s typically because they are too-close to their business. They […] Read more

Do you know what Thomas Edison thought about failure? Or more importantly, do you know what Edison’s peers said about his thoughts on failure? They were annoyed with him. Wanted to throw him out on the street every time he failed. But not because he was a failure. But because of Edison’s reaction to his […] Read more

I read an article this morning from one of my mentors – copywriting expert Nick Usborne. In Nick’s e-mail, he talked about an opener for a “short & sweet” e-mail: First Line My name is Nick Usborne, I’m a coffee marketing expert, and I wonder if you could tell me who in your company would […] Read more

For our outbound/outreach efforts (we call on people in companies where we know we add value, but they may not know we exist… yet), preparing the Target Customer Profile (“TCP”) is a strategic move to get the outbound pipeline machine humming. You blend together everything you know about your customer, or your wanna-be-customer and create a profile. […] Read more

There are three additional steps that many of us miss when considering a list for our outbound prospecting efforts – ask for counts request query parameters from the list vendor, and ask for test records so you can validate the list against your ideal customer assumptions. Tip #1: Ask for counts Ask the vendor for […] Read more

When I taught the Predictable Revenue online course, I mentioned the importance of the five fundamentals in the writing of a good e-mail: Get Attention Show An Advantage Prove It Persuade Prospects to Grasp This Advantage Ask-For‐Action Called persuasive copywriting, the e-mails are written specifically to move your prospect to the next sales step. Important, […] Read more

Good news for those of us who expect immediate return on our investment from our e-mail campaigns! One of the biggest issues we face in generating the desired 7-9% response rate for outreach lead generation is Salesforce’s deliverability success of those e-mails. The 7-9% response rate drives continuous improvements in the pipeline.  If we don’t […] Read more

As the quarter rounds the bend, many of us are feeling the pressure of a sluggish pipeline. Here are three cold e-mail templates that might be helpful in jump-starting the top of your pipeline. We’ve tested these e-mails with a number of clients following the framework outlined in “Predictable Revenue” (Amazon.com). These three e-mails all ask […] Read more

We all know that over time, and as a prospect gets to know us, we establish credibility and trust. How can we slash the amount of time it takes to build credibility and shorten our sales cycle? According to Dr. Cialdini, author of Influence – Science and Practice, there is a way to build credibility from what used […] Read more

Prospect Persona – What It Is and Why It’s Important When creating a prospecting & selling process, a critical initial step is developing a Prospect Persona. I define a Prospect Persona as a representation of the decision maker(s) you are selling to. A well thought out Prospect Persona help you to focus on both of […] Read more

You sent the cold e-mail and received a positive response – a referral. Now what? What should you say? What do you do next? How do you feel? Uneasy, lost, or confident? Let’s look at two possible scenarios for handling this new lead. Scenario #1: Meet Brenda. Brenda is a business developer for a tech […] Read more

According to Daniel Pink’s new book – “To Sell is Human – The Surprising Truth About Moving Others”, “most of what we think we understand about selling is constructed atop a foundation of assumptions that is crumbling”. What does this mean for us, business developers who job it is to bring in new clients for […] Read more