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 startup company. She’s read Predictable Revenue and has a good grasp of the framework. But, Brenda has not done her homework. She immediately advances to the “send cold e-mails” section and starts sending out e-mails to her list. Now she has referrals and doesn’t know how to move them through the pipeline. She’s feeling nervous and scared. She does not prepare herself and is not confident of her ability to express what value her company brings to her prospects.
Brenda’s Process:
Brenda’s process involves searching frantically through old e-mails to find something to copy & paste into a new e-mail to send the referral.
Scenario #2:
Meet Katy. Katy is also a business developer for a tech startup company. She’s also read Predictable Revenue and has a good grasp of the framework. Unlike Brenda, Katy is prepared and confident about moving her referrals to the next step in her pipeline.
What does Katy do differently from Brenda?
Katy’s Preparation Steps:
- Katy sits down with her team and talks about the people who buy her product.
- She lists each person’s job role, imagines who this person is and how they go about their day, and jots down the pain they may be experiencing by not using Katy’s product.
- With her team’s help, Katy lists every way her product remedies this pain.
- She synthesizes the pain and remedies into a series of short e-mails and telephone scripts.
- Katy and her team repeat this exercise for each prospect role, and each pain the prospect experiences.
She stores her work into an electronic library for easy reference, organized by job role and pain.
Katy’s Process
Katy’s process saves time and closes more business:
- Note the job title of the referral
- Research company background information and assess major pain her referral’s company might be experiencing
- Select the pain sequence that resonates best from the stored library
- Start the sequence
Katy’s Process is Shared, Repeatable and Tracked
Katy’s library is used by all members of her team. Her manager knows how well each piece of content in her series is performing:
- Subject line conversion rates
- Which content pieces drive better pipeline performance
- What pain points resonate best with decision makers
- What sequences (e-mail, voice-mail, telephone) produce the quickest path through the pipeline
What do you think about Katy’s process?