Prospecting Persistence=
More Sales For You/Your Company
You and I both know that prospecting via the telephone has changed drastically over the past 5 to 10 years. But one thing that has not changed is this: It takes multiple telephone calls (and voicemail messages) by a salesperson to finally reach a live prospect.
As I mentioned in my book, DRIP Marketing: A Powerful New Marketing Strategy That Gets Prospects To Buy From You, your prospective buyers are busier than ever. They have e-mail and voicemail messages to answer, less staff to handle the work and a personal life filled with cell phone calls and text messages. And it does not look like it is slowing down for them anytime soon.
My 8 Years Of Research Revealed This:
I spent 8 years researching the sales and marketing strategies and tactics of more than 1,000 businesses, CEOs, sales leaders, marketing pros and salespeople. It was a massive undertaking. While many CEOs and sales leaders embrace the idea of their salespeople only calling a prospect one or two times, it is a decision that is costing them a small fortune in missed sales opportunities.
Why?
Our Market Research Studies Revealed This:
- 50% of all salespeople stopped calling a prospective buyer after their first unsuccessful attempt at moving the sales process forward. This number skyrockets to 85% and 99% on their second and third unsuccessful attempt, respectively.
- Contact ratios (of a targeted prospect) in a B2B environment are approximately 10% to 15% at best for most industries.
- 95% of all salespeople cannot predict when their hottest prospects will close. That being said, how can they predict a moment in time when their least interested prospects will have the need to take the next step in the buying process? They can't.
Now Read The More Positive News:
Our research also discovered that if a business (not a salesperson) implemented a series of direct mail and e-mail marketing campaigns in addition to its salesperson consistently calling a prospect every 75 to 90 days, their contact ratio dramatically increased 35% to 40% to ~ 300% after talking with a "live" prospective buyer.
Attention All CEO's And Sales Leaders, Ask Yourself These Two Questions:
- Are we considered or engaged in a conversation with 100% of the prospects who want to buy what we sell?
- After submitting a proposal to a prospect that doesn't make a decision to buy from us or our competition in 30 to 60 days, what marketing campaigns are we implementing to maintain contact (a.k.a. show interest) with these sales opportunities?
Executive Summary:
As you can see by our extensive market research, the majority of businesses:
- Allow their salespeople to give up far too early in the sales process.
- Rely on their salespeople to "maintain contact" with a prospective buyer.
- Do not plug their salespeople into a drip marketing system to augment their calling cycle/sales process.
Smart CEOs and winning salespeople know that if they are part of a marketing system AND call a prospect more than three times, they will have much greater success than their fellow salespeople - but more importantly, greater success than their competition.
