You’ve written a great introduction email and have prepared
an inspiring cold-call pitch, but how do you actually get in touch with and
make contact with the prospect? Calling the company’s switchboard or filling
out their website “contact us” form are not efficient or effective ways to
connect with senior marketing decision-makers for new business for your agency.
All too often, companies require sales reps to try to track
down their prospect’s contact information on their own. If the contact data is
ever even found, it is often inaccurate and incomplete. This process eats up
the seller’s time and limits their sales potential. But there’s a better way.
Top agencies subscribe to database services that provide
accurate, direct contact information on prospects. They build targeted lists
and supplement this data with their own due diligence. This process results in
richer information that is relevant, current and provides insights that can be
used in prospecting email and call messaging.
Below are five important steps to build a scalable,
repeatable and efficient prospecting process. Following each step of these
steps on a consistent basis will result in thorough and targeted prospect
lists:
1. Get A Good Database Provider
There are number of database providers available online,
such as Winmo, that offer vetted and current prospect contact information for
ad agencies, marketing firms and creative agencies. These sophisticated
database and intelligence services often provide much more than contact
information. They also can offer company financial data, agency relationships
and recent news articles to help you better identify your best prospects.
When selecting a database provider, it is important to find
one that employs teams of researchers to validate and refresh the data on a
regular basis, at least every 3-6 months. It’s also important that the company
specializes in advertising and marketing agencies so the prospects align with
your target audience.
2. Focus On A Vertical
As a consultant and sales director at Catapult New Business,
I pull prospect data lists on behalf of agencies multiple times each week. I
typically begin by selecting a target business vertical, such as insurance
companies. By being narrowly focused, the outbound messaging can be similar
across all companies within the vertical, leading to more efficiency in your
outreach program. Top sellers will focus on 1-3 verticals per quarter,
depending on the final size of the prospect lists.
3. Identify the Best-Fit Companies
Once the vertical is selected, the company list can be
narrowed by such criteria as revenue, media spend and location. By targeting
only the companies that fit your buyer persona, you’re able to laser-focus
sales efforts to the best-suited companies. Although the database provider I use
has extensive lists of companies, I also review top business rankings lists
within that vertical to ensure that I have all relevant companies included on
my list.
When researching each company to determine if it fits our
buyer persona, I take notes on the challenges the company is facing. These
insights are later converted into talking points for email and phone outreach.
If I am unable to identify challenges that we can realistically solve, I
believe I have no valid reason to reach out to the prospect and remove them
from the company list.
4. Identify the Best-Fit Contacts
Once I have narrowed the list down to the top 10-20
companies, I use the database to find the most relevant contacts within the
companies, based on job function and rank.
Who the right contacts are will vary depending on your
agency’s services. For example, a social media agency surely will want to
connect with a social media director. However a branding agency likely would
not.
I like to focus on C-suite, VP and director-level marketing
professionals, but depending on your agency, you may also target manager-level
contacts. What’s important is that you’re only targeting decision-makers or
influencers. I focus on finding about 10 contacts per company, depending on the
size of the prospect company and your agency’s specialty.
At this point, I download the information from the database
provider into an Excel or CSV file to upload to a CRM program such as
Salesforce.
But the work is not over.
5. Uncover Even More Best-Fit Contacts
Unearthing information on LinkedIn is a powerful way to gain
even more contacts. By reviewing the LinkedIn profile of each contact, you can
confirm that the employee is still with the company and remains in the
appropriate role.
LinkedIn is also useful for mining additional contacts in
the company. By reviewing the “People Also Viewed” box on a contact’s LinkedIn
profile, you may find additional relevant prospects you have not found
previously.
During this process I also make notes of mutual contacts,
past employers, links to presentations, schools attended or other points of
connection that I will use in my outreach to that contact.
You will need the email address information for these
contacts found outside of the database. You can solve this by looking at the
email naming conventions of the other contacts in the company; 90 percent of
the time the naming convention will hold for the missing prospects. If all else
fails, there are a number of online tools available to help find alternative
email suggestions.
Lastly I will scour Google reading financial statements,
press releases and trade articles for mentions of other relevant contacts at
the companies.
Key Takeaways
Your prospect data list is the most important part in agency
new business outreach. If you do not have a relevant and accurate list of
prospects and an efficient way to get this data, even the best messaging will
fail. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?
Using a database platform makes this scalable so business development reps can
spend more time on outreach and less time trying to track down contact
information. Following each step on a consistent basis will lay the critical
foundation for an effective outreach program.
Article From: catapultnewbusiness.com
