Ryan Dohrn, CEO of Brain Swell Media and 360 Ad Sales, has been working with publishers for, “almost too long” as he affectionately states it. Throughout his years as a professional consultant he has worked with countless publishers both large and small, advising them in ad sales, marketing strategy, and overall publication success. Today he takes on effective sales prospecting in a Shweiki Media webinar.
“I think this is going to be an opportunity for you to really gain some valuable insights on what veteran and rockstar sales-people do to effectively prospect.”
Use a Disciplined Approach
Create Prospecting Channels
The first step Dohrn recommends when building a disciplined sales approach is to create proper prospecting channels. He breaks down prospects into four main categories: cold, warm, hot and current. One can consider cold as being the prospects whom one has the least chance of working with, all the way up to the hottest lead, which is one’s current clients.
“So what potentially would that look like?”
Most sales teams use a CRM system to track leads, but what they don’t know is that many CRM tools such as SalesForce or Highrise often have attributes that do a good job breaking down prospects into warm/cold prospects. For those without a CRM system, a simple Excel spreadsheet does the job just fine.
Become a Meeting Maniac
“..You have to be a meeting maniac. What that means is, if you look at successful sales people, typically they are the ones that have the most meetings. Does that mean they have to have face-to-face meetings? Not necessarily. A meeting maniac can come in multiple forms; it can be phone meetings, it can be in-person meetings, it can be meetings at trade shows…You have to become a meeting maniac, and what that means is that you have to become busy.”
Dohrn believes that call volume (i.e meetings per day/week) is the single most important aspect to becoming an effective salesperson. Without consistent outward calls, one will have major difficulties adding to their incoming prospect list. Not only should one be making calls, one should have a planned attack on whom they are going to call on for the rest of the week. “If you come in without a plan, you will fail. Think about it, it’s such a simple concept, yet sales people overlook it constantly. If you are going to build a house, with no plan, will you build a house?”
*Dohrn has a plan in which he calls on 10 previously uncalled leads a day, resulting in around 200 new-business calls a month. You can hear about some of his other tactics in the webinar, here.
Working with an eNews Letter List
After one has called on a lead and prospected them through their CRM tool, (or Excel sheet), the final step (before closing the sale) is to add them to one’s enewsletter list. An enewsletter is a letter either mailed or emailed to one’s potential clients informing them about any updates in software, or product, or just general advances the company is making. Creating an enewsletter is important because it gives prospects a chance to see what’s new within the company, while also touching base with them without any extra input from a salesperson, making it a win-win for sales effectiveness.
