Prospecting isn't always sunshine and roses, but a strong strategy is absolutely essential to pipeline creation. So how you construct a hyper-effective outbound strategy that ensures the pain is worth the gain?

In this episode of the Sales IQ Podcast, Luigi is joined by Jeff Swan of Outbound SOS. This episode is packed full of strategic advice to fill the top of your funnel and ensure a health pipeline.

🔗 LINKS

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn or at Outbound SOS.

Find Luigi on LinkedIn. You can find that LinkedIn post he mentioned here.

Targeting, Narrative and Cadence are all key parts a well-oiled outbound strategy. In the Create Pipeline course we help you craft yours. Next intake closes soon 🚀

Welcome back to another episode of the Sales IQ Podcast. If you're a first time listener, thank you for jumping on and checking out this podcast. If you're a longtime listener, thank you very much for the support and for allowing me to have a platform to share some ideas and thoughts when it comes to the world of selling.

This month is all about prospecting. We've been interviewing guests and really focusing on the element that is prospecting. That is probably one of the most important parts. Of the sales process. Yes, we need to be closing and yes, we have to be, you know, our success comes from the, the results that we achieved, but I just wondered before we get into today's guest.

And before we get into today's topic is this topic is going to be a great topic where we're going to break down some tactics that will help you prospect better and generate more qualified pipeline for yourself. But before we get into it, I want you to think of the pipeline, right? The pipeline is fundamentally three key stages that we as sales professionals need to be managing.

We've got that top of the. Right. The top of funnel, net new creation. It's a portion of the funnel that is absolutely critical that if we don't put things in, we have nothing to progress, which is the second stage of the funnel, right. Is deal progression. So we create, we progress and we ultimately close, but for many of us in sales, we aren't spending all of our time managing the pipeline.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff that we have to do. And sometimes even when you start the day with the best intention, The intention of right. Then I start the day, I've got my prospecting list. I'm going to go hit those target accounts that I've been researching. But then all of a sudden, an email comes from an opportunity that you've been chasing and you're like, all right, I've got to get on top of that.

And then you might see a slack message or a team's message or a LinkedIn message from somebody that's needing something from you. And you're like, okay, I've got to get that too. Then you might have someone from accounts, somebody busting your hump because a client that you brought in ease getting back to them, or isn't.

There bill. And then on top of all of that, you've got all the other things that are happening in the hybrid work world. Things at home could be school ringing could be a whole variety of things. And before we know it, the best intention that we had to spend time prospecting our target list, all of a sudden we have all these other conflicting priorities.

And if you're hearing this story and going, man, that does sound like a day in the life. It does sound like some of the things that don't have to work. It's absolutely. Okay. Because a lot of us find ourselves in that position, but I think what's really important is that we have to be able to find the discipline to go right.

There is a non-negotiable activities that I need to work on every single day, the revenue raising activities that he's pipeline creation. And that's what this month's all about. Pipeline creation. It's all about prospecting. And just as important that is deal progression. And working on opportunities to close.

We've got to be constantly be focused on filling their top of funnel and it requires discipline. It has to be a non-negotiable activity. And you've heard me talk about this before the non-negotiable revenue raising activity, the tasks that you need to focus on to ensure that the deals that you are working on, the deals that you are trying to close, there is always a portion of those deals that just won't close.

And even if we followed every step in the process, we've done everything in our power to create the business case, to get consensus, to generate a significant return on investment for our, our prospects and our clients. There is always a portion of the bottom of the funnel opportunities that don't close and that's okay when you have other opportunities coming through the funnel, and this is why we need to have a really healthy pipeline.

We really need to be thinking about the time that we're allocating on creating. Progressing and closing. And as we move into different themes, you see how we're going to focus on different ways, different topics around progressing. How do you progress opportunities? How do you make sure that opportunities don't go stale?

Don't become like that loaf of bread that you might've left out the bench for a few hours. And before, you know, it you're like, this is not editable. You know, how do we make sure that deals don't become stale or moldy or go off? And therefore you just can't progress them because pipeline has. His life when it comes to selling.

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Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Yeah, no worries. It's prospecting month in Sales IQ. I mean it's prospecting month, every day in in my world.

Absolutely mate. But before we dive deep into the topic of. You know how sellers can really turn their prospecting activity and get improved results from that, from that time that they're investing.

We'd love to learn a bit more about you and, and tell us how you started in this wacky world of selling.

And then, and then I found advertising. So it was kind of like this artistic kind of method towards marketing. Okay. So I ended up going to marketing school because I liked all of those things. And well, guess what. For some reason I had to pay for school, you know, crazy, right. Like tuition books transportation and all that stuff.

So I, I ended up actually getting a sales job to put myself through school and in four hours time, I don't know, $300 commission. You know, so I was making more than my parents were making in a day while working a part-time job after school, you know, at the time. And and I would go to my marketing classes and learn all these cool things about planning, a go to market strategy.

And then I put it to plan, practice that night, you know? So it just got me fired up though, because I was able to. Rapidly become. So just for your reference, anybody who's familiar with the, with the company best buy. I worked for the Canadian equivalent called future shop. That was commissioned only. So we had this leaderboard and I found myself in the top three in Canada, regularly as a part-timer.

So needless to say I was fired up and I was, I was just jazzed about joining this, this wacky world of sales, and I've never looked back

And I think for most of us within kind of get up on day and have this epiphany that, you know what I want my career, I'm going to be a salesperson. I'm going to be the guy that everybody, you know, when you go to a party again, what do you do? Like, Aw, you know, you can't go through that sour shame of telling people what to do.

Right. I think. Our industry has come a long way since then, but you didn't really have an intentional focus to become a sales professional. And second, you actually started studying marketing, which I feel is something that every, and I've just done a post on this, this week on LinkedIn, that if you're in sales, you've got to be in marketing and vice versa, right.

Because the worlds have collided in a way, like never before. Tell us a bit about how you've been able to use that marketing. Skillset and viewpoint in the way that you prospect and go to market.

And I find that the people that are really good at prospecting these days, think even if they're not producing content, if they're not, you know, talking on podcasts, things like that, they're, they're thinking of this macro minds instead of micro. So it, it requires you kind of understand the market, the industry, the players, the factors that.

Contribute to sales and revenue success and, and really understand how to navigate the industry. Right. And so that macro sorry, the macro is like lots and micro is one, right? So just for anybody who doesn't know so the way that I look at it, that macro view that I have of looking forward, looking ahead of what's happening in the industry.

It makes it really easy for me as a, as a BDR, as a prospect, or just to be able to go out there and understand where should I go with, where should I spend my time today? You know? And then when I'm speaking to a prospect, when I'm trying out different things, I'm leveraging tactics that were traditionally held only by the marketing department.

So I'm posting videos on my LinkedIn feed. I'm sending out mass emails. And, and I mean, that's a whole conversation, whether it should be mass or personalized, but I'm not going to get there. If I'm using a sales engagement tool and selling that, sending mass emails you know, I'm engaging people in my content, so I'm getting people to like and share and all that stuff.

So a lot of the job of a prospect are now, and the way people are filling their funnels, it comes from a lot of different channels and a lot of different ways, rather than just picking up the phone

Yeah. I mean, all these companies are getting insane amounts of investment into their business. Everyone's a unicorn. With that comes, we've got a high, more, we've got a higher, more right. More sellers are coming into that top of funnel, SDR, BDR. I think there's so many frigging names for that role now.

And a lot of them are kind of first, second year out of, out of uni. They don't get a lot of training and they get thrown into the deep end of saying, Hey, talk to our most important asset, which, which reach our prospects, right? Because they're the ones that are gonna help us grow our business. And they've got to figure out the calling process to cadence the sales engagement.

They're not learning. I know that. And, and I'm not trying to say, you know, this is what I did wrong grew up, but that element of research that we used to have to go through when we didn't have data enrichment tools, LinkedIn, like we actually had to go away and actually try to find who the right person was.

What could be the reason we could reach out, like, give me a point of relevance. I think of a case step in a development process for sellers is getting missed. And then on top of that, you go, well, you've got to now be out there, create awareness, nurture credit content. Like it can be overwhelming for a new seller, right?

Even for, even for sellers that are mature out, logging that 30 to 40 year old range or. That have been doing things a certain way. And now. I've got to add all these other elements to the way that our prospect, right. Yeah. So talk to me about if you're in this position going, I can, where do I start?

Right. What are some of the things that they should be doing? That'll give them some immediate results from prospecting instead of you know, chewing the whole, the whole pie at the same time.

And we both agreed that no you actually to be great at prospecting, you don't need to know that what you need to know. As one, who do you sell to? What problems do they have that keep them up at night in related to your school? Okay. And I would argue and I've have argued. This is, I would argue you don't need to necessarily need to have product knowledge, to be successful at prospecting.

What you need to know is how to connect those dots, that problem that somebody has, that you're talking to with the solution that you have, and you need to understand that relationship. And then after that, once you understand that. You need to just get to it, get it done. Just do it. Like Nike says is that if you focus and you choose a number that you're going to get every single day, make 50 calls make a hundred calls, you know, do 15 LinkedIn outreaches.

Do I would suggest for anybody starting out, work out the math with your, with your supervisor or your colleague, anybody at the organization that you're in that understands the metrics of performance of how to get to that bottom dollar number and then work backwards and see how many activities you have to do.

And once you're able to do that. And I actually have a calculator for that, if everybody, if anybody wants help with it. But it there, if you work backwards just doing it every single day and just keep learning about the customer and asking questions and really be curious on the phones, be curious in your conversations.

Then all of the other stuff doesn't even matter because that will be successful. Just doing it, making a habit, doing it every day. And instead of focusing on the outcome, focusing on learning, then all the other stuff just comes from it.

And I think just like an athlete, the athlete doesn't focus on the result. They focus on the things that they can't control, which. The daily training, the daily I'm focused on eating, sleeping, all the things that they can control. And I, and I just had this conversation with those, you know, training. We for 40, 50 STRs last night for me was midnight.

But for north America and UK, and I actually flipped it. I didn't talk about anything to do with tactics because I said, actually, we've got to get the mindset. Right. And I love what you're saying. You're right. Yes. You need to know your product, but you don't need to become a product expert. You need to be an, you need to get the skills that help define the problem.

That's sitting within our process. Right. And really understand the use cases that they're experiencing and the outcomes they're looking to to achieve because ultimately people don't buy what we sell. They buy the outcome, we help them achieve. Right. So I absolutely love what you're saying there. So just to summarize, go back a step and say, okay, I need to figure out the problem.

What, if I am you, how do I start to really define those problems?

They've just really done a lot of work. In developing the companies that they're with, they've done a lot of work in developing their product market fit. So understanding their customer. I was just on a call before this, this podcast with a founder who, who was a programmer by nature by and by design.

And he was telling me about how his fellow co-founder, who was also an engineer and programmer would do 10 before 10. It was a very normal sales tactic. Get 10 people in your funnel before 10 o'clock. Right. And so they used to do that and they, for the first year of their business, they did this by themselves.

No help, no nothing. And what they learned through that process is they didn't go into it, trying to sell something. They went in, try and trying to understand the problems around the specific solution that they had. And so just by going in with that kind of curious mentality you, you, by yourself as a BDR, SDR, whatever you call it can go in and learn really quickly just by having those conversations.

But you can shortcut that is because somebody in your organization has already done this work and that's why they got the money to hire you. So I would suggest talking to. Talking to product marketing. If they have it truck to sales, talk to some of the people that have had more of these sales conversations or more of these product conversations, and they will be able to help you understand what problems you solve better.

So we know they're going to slip. We know we need pipeline coverage and we know AAS need to be controlling their destiny by creating pipes. So I think this is awesome. You know, awesome content that you're sharing about leveraging the people around you that have been there, done that. Type that knowledge and then deliver it in a way that engages with your prospects to create a conversation.

And also love the fact that you're talking about. The prospecting stage is not about selling, right? It's there's gotta be a level of curiosity. And that will lead to a conversation. So what are some of the tactics that you're seeing work really well that are enabling sellers to start conversations with their prospects?

Actually phone is, is outperforming sales and social, but I like to, to one across the board. So when you're looking at that, I mean, you can really look at focusing on I, I don't like to focus on one channel. I feel like if you're really going after your target audience, if you have a hundred contacts, you're going after.

30% of them are going to be phoned people 30% are going to be email, et cetera, et cetera. So you use multichannel. But what you want to do is really focus on brushing up your cold calling skills these days, because that's the area that's going to make a huge impact on your response. Okay. And one of them, there's a, there there's a video I did with sales hacker a couple, a few weeks back on some of the best cold openers.

So I'm not going to say that there's one specific way to do it because it really matters more. It has more to do with your personality and selling style than it does the actual tactic. But my, my recommendation is to actually have a tactic and have a tactic that meets your standard. Right. Like your personality and the way you speak.

So, as an example Chris Biola connect and sell had mentioned one approach where you go in, you go into the conversation, introduce yourself. That's a, that's a topic of discussion for another day as well. Whether you say your name or not. Hi, I'm Jeff from outbound SOS. I know this is an interruption.

Can I get 27 seconds of your time to tell you why I called you know, like something simple? So that's. Option another option and a conversation I had with Colin Mitchell a few weeks back when, you know, you're doing a live cold calling session. And we were, we were workshopping the falling on the sword of, Hey, you know what, I hate cold calling just as much as you like, hate receiving them.

Let's talk about this, right? So, so both of those tactics. You know, the falling on the sword work way better for Colin in our little session, then the other tactic of kind of asking permission kind of thing. But I've also seen it work the opposite where the falling on the sword doesn't work, your audience doesn't pick it up.

Or maybe you just don't deliver it. And then you're better off doing the permission opener. Yeah, the, the, the point I'm trying to make here is that there is no one right way, but it's good to know the different ways and practice them and try them out and see what works best for you, your offer your customer and your position.

And I do use my name. This is Lou from sales IQ. This is what I've noticed. This is why I'm reaching out. So I try to have what's in it for me. This is the main narrative that I think my value hypothesis. So I think you want. And then we go a level deeper by me asking a question, and then hopefully I can get a point of, you know, what, let's get some time in the calendar to discuss this further, to see if this inappropriate opportunity for us and that's worked for me.

Right. But I've also seen many of the people that I'm coaching use that pattern interrupt, and it works for them. And I, what I really love about what you've just said, there's no one size fits all. It's your personality is very important to this because this is where the authenticity, the intonation, like it's gotta be fit for you as an individual.

Right. So I absolutely love that and, and tell us, because I don't look. I'm going to try that somebody, I saw it. I'm actually going to give it a go. I'm going to give the whole, hi, this is a cold call. You probably weren't expecting this, but give me two, I'm going to give it a go, right? I can't say I'm just going to try it.

What's the worst thing that can happen. They hang up on me. I said, no, I'm not going to give you 27. Okay. Thanks.

They're like, no, it's never a good time. Right. Because they're always doing something. But I don't want to pattern interrupt. And can you just share with our listeners for those that don't know what the pattern interrupt is? Why does the pattern interrupt? Get people's attention.

So all the cars were perfectly equidistant part and they were at the right angle and all this stuff. And then one of the senior sales guys who was very good and constantly at the top of the leader board, he went out and started. He put a card this way. And I was livid. I said, what is going on? Like, what are you doing?

I was, I was so upset and he goes, Jeff, you don't understand when they, people are driving. It was the first dealership in the part auto group park. Okay. So there's like this park of a bunch of different groups, right? So what he said is that most of the people come in here to go to another dealership.

They're going to go to Toyota or Honda. Okay. Not many people are going to evolve. Right. So what he, what he said was, is that just making it different? Makes them look. And now they're looking at our lot because it's not this pristine, perfect thing they're looking because it's different than something's out of whack.

So what it does is, and that's a loss that I've taken with my, my entire career is that when you do things that are, that make people think, and even if it's bad, this is why they say there's no such thing as bad press. Because even if it's bad, it gets their attention. It gets them thinking and nail. And now if it is really.

They're thinking critically. And when they're thinking critically, you actually have their brain activated. So when you say something there, they're thinking they're listening.

What is important, even if you're not a content creator as a, as an AE or an SDR any. You can still be sharing a point of view in your world. Right. And what do I mean by that is I think not enough sellers are taking advantage of the fact that there is a way for them to curate content, right. And develop a point of view on a particular subject.

Even if they don't want to write articles, they can share this stuff. And that way, when we do reach out to somebody, if the effect of that message or reach out, doesn't get us an appointment in that first instance, it doesn't necessarily mean that prospect's not looking at you moving forward. I had somebody one year, like.

Reach out to me after a post that I've been hammering. I thought I stuffed the process up and long behold they're back into my final. And that's because I've been delivering consistent level of content on a particular topic and it's come back another way. So, so, you know, again, I, I think that whole pattern interrupts important that whole cold call opener.

What do you do when you start the call and it completely goes wrong? You're you get nervous? Your voice kind of gets a bit intonation drops. You can hear that. They've kind of like, nah, I'm not engaged in this. What's one of the best tactical, the best strategies that you've used to kind of get composure and just to take control back in that process.

And you're right. You're leading your value hypothesis is this is why I'm reaching out. And if this is something top of mind for you, we could probably should keep talking.

I'm contacting Luigi, not Rosalyn. And here's why I'm contacting you. It's because I think Sales IQ is more fitting for what I'm trying to sell or what I'm trying to present today, as opposed to the other one. Right. And so if you have something competitive, To say, if it's generic, great, you're going to have volume and you're going to be able to reach more people and talk.

But if you're, if you have a small prospect list you were working account-based or something like that, and you don't necessarily have the ability to do volume that what's in it for me is so strong, especially when you make it real, like I was saying, and, and it's so powerful.

But if sellers aren't doing that level of pragmatic research what are the attributes? What are the triggers or what are the things that they should be looking at from a, when they're developing the ICP and by persona so that they can at least develop a message that's relevant for that particular sector and that particular persona

Now she had four pro for conversations, so it actually ended up being pretty. For her for BDR, right. Four conversations in a day for BDR. Fantastic. It's it's pretty good. But if she was, if she's able to take that 25 and, and get that done in about an hour, hour and a half, the next thing you know, she's she can have 40 conversations in a day.

Right. So, so I'm going to say that there's one thing is that preparation means everything. If you're going to be doing pre-call research, knowing exactly what to look for and where to find it on people is going to save you a ton of time. So just you get into the habit of, okay. If you're looking, if title's really important, if I'm them saying a specific thing on their LinkedIn profile is really important.

These are things you can actually use tools to, to find. Use Boolean searches, right? Use Boolean searches with the specific keywords. If this is in the, if this keyword is in somebody's profile, I could just make a list of all the people with this keyword and make a personalized batched outreach. Okay.

Yeah. So that's the one side of the research, how you can speed up on the research and make it all relevant. If you're not doing research at all, if you're just creating a list, then you better make sure that list is very strong and tie specifically to the pain points are addressing in your conversation.

Okay. So make sure that, you know, in the situation I just described, you have a list of people that actually say the specific thing in their profile that you can find it quickly through a Boolean search or, or, or a tool or anything like that. And then make sure that what you're saying speaks specifically to that.

That pretty much goes to me for the last six months. So so absolutely love it, but, but maybe we could talk about these tactics all day. But and I will put into the show notes where our listeners can find you because you know, I follow your content pretty much daily. That's why I mean, all mad, I'm like, geez, I've got, I think I'm creating enough content.

And then I see you I'm like this guy. He just seems to be probably a hundred from here. I've got to do more. So we'll put where we can, because you do a lot of things across various platforms. So we'll make sure we put in the show notes. And, but before we let you go we'd love to know. If our listeners want to reach out, what's the best platform for them to get.

That can allow sellers to be the best they can be. So thanks for coming on the sales IQ podcast.

Don't forget to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. And if you want to find more about the programs that we offer at Sales IQ, head to www.salesiqglobal.com.

This epiosde was digitally transcribed.