Here’s the brutal truth about hunting for appointments these days.
You have to dial a LOT to get results consistently.
Unfortunately, hitting 50 dials every day is much easier said than done. If only it were as simple as putting a large list of leads together! No, it takes more thought.
For some reason, even if we have the gym membership, we don’t necessarily stay in shape.
This challenge reminds me of something my dad said to me when I was a kid. He said:
“Derek! Do as I say, not as I do!” I can’t remember what the context was, but I do remember how it made me feel!
BAD and frustrated.
So in this blog series, I’ll share a few ways you can help your hunter avoid feeling bad and frustrated, and instead enable them to be the best BDR they can be.
This is part of one of a series on this, so if you get value form the first two steps, definitely subscribe!
Surprised?! Come on, you knew we’d start here.
Building the leads list for your hunter is step one.
Surprisingly, many managers are going about this the wrong way.
There are lots of B2B leads databases out there. We’re subscribed to several. I won’t advocate for any in particular because we haven’t found any to be amazing.
What matters is that you have access to at least one database and that someone other than the hunter is doing the list building work.
You may be asking yourself, “why shouldn’t the BDR do list building? I mean, anyone can export/import a list of leads from a database, right?”
Fair question and I’ll share a real scenario to illustrate why this is a terrible idea.
Let’s say you were an MSP that targets healthcare companies. Most leads databases do an okay job narrowing down by medical sub-industries, company location and by headcount. However, out of 100 prospects that are supposedly qualified, about 70 are trash leads. And the worst part is we don’t know which are bad unless we individually check each prospect website and LinkedIn profiles.
So you have two options, either you do the list building and quality control, pay someone else to do it, or you lower your expectations from your hunter for dials.
Remember the goal is to keep the hunter hunting ICP, not having them do lead quality control!
May I share a quick story to set the stage?
As a small business owner, I have to make a lot of decisions all the time. Decisions about process, about our people, clients, technology, etc. It’s mentally exhausting to have so many decisions to make each day.
This is why I prefer to just be Mr. Implementation on weekends. I become Mr. Fix it, not Mr. Decision Maker. Being action-oriented uses a completely different part of my brain, it’s more physically challenging, and thank goodness or else I’d burn out!
Well, an outbound workflow solves a similar problem for the modern hunter. In a nutshell, a workflow is the prioritized list of outbound tasks to do each day. It’s to do tasks built inside your CRM. They include call tasks, LinkedIn tasks and automated emails.
The hunter’s job is to dial! It’s not to decide how many dials each lead deserves, deciding which emails to send, or choosing what to put on the LinkedIn connection request. Instead, their job is to act, to call, to get the job done.
Remember the objective is to enable the hunter to dial 50 times per day! They should not be bogged down deciding who to call, when to call, who to email, when to email, no no that decision should be made by the sequence that YOU make for the hunter.
You can find hundreds of answers to this question. We’ve found that leads typically reply with 12 to 18 touches. The majority of these touchpoints should be calls.
A typical structure is 5 to 8 calls tasks and 3 to 5 emails per workflow per lead.
I recently conducted a webinar on cold-calling for MSPs and during the webinar we conducted a poll asking participants what reason they gave to prospects during cold-calls.
More than a few gave an answer along these lines:
"In order to build a relationship and see what technology challenges are keeping them up at night."
Do you know what happens if you make 100 calls with that reason for interrupting their day?
Nothing. Nothing happens because no one wants to open up to someone who brings zero value to the cold-call.
So whatever you do, make sure you arm your hunter with valuable insights that peak curiosity and sell the meeting.
For example, here's how Jason Bay "poked the bear" for a CRM company.
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Prospect: “We’re using [competitor’s CRM solution].”
Jason: “Sounds like you have a solution in place, which I had a feeling you’d say. You’ve been running the university for years now, and I figured you were on top of it.”
Prospect: “Yep, sorry. I appreciate the call though.”
Jason: “Hey, this might be a longshot...but the reason I was calling you was not to convince you to switch CRMs. There’s a big challenge that universities are dealing with that you’re probably aware of. Students are applying to up to a dozen schools these days.
It’s creating massive competition to make sure you don't lose students during the application process. I wanted to show you the top 2-3 reasons why applicants are lost to competing universities. Then you can decide if you want to keep the conversation going.
Would it be too much to ask for 20 minutes to share these insights with you?”
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So what reason can you give? It's up to you to prepare on your own. You shouldn't copy this from some blog because you possess the knowledge from your experience with clients.
There are so many business problems that your technology can fix. In the example about the CRM, note how the cold-caller sold the meeting. It was 2 to 3 reasons why applicants are lost. He did NOT focus on CRM features!
So stick to themes that decision makers care about. Stick to thing you know inside and out and that can be a good first meeting for you and a prospect, because if the first impression goes well, then you can be rest assured you'll get the opportunity to pitch your services.
Last and certainly not least is the power hour. It's a blocked hour where your cold-caller is doing nothing but dialing prospects. It's sort of like going to the gym with a fitness trainer.
Anyone can say I'm going to the gym but then they get sidetracked and find excuses to skip. On the other hand, if you are meeting a fitness instructor at a designated time, you can't just skip it. That's why power hours work.
For our team, we meet in a Google Meeting, state our goals out loud and then turn on camera and each one has at it! This group approach improves discipline of dialing, motivates and it gets results.
Power Hours are much more fun when more than one person is involved. So if you're hosting it, try to do a few dials yourself, give props when someone has a good call, compliment by sharing the call stats at the mid point, and if you can, include bonuses for appointments booked.
It doesn't need to be complicated! Have fun with this and you'll see call volumes will spike as a result.
