Prospecting 2.0: The Cold Call is Dead

Nothing is more dreaded by most sales reps than having to generate new sales leads by cold calling.  I am preparing for a webinar, hosted by InsideView and part of their educational web event series on Sales 2.0, that explores a more effective way to find qualified sales opportunities and engage with those prospects.  Called “Prospecting 2.0″, this new approach is a godsend to sales reps.  Customers are pretty happy about it, too.  It respects both the customer and the sales rep’s time by focusing the sales organization on contacts who are most likely to be interested in receiving a phone call or e-mail from them.  How is this possible? Sales reps that practice Prospecting 2.0:

• Put themselves in the customer’s shoes and only reach out to those contacts at the right time with the right message
• Are well-informed about their prospect’s business objectives, initiatives, and challenges
• Use a lead rating system to prioritize their contacts and organize their outreach and follow up accordingly
• Embrace technologies that make them more effective and productive by delivering information in an easy-to-use context

In many Sales 2.0 organizations, there is a dedicated person or group whose job it is to reach out to customers early in their buying cycle, discover if there is a “fit”, and keep them engaged – with the help of nurturing marketing programs – until they are closer to a buying decision. This Sales Development or Lead Qualification group allows sales reps with quotas to focus on closing qualified buyers without sacrificing the filling of the sales funnel for future quarters. While sales reps are compensated on revenue-generation, sales development reps are paid on delivering qualified opportunities to the sales force.

E-mails can benefit from a Prospecting 2.0 approach as well.  At the end of last month, I remember getting a message that went something like this:

“Since it’s the end of our quarter, I thought you might be interested in (product name), which is now available at a 15% discount until (end of quarter date).”

This is a commonly-used approach that has everything to do with the sales rep’s quota attainment and nothing to do with the customer. Consider instead this customer-centric, personalized approach:

“Steve at Steve and Company suggested I contact you. I read recently in Profitability Today that your company is facing cost reduction in sales.  We just reduced head count 20% while increasing revenue 25% by implementing Sales Wonder Tool at Steve and Company. Would you like hear more about how we could help you decrease cost while increasing productivity at your company?”

In next week’s webinar at 10AM on April 21 PST,  I look forward to interviewing Jason Braun of Jellyvision and Mike Pilcher of MarketBright and hearing about how they use a Prospecting 2.0 approach every day in their sales organizations.  We’ll address three key topic areas:

1. The Importance of Data
2. Know Thy Customer, and
3. Provocation-Based Selling, as described in the article by Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin and Geoffrey Moore in the Harvard Business Review.

What questions do you have about how to prospect more effectively? What approaches are working for you?

Tags: Geoffrey Moore, Harvard Business Review, InsideView, Jellyvision, lead qualification, MarketBright, Philip Lay, Prospecting 2.0, Provocation-Based Selling, sales development, Todd Hewlin, webinar

Making Webinars and Presentations Sales 2.0

Since my book was released a few months ago, I’ve had many opportunities to  participate in Web and speaking events on the topic of Sales 2.0. While I am grateful for the invitations to  spread the important message of reinventing sales to achieve better results, something has been troubling me:  the typical approach many of us take to presentations is best described as Sales 1.0.  Sales 2.0 is about collaborative, two-way communication and sharing of ideas with prospects and customers.   Sales 1.0 describes the traditional feature/benefit-oriented pitches or presentations that we often make in one direction – to our customer or audience – without engaging them and letting them tell us about themselves and their business objectives.

Isn’t the PowerPoint presentation the ultimate Sales 1.0 offender, whether given face-to-face or online?

Robin Carey, CEO of Social Media Today, and I discussed this dilemma, in preparation for the upcoming March 31 webinar she asked me to join, along with Mark Woolen from Oracle and Christopher Carfi from Cerado.  Robin, being immersed in the world of social media and not one to take a traditional approach,  explained that the webinar would be a highly interactive Q&A Panel.  She would encourage  participants to live chat their questions during the event.  These approaches are right in line with Sales 2.0 philosophy.  Robin emphasized that she expects the conversation to be lively and for the speakers to talk over one another at times, like in real life.  I thought immediately of David Mamet’s plays.

The “Maximizing Customer Relationships through Technology and Social Media” panel I’m sharing with Jim Calhoun, CEO of PopularMedia, this Thursday, March 26 for MENG (Marketing Executives’ Networking Group) will follow a similar format, with moderator David Schneider asking us questions rather than us giving slide shows. David emphasized, “in an effort to encourage as much audience interaction as possible and evolve to topics that interest them, I will try to initiate discussions and turn to the folks in the crowd for their questions frequently.” Chris Kenton, founder of the Social Media Breakfast San Francisco and his own startup, SocialRep, came to the same conclusion about the event he organized last month.  He interviewed me Michael Krasny-style, inviting audience members to chime in after he posed some of the most thought-provoking questions I’ve been asked since Larry Ellison interviewed me for my first job at Oracle in 1980. I have to admit that our decision to do an interview was influenced by the fact that the venue for the event – a hip bar in downtown San Francisco – didn’t have much in the way of audio/visual equipment, making a slide presentation problematic, but we turned this “bug” into a “feature”.  Chris went a step further into Sales 2.0-thinking by inviting a professional videographer to tape the interview, which he later posted online.

As I look forward to future speaking opportunities, I am still searching for ways to re-think the standard and expected method of communicating a message to a group audience.  When I was approached to to be part of InsideView’s Sales 2.0 webinar series, I balked at the idea of a giving a traditional pitch. As we explored ideas, I had a Sales 2.0 suggestion: let’s include a customer, who would describe a personal experience accelerating sales with Sales 2.0 practices.  We are now in the process of planning a program for April 21 that will be more in line with another key Sales 2.0 message: be customer-focused.

My first Bay Area bookstore appearance is coming up April 2.  Any thoughts on how to prepare for Author Appearance 2.0?

What Sales 2.0 practices have you been incorporating into your presentations and webinars? What results have you seen?

Tags: Cerado, Chris Kenton, Christopher Carfi, customer relationships, David Schneider, InsideView, Jim Calhoun, Larry Ellison, Mark Woolen, MENG, Oracle, PopularMedia, PowerPoint, Robin Carey, Sales 1.0, Sales 2.0, social media, Social Media Breakfast, Social Media Today, SocialRep, webinar