Prospecting: What’s Next.

Getting new clients has always been vital for the existence of all companies. Even more today, when i) e-trade reaches and erodes the traditional customer base and ii) competition from classic competitors becomes fiercer. In our disruptive times, trying harder may be not enough. What about re-considering the total model of prospecting altogether? What about getting some inspiration from companies that are pure digital? 

When we refer to pure digital companies, we think of companies selling social media tools or reporting and analytics software, pure e-commerce companies or internet-based services like recruiting solutions or e-learning sites.

Have you ever seen a sales representative of these companies in your office? Your company is certainly using or at least potentially interested in some of these products or services. Have you or your colleagues met any salesperson from these companies? Are there any? If so, how do they reach the prospective customers?

Digital companies, virtual Sales Teams

Well, these companies do have sales teams. And yes, new clients are extremely important for them. Actually, how efficiently and effectively they reach new customers is key to their existence!

Simply, these sales teams are “virtual”. They are in an office, somewhere in any country. Instead of carrying a bag and driving a car, they are stuck in front of a computer screen, analyzing data or videoconferencing with customers. They are like any other global sales force: spread geographically, possibly based out of a home office, belonging to a team and connecting with their team leader via conference and video calls. They speak the language of the country they serve; most probably they do not even need a local legal entity to invoice their products. And certainly these teams are significantly small in size, for the volume and number of customers they serve!

It is well known that the cost of acquiring new customers, those we call Raw-Gems because exactly they are rare and precious, is 600% to 700% higher than serving existing customers. Major reason is the increased number of failed contacts with prospects until one finally decides to give an order. Therefore, the first task in prospecting is to identify the new customers who have an interest in the category of products you sell and who will, most probably, buy your brand, if the correct connection is made. Desirably, we would like to have a meeting with a customer who has already expressed an interest in our products, who is in the journey of searching. That would increase significantly the chances of success and consequently reduce dramatically the cost of acquisition. Ideally, this customer should knock on our door instead of us cold calling. Right?

Well, this is exactly what digital companies strive for: employ processes and tools to identify those prospects and even make them contact the supplier to ask for help and a quotation. I am sure you have received emails like these:

Did you notice, twice, the urge to “Request Demo”?

By locating positively inclined customers and convincing them to ask for a free on line demo, they do not need traveling salespersons to visit the customer and present the product. They need people who are in the office working on these locating processes and with these tools. And, as we will see, they need other people, “experts to walk you through”, and who will close the deal.

Inside Sales (in other words: Sales Operations)

The first group of inside sales are those using an important tool: a software which identifies who is currently searching for their kind of products. Nowadays, we all search on the internet and our digital traces are everywhere. Knowing where to look for such traces and combining them to link them to a person is a task that is more and more sophisticated and automated. Software applications, called predictive lead scoring, like Infer, Leadspace or 6sense link these potential buyers to the companies they work for and their roles there, identify behavioral patterns that are not immediately obvious and assign scores reflecting the probability to be interested to the company’s products! The list of prospects is reduced to the more inclined to buy!

What is more interesting, however, is the way these targeted prospects are contacted. Before any person cold calling, these companies deploy a warming up activity of making the person familiar to the products and above all to the company. Using digital media techniques as remarketing (the placement of ads to those who visited the web site of the company or searched for a core product of the company) they place interesting and relevant content for them to simply read, to download or even offer free tools to try the services. While educating the buyer, such a content indirectly strengthens the authority of the company and solidifies the brand awareness.

After the prospective customer is identified and supplied with the information they want, then comes the time of the good old phone call or email to introduce the account executive assigned, the “experts to walk you through”, and ask for the particular need the person wants to cover.

In that way prospecting has shifted from a push (go to the customer and present your solution in the hopes of liking it) and becomes a pull game. You will say, well, this has always been the role of Marketing: create interest and make customers call for information and an order. True. However, interest awakening is nowadays done from Marketing in close cooperation with Sales. That is the reason why we often refer to Smarketing.

Marketing needs to develop the relevant content, personalize it, make it attractive on-line and place it in front of the customer. Not the classic job of a marketing department that has been used to creating sales folders for sales reps and classic advertising for the prospective customers.

It is now on the salesperson on the phone or on videoconference to convince the prospective customer to buy the product. This is the second phase of prospecting: understanding the needs of the customer, making a convincing presentation satisfying these needs and closing the deal.

How these pure digital companies support their salespersons in that second phase of prospecting is presented in my article: Enabling Sales Forces, the new buzzword in Sales.

When we study the sales force responsible for acquiring the new customers for these digital companies, we have seen that the gendre of “traveling salesman” for these companies does not exist at all. They have been replaced by a) back-office sales search teams, who use sophisticated tools to identify potential customers, b) marketing teams who arrange for relevant material to be created and placed to warm up the customer and create the relationship and c) account executives on the phone or video to contact the customers.

Obviously, the profile and skills of those sales analysts are totally different than those of traveling salesmen. They do not even need to talk to the customer who is eventually contacted by the team of account executives. Their Key Performance Indicators are different, their incentive scheme is different.
When studying these processes employed by pure digital companies, it becomes clearer how complex it is to move from a traditional system of prospecting to a “digital” one: new software which by-the-way needs to be customized to the needs of your specific industry, new marketing methods to be developed by the marketing department, new profile of inside sales people to be employed and new ways of measuring their performance and steering them, a different profile and skills for the account executives.

A complex transformation

When studying these processes employed by pure digital companies, it becomes clearer how complex it is to move from a traditional system of prospecting to a “digital” one: new software which by-the-way needs to be customized to the needs of your specific industry, new marketing methods to be developed by the marketing department, new profile of inside sales people to be employed and new ways of measuring their performance and steering them, a different profile and skills for the account executives. Also, a totally different culture, closer to telemarketing rather than Field sales force.

This transformation complexity is what makes it so difficult for existing, traditional companies to move to the new way of prospecting. If one adds the risk associated in abolishing the known, tested way of prospecting, moving to the new era seems almost prohibitive. But it is exactly what needs to happen!

It is not going to be long until a small company will enter your industry, organize itself and invest only in the new process and succeed in acquiring and serving more efficiently new customers; most probably your customers.

The process of pure digital companies is particular cost efficient because it abolishes all the costs of traveling, while the time spent with customers is very productive: all those blind calls to new customers are eliminated.

One could argue that the way of their work is an evolution of the old call center concept which is now equipped with more sophisticated tools. It may be true. What is certain is that, as these tools become wider available and adapted to the needs of traditional industries, they will find their way in the hands of new, aggressive start ups which will change the rules of the game and succeed in entering your industry.

Where to start?

However, you, as ambitious executives interested in Sales and what is next, should first get familiar with the new methods and tools and start thinking of how to prepare for the transformation of your processes in the future. All those companies of predictive scoring provide resources on their web sites to allow you deep dive on how they work and see concrete examples of success. Start from there!