Make the Commitment
Most salespeople give up before they give themselves a chance at gaining any momentum. Prospecting isn’t a one-time event. You have to give up on the idea that success looks like saying the right thing to the right person at the right time. Think of it like a campaign. It’s a process you commit to. You build on each call, and you win the meeting as the result of your cumulative efforts.
”But I don’t want to be a pest”
The common myth among salespeople is that the more often one reaches out, the more likely they are to aggravate their prospects and miss out on any chance of ever getting a meeting. You’re right, but that’s not the whole story.
The real key to not being a pest is to have your outreach mean something to your prospect. That’s why I train my clients how to ask provocative questions in their outreach. In that case, every time your future customer hears from you, you’re making them think about their own situation. There’s a lot of value in that, and when you reach out with value, you can reach out more often.
Finding a balance
There are a lot of things you need to manage when creating an outbound cadence. You want to reach out with enough frequency that you can create momentum. Still, if you’re provoking some thought, you want your prospect to have some “time under tension” to really let some of that emotion build up. There are only so many salient points you can make without confusing your prospect, and you also need to have a defined length of time where you feel like you can walk away having done enough for now, should you not be able to reach them.
The data on sales cadences is out there, and you can find it for your specific industry. What I recommend as a good starting point, particularly with the professional service providers and technical salespeople I work with, is a cadence I call 5 Over 4.
Subdivide your target list into four groups. Reach out to each group every fourth business day. Over the course of four weeks, you will have attempted to reach each group five times, hence the name.
If you sell SaaS, the current data suggests 12-15 times over 4-6 weeks. It’s a much more intense campaign, but you’re dealing with people who are constantly in front of their computers, and the noise level is quite high. It takes a lot more effort to break through.
Regardless of the cadence or your industry, I recommend these outreach attempts are a good mix of the telephone, email, and social media touches. There’s no reason to leave any tool unused. Rather than limit yourself to people who only use the phone, per se, mix it up a bit. Despite the evidence that this works, few people employ this approach, and you’ll find it’s another way to differentiate yourself.
How long before you give up?
I think a good rule of thumb is that you pursue someone for a quarter and then reassess. Over thirteen weeks, using the 5 Over 4 cadence I showed you you can reach out to your prospects at least 15 times each. That’s often enough:
for them to know you’re trying to reach them
for them to know you won’t be waited out
to allow for adequate time under tension
for you to plant the seeds in their head that a conversation with you will be time well spent
If that doesn’t work, then one of three things is possible:
Your questions/topics aren’t relevant enough
You were wrong about your potential fit with them
The timing is just not right
After each quarter, reassess the progress (if any) you’ve made, and decide whether or not to continue with each prospect for another quarter, rotate them out of your cadence for a quarter, or disregard them altogether.
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