My client, let's call him Alex, used to be a prospecting dinosaur. His prospecting mindset involved picking a random window of time to make cold calls, and then hoping the prospects would be by their phones. Even if he got through to prospects, they had absolutely no clue who he was.
For that reason, he was lucky to get past the first seven seconds of a call. He'd then follow up with a long form email that never got read, and would start the process over with each new prospect.
But not anymore. With the rapidly evolving selling space, all that has changed. Alex has entered the future of prospecting, where he’s no longer a random stranger to prospects. Prospects know exactly who he is, and are already thinking about him by the time he calls.
No, not by caller ID. It's way cooler than that: Sales tracking technology. And by following the three ninja steps I suggest below, my clients and I have seen an over 70% increase in dial-to-connect ratios.
Step 1: Employ sales technology.
By using sales tracking technology, sales professionals can begin understanding when a prospect is actually opening and clicking on their emails. That way, a sales professional like Alex can use this intelligence to understand when his prospect is thinking already thinking about him, and call then. Tools like Sidekick provide this tracking for free.
But before you even get there, you need to ...
Step 2: Send a short and clean email.
One of the most common mistakes people make when sending prospecting emails is that they simply write too much. Your email only has a few seconds to make an impression on prospects. Long, wordy emails will be sent right to the trash.
Instead, craft a customized email that's short and to-the-point. Try to offer some value in the email, in the form of information that would be appreciated by the prospect. An effective email will look something like this:
This email is short, simple, and engaging. Most importantly, it's not the end of his prospecting effort since we are about to learn exactly when the prospect opens the email.
3. Call prospects when they're engaging with your email.
Once you're notified a prospect is interacting with your email ... pick up the phone. If you time your call correctly, your prospect will have you top-of-mind. That means they'll know who you are, and be much more likely to speak with you. Data from InsideSales even shows that the odds of calling to contact a lead decreases by over 10 times in the first four -- I bet that translates seamlessly in this tech-driven context.
So try out these ninja steps, and hopefully you start seeing the dramatic dial-to-connect ratio my clients and I have seen.
If possible, please share your results from using this technique below in the comments. I'd love to hear how it's working.
