Getting Creative with Prospecting with Craig Rosenberg and Dan Gottlieb {Hey Salespeople Podcast}

Everyone wants value.

Craig Rosenberg and Dan Gottlieb, both analysts at TOPO discuss how to think outside of the box when delivering that value to prospects.

From storytelling to experimenting with channels beyond just email and phone, Craig and Dan give their best practices for prospecting and advice on how to build connections and engage in a new and creative way. 

You won’t want to miss Jeremey’s three immediately actionable takeaways! 

Listen to this episode for answers to questions like: 

• Are the typical sales methodologies still relevant? 
• What do executives respond best to during prospecting? 
• Should using chat as an outbound tool be an AI experience or human experience?
• What are the best prospecting emails? 
• Is it worth it to give away high-value content during prospecting? 

How Should You Prospect?

Jeremey: Craig, when people prospect you, what do you expect? How do you want to be prospecting?

Craig: Every sort of sales methodology tries to come back to pain and challenges. That’s great, but if you’re going to talk to an exec, they want big ideas. That’s a little bit different.

What I want to know is how can I go to X revenue and what are those ideas? What are the best prospecting emails? There’s been a couple over the years.

Jeremey: I think that there’s sort of two categories. One is, I know I have this particular problem, but I don’t necessarily know what the solution is. If you give me a great idea for the solution, great.

That great idea can’t just be your generic value propositions. If I’m going to take a call, I really want at least one nugget that I can take away, even if I don’t do business with you, and immediately apply.

The other one is not that I know I have this problem, but it’s basically I know that I need to meet or exceed our company’s revenue goals, sales, or productivity. If you bring me something that is going to be able to do that with a sufficient ROI, then I’m going to have the conversation. It’s basically bringing me an idea. Don’t just try to ask me discovery questions.

Craig: That’s the thing that nobody talks about. What the really good sales reps do is gravitate towards the big picture and try to show executives how they can take their business to the next level.  That is a major differentiator and something you can express in your prospecting. 

LinkedIn for Prospecting

Jeremey:  Dan, for prospecting efforts around LinkedIn what are the key takeaways on how to do that most effectively for people?

Dan: Because of the GDPR scare, a lot of European companies effectively shut down outbound prospecting, using traditional email and phone methods from out of their contact database are no longer allowed.

So obviously, if you’re a rep, and you still have a quota, what are you going to do? They all flocked to LinkedIn.

So what we’re talking about here is, instead of sending a cold email, leaving a voicemail, etc., it’s looking at a profile, I’m engaging with content on LinkedIn in some way, shape, or form.

This creates some degree of awareness around who you are, followed by a very personalized connection request. That connection request is ultimately designed to convey that I have value to provide to you. I have big ideas, we both have big ideas, I’d love to connect with you to share those ideas to learn more about your ideas.

Ultimately, throw that intention out there. The key is following up with that intention if they accept your request.  Once you are accepted as that connection request, then think about how do I now thoughtfully engage in a conversation.

Sharing content with somebody, asking them a big open-ended question about what they think about something, or commenting on something that they have created genuinely starts a conversation centered around value in that world.

Now, you’ve got multiple ways to engage over time and intentionally try to position yourself as somebody that they can get answers from. So it’s a longer play.

So it’s not really novel, it’s not new, but it’s valuable enough. It’s productive enough based off of some of the things that we’ve seen out of reps in Europe making their number off of this strategy. That it’s something you can confidently build an outbound strategy around when you’re trying to build relationships.