Converting Sales With Campaigns

One of the smartest minds in sales is Jeff Bajorek, and we were able to sit down with him to talk about making sales Bulletproof. One of the chief challenges we discussed was outbound campaigns to convert conversations – a perennial issue in the world of sales.

Jeff made it clear that leads are different from prospects. A ‘lead,’ according to Jeff, “is someone I know I can help.”

A ‘prospect,’ on the other hand, is someone we know we can help who has expressed an interest in a further conversation. While drip sequences are fine for leads, prospects deserve more of our attention as they have self-selected to hear more from us.

But the challenge remains – how do we encourage a prospect to meet with us to discuss our products and services?

Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.

T – Trigger: A value-driven campaign sequence to convert prospects into customers happens when a lead becomes more than a lead – whether through self-selection, filling out a form, or through a targeted campaign, this sequence triggers when we have a new prospect enter our world.

R – Repeatable: In order to execute the type of high-value and high-touch campaign that Jeff recommends, we need to ensure the sequence is defined ahead of time, either in a spreadsheet or CRM. Jeff recommends we look at the 5 differentiators our product/service has, and to come up with a few questions we can ask prospects around each of those differentiators. That means 15-30 separate questions.

Of course, just asking questions isn’t enough. We also need to provide value – and that means finding supporting documentation for each of our questions in the form of white papers, links, articles, etc. that save our prospects the time of conducting the research on their own. An addendum to each of our outreach attempts can be a follow-up with a piece of this value-added content.

I – Improvable: In order to improve a sequence like this, Jeff recommends salespeople pay attention to which pieces of content generate a response. If a few prospects all respond positively after receiving a piece of content, consider front-loading that content in your sequence to see if it generates more conversations, sooner.

M – Measurable: To measure the results of a sequence like this, Jeff recommends first looking at ‘progress along a process’. If progress lacking, Jeff says leaders should measure activity. Are the reps executing the sequence, making calls and sending the messages? If not, they can coach salespeople on execution. Alternatively, if some salespeople are generating exceptional results, leaders should measure the differences in their outreach to see what can be modeled for the rest of the team.