A multi-channel approach and rhythm could look like this.
Week 1
Monday – Start Email Sequence One Inducing your Product Market Fit and Highlight a Industry Problem
Tuesday – Rest Lead
Wednesday – Email No 2 – highlighting how others are dealing with this industry
Thursday – Rest Lead
Friday – Email No 3 – Put in a call to action encouraging your prospect to engage with you
Week 2
Monday – Attempted Phone call, leave “missed you” voicemail
Tuesday – Rest Lead
Wednesday – Attempted Phone call, send email
Thursday – Rest Lead
Friday – Attempted Phone, end of week email
Week 3
Monday – Send a LinkedIN Message
Tuesday – Rest
Wednesday – Attempted Call – Leave a voicemail
Thursday – Rest
Friday – Attempted Call, end of week email
As you can see from this initial three week plan, there have been 14 attempts to interact with the prospect. Business development or lead development is not done in single digit attempts. Very often it takes much more than 14 attempts to engage the prospect, if the AVERAGE is 12, you can get an idea how far out your outreach strategy actually needs to be. Remember if your TAM sizing is done correctly the prospect is on your lead list for a reason. So unless you get to talk to them and qualify them, they are still very much a potential customer, why would you give up on them?
The ultimate goal in pre-sales is to identify a Sales Qualified Lead commonly known as an SQL. This is achieved by applying the BANT process to one of two pockets of leads. The first being the above, which is cold lists using an SDR team. The second is using a BDR (Business Development Representative) team in tandem with a marketing program to deliver MQLs (Marketing Qualified Lead).
MQLs are prospects or leads that have reacted or engaged with a planned marketing activity. Usually in the form of digital advertising, the definition of a marketing qualified lead is a prospect that has shown an expression of interest in your product or service. This can be achieved in a number of different ways including but not limited to:
- Tracked visit to key pages on your site, such as services or pricing
- Signing up for a webinar
- Downloading a white paper from your site
- Completing a “Request for Quote” or engagement form on your site
- Engaging with your chat bot on your site
What each of these actions gives your BDR is a pointed person to contact to engage with to apply BANT. Though the activity of the pre-sales team is outbound it is guided by the stimulus of the prospect taking some sort of buyer intent activity. The prospect is either familiar with your brand or offering and has either requested contact or has engaged enough not to be surprised when we do reach out.
Pre-Sales’ role is to uncover pockets of leads, qualify them and present them to the sellers to educate and close. In the SDR process it is mainly nurturing and coaxing the prospecting into engagement. The BDRs main driver is to engage and qualify at speed from the moment that the lead shows an expression of interest. If a prospect engages through the varying options listed, that puts the prospect in what can be classified as “Buyer Intent Mode”, meaning they are open to being sold to and speed to engagement by presales in this situation is critical.