No More Finding a Needle in a Haystack

Traditional sales and marketing have approached prospecting as one big blog of company names. They buy a list of 10,000 company names across the United States and expect business leads and closes to happen. You got the list, now make a sale. That’s the expectation.

As you can imagine, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. You may be lucky to find it…or you may not.

The Birth of Account-Based Marketing Software

We’ve all been introduced to Marketo, Hubspot and SalesForce to name a few of the wide selection of sales and marketing account-based marketing tools. These are tools where you can buy, or sometimes get a portion of it for free, to manage your prospects. We’ve read case studies, listened to online conferences and read articles from A to Z on how great these tools are and how they are going to help us increase revenue. Maybe it has for some, but that’s usually because they have large staffs and dedicated employees that do nothing all day but work on the software.

The real world is simple. There’s one, maybe two marketing people on staff to support X amount of sales reps. They need to develop the concept, write the copy, design the marketing graphics, send it out and track it all to generate leads. The bottom line, it’s still the same 10,000 company name list that sales and marketing agreed to purchase. Did the expectation from management change? No. All you got was this expensive software that now you’re spending a lot more time working on with the same result.

What Can Be Done to Actually Make this Work?

Step 1: Identify your ICP. This is information both sales and marketing should automatically know. Who is your target industry, size company, and title. There’s always more that you can narrow it down by, and if you can, do it. The tighter the target, the better result you will get. 

Step 2: Take that list of 10,000 (if it meets your ICP requirements) and break it down into smaller lists, no more than 1,000 contact names per list. If you need to have 10 lists, of 1,000 or less, we suggest prioritizing the lists.

Step 3: Control the mailing. Do you need to send all 1,000 out at the same time? Can you send a controlled mailing so follow up calls can be made? If so, what will that look like?

• Call every one on the list?
• Call only those that opened the email?
• Call only those that clicked through on the email?
• And…can or will sales take that contact and invite them to connect on LinkedIn and the company page?

Sales May Not Be Able to Call in Marketing’s Timeframe

If marketing can have it their way, sales would make timely calls and connections following their communications. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes for good reason, they cannot make the calls when marketing wants or needs. Even if you ask sales, when would be a better time, they may not give you an answer. So, what is marketing to do? Marketing is tasked with generating sales leads as well as the sales team themselves. How can momentum keep moving forward without losing business opportunities?

Prospecting Services

It’s important to be ready to fill in that gap if sales have obstacles in the way. The best way to support the targeted program for both sales and marketing is with prospecting services.

There are many companies out there that offer prospecting services. However, the knowledge level for our industry with most of these companies is non-existent. That’s why SalesLeads offers Prospecting Services.

It’s the ongoing support you’ll need to ensure you remain on target with your ICP list, marketing program and follow up in order to generate sales leads for the team to follow up on and close deals.