3. Understand your sales process stages

Very important step. You’re sales process is the way you turn a stranger into a customer. It can vary from business to business, but we typically see 5 stages, from discovery call to closing.

Here’s my sales process (feel free to copy):

• Stage 1: Interest – Discovery
• Stage 2: Education – Demo
• Stage 3: Validation – Contract Review
• Stage 4: Justification – Negotiation
• Stage 5: Decision – Closed Won

4. Define a conversion rate for each stage

Now that you have clear idea of your sales process, define the conversion rate from one stage to the other.

Here’s what I see in my process:

• Stage 1 to 2: 50%
• Stage 2 to 3: 60%
• Stage 3 to 4: 70%
• Stage 4 to 5: 90%

5. Find out how many discovery calls you need to set

Finally, start from the final goal and use your assumptions to define how many stage 1 opportunities are necessary to reach your goal.

In my example:

• 10 stage 5 opportunities at €25.000 per quarter closed equals:
• 12 stage 4 opportunities
• 18 stage 3 opportunities
• 30 stage 2 opportunities
• 60 stage 1 opportunities

60 discovery calls per quarter = 5 per week. If you’re already running 5+ discovery calls per week, you’re on track. If you’re under 5 discovery calls per week, you need to find more through outbound, or increase your average deal size.

Follow these 5 steps and you’ll get a general idea of the prospecting effort you need to deliver on a weekly basis. If you need to be spending more than half of your day running discovery calls, your plan will be hard to reach with the assumptions you have.

And if you’re interested in finding out how many prospects you need to contact every day, I suggest using my “Cruising Altitude Calculator”. It’s part of the New Outreach System and you’ll calculate the exact number of prospects you need to find and contact every day. You’ll also learn how to build an outbound sequence, what to say in each touchpoint, and how to build your prospecting routine.

Grab it today for €79 instead of €149 with the code “week7email”.

3. Found 5 new prospects

Now that I have done my follow-ups, I start drinking my coffee (I don’t touch it before). I have added this small hack to my routine to gamify my prospecting.

As I’m a bit of a coffee addict, I’m motivated to get rid of my follow-ups, because it’s the only way to drink my coffee. And if I’m too slow, I’ll drink a cold coffee (which I hate).

While I’m doing that, I look for interesting prospects who have visited my LinkedIn profile, reacted/engaged with my posts, or reacted/engaged with someone else’s post.

Sometimes I find them in 5 minutes, sometimes it takes me 15 minutes.

4. Added them to my sequence

Finally, I contact these 5 new prospects. If I’m not connected with them I send them a connection request. If we’re already connected I skip the connection request and I go with a Tolstoy video.

If you’re curious to know what I say in the video, go check this article I wrote a few weeks ago.

This part of my prospecting routine never takes more than 5 minutes.

As you can see, booking 8 meetings in January isn’t the result of some magic new tool or channel. It’s the natural outcome of consistent, daily prospecting.

I show up every day and I:

• Use a power hour
• Start with follow-ups
• Find 5 new prospects
• Add them to my sequence

Outbound prospecting is no rocket science. It’s about showing up every day and doing what everyone else won’t do.

It’s really that simple.

And if you need help building your prospecting routine, go check the New Outreach System. You will learn how to:

• Define your Ideal Customer Profile
• Find prospects daily (as well as relevant details to mention in your outreach)
• Build and cadence your sequences
• Navigate conversations
• Produce consistent prospecting outcomes

Grab it for €99 instead of €149 today with the code “week6email”.

2. Prepare your setup

Now that you know what to say, you need to make sure you’re in the right mindset, and in the right place to shoot your videos.

The only tech you’ll need is your computer’s camera and microphone, and a video recording tool like Tolstoy. You’ll also need enough light to make sure the quality of your video isn’t too bad.

Don’t worry about your background, as long as nothing is moving or distracting from what you’re saying. I met an incredibly successful rep who used to send videos from her bedroom with a messy background. It never hurts to show a bit of your personality in your videos.

The one thing that matters is to record your video in a quiet place. Make sure there’s no background noise.

3. Shoot

You know what to say and you’re in quiet place with good lighting. Now is the time to shoot your video. Don’t worry about stuttering or missing a few words, it doesn’t matter in the end.

What matters is that you record a short, relevant video for your prospects. You’re not paid to be a movie star, you’re paid to generate opportunities.

Just shoot your video and read your script. It won’t sound natural at the beginning, but with practice, you’ll be able to record your videos in one shot. If you don’t like seeing your face when recording the video, just open another tab with the text you have to read.

Here’s a recent video I recorded. I look tired, I’m not shaved, but I got the meeting.