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How I use Amplemarket’s AI features to prospect

How I use Amplemarket’s AI features to prospect

In today’s issue, I’ll share exactly how I use Amplemarket’s AI features to become more efficient when prospecting. These steps will help you understand how you can integrate Amplemarket in your tech stack, and you’ll discover some useful features to save time.

Let’s dive in:

Step 1: Export leads from posts

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know I mostly use LinkedIn for prospecting. It’s a great way to find prospects, and contact them based on the digital footprint they leave when using LinkedIn (reactions, comments, event attendance, etc.).

Here’s a recent post I did, with 57 reactions, and 24 comments.

Image #1

I can click on the “Export Leads” button at the bottom of the post, and an Amplemarket window will open, with all the people who fit with the filters I have set (see below):

Image #2

Step 2: Enrich data

Now that I have a list of potential leads, I need to do two things:

  • Check if they are really relevant
  • Enrich data when I find out they are relevant

I click on “Filter Leads in Searcher” and the following window opens:

Image #3

As you can see, I have a ton of interesting information I can use to find out if I should reach to these people. In the example above, Alper, Leslie, and Patrick are good leads to contact, because they fit with my ICP.

Next I click on “Add To Sequence”, I select an active sequence, and they are automatically added, enriched, and 3 tasks pop in my task list (I could also add them to an automatic sequence, but you know how I feel about automation).

Step 3: Use the AI copywriter

My prospects are now in the sequence, and I use the Amplemarket assistant window to execute my tasks in order.

Image #4

As you can see, there’s a “Generate” button on the profile of Patrick. When I click on it, the AI generates a first message, based on the activity of Patrick. Here’s what it looks like:

Image #5

With a bit of tweaking, I came up with the following message:

Image #6

Step 4: Enrich meetings

Finally, when prospects accept a call with me, Amplemarket automatically enriches the meeting with relevant information to run a great discovery call.

Image #7

These are just a few examples of how I use Amplemarket to save time and close more deals. If you want to give it a try, you can use my link to book a demo, and get a 10% discount if you decide to become a paid customer.

Hope this was helpful.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Enroll in The Prospecting Engine

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

How to find your prospect’s problems: A step-by-step guide

How to find your prospect’s problems: A step-by-step guide

In today’s issue, I’ll share the exact process I follow to find prospects’ problems. If you can replicate these steps, you’ll be able to catch the attention of your prospects, because you’ll show them you understand what problems they are trying to solve, in details.

Understanding prospects’ problems is a big mindset shift for many salespeople because they are trained to sell a product, and pitch features and benefits, instead of trying to put themselves in the shoes of their customers.

That’s what I’m going to show you, step-by-step:

Step 1: Understand their goals and metrics

Every prospect you are trying to reach has one or more metrics they are evaluated on. A VP of Sales will be evaluated on revenues, a CFO on bottom-line, a CPO on shipping speed and so on. Your prospects get promoted or fired based on their performance against these metrics.

Your goal when finding prospects’ problems is to get a clear understanding of these metrics, and the goals associated with these metrics.

Here are a few places where you can get an idea of these metrics and goals:

  • Podcasts/webinars where your Ideal Customer Profiles are interviewed
  • Job descriptions
  • Current and past customers

When you have an idea of the metrics your prospects are evaluated on, your next step is to understand their goals. You can ask yourself the following questions:

  • Are they trying to maximize or minimize this metric?
  • What happens if they miss it? What are the concrete consequences on their jobs/lives?
  • Do they have stretch goals?

Below are some examples for different types of prospects:

Image #1

Step 2: List their key initiatives

When you have a clear metric and goal, you need to find out the initiatives related to these goals. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What are they working on right now to achieve their goals?
  • What are the tools/services they are evaluating to avoid missing their goals?

Again, look for any information that can help you understand these initiatives in podcasts, webinars, 10-K reports, and so on.

Here’s an example of what an initiative could look like:

Image #2

Step 3: Find their problems

Now that you know more about their initiatives, you can start listing problems they would typically face when pursuing these initiatives.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Are they having a hard time finding/implementing the right tools?
  • Did they try other solutions, without success?
  • Are they going to miss their goals because they can’t find a service provider to do a job they are incapable of doing?

Here’s an example of problems related to initiatives:

Image #3

Step 4: Find symptoms

Finally, list the exact symptoms of these problems, so you can highlight them in your prospecting messages.

Problems are often not enough to get a reply. They tend to be vague and full of jargon. For example, “Not having an upsell playbook” is a problem a lot of my prospects have.

Symptoms of this problem are:

  • AEs are missing on easy expansion revenues
  • Customer Success Reps are only order takers, they have no sales skills
  • Expansion metrics are missed, quarter after quarter

I like to compare this with a doctor consultation. When you say “I have a cold”, you’re mentioning a sickness (a problem), but when your doctor asks you about your symptoms, you’ll say you:

  • have a runny nose
  • have regular headaches
  • feel exhausted
  • have fever

Think about what is more vivid in your mind? Problems or symptoms? It’s the same with prospects.

Here’s an example of typical symptoms:

And these are the 4 steps you can follow if you want to find your prospects’ problems.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. This is a small preview of my flagship course, The Prospecting Engine. 14 chapters and 114 lessons of instructional video that will teach you how to start conversations, book meetings, and generate a healthy pipeline in 2024 and beyond. (even if you’re just getting started).

Join over 40 salespeople here.

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Enroll in The Prospecting Engine

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

A complete guide to booking meetings with LinkedIn

A complete guide to booking meetings with LinkedIn

In today’s issue, I’ll share the exact process I follow to book meetings with LinkedIn. This is a tactic I detail in my Prospecting Engine, and if you can replicate this system, you’ll increase your chances of getting replies and booking meetings.

The main goal of this tactic is to use the digital footprint that can be found everywhere on LinkedIn, and use it to prospect as scale.

Here’s how, step-by-step:

Step 1: Find a relevant LinkedIn post

If your customers are active on LinkedIn (logging in at least once a week), then it’s highly likely that some people have built large audiences speaking about your prospects’ problems, and how to solve them.

I’ll take sales as an example. The domain is filled with thought-leaders who have built massive audiences on LinkedIn. Same goes for marketing, HR, and operations.

Your first step should be to build a list of 5 – 10 thought-leaders who post regularly (daily is best) on LinkedIn. Go check step 3 of this article if you want to know how.

I’ll take the example of Florin Tatuela who posts daily about outbound prospecting tactics (a lot of them are available in my Prospecting Template Swipe File).

Image #1

He has over 58.000 followers, and a lot of them may fit with my ICP.

I can go through a list of his posts to identify something my prospects would find valuable.

Remember, prospects are always faced with various problems, and posts related to these problems (and solutions) attract their likes and comments. Content that educates, challenges, entertains, or empathizes with prospects’ problems generates engagement.

In my example, I scrolled through Florin’s activity (filtered by post) and found this post. It’s a guide to using LinkedIn & Sales Navigator to its full potential.

This post got over 300 reactions, 36 comments, and 4 reshares. I’m pretty sure I can find some interesting people in there.

Step 2: Extract prospects who fit with your ICP

When you click on the lists of people who engaged with the post, you can see their reaction, and their connection degree with you.

Image #2

Now you just need to scroll and look for people who fit with your Ideal Customer Profile. In my example, I found 19 prospects who were a fit.

An additional benefit of this tactic is that you can use the same exact message for all the people who fit with your ICP

(Note: you can also use Amplemarket’s “Export Leads” feature to find prospects faster, and directly add them to your sequence).

Step 3: Tease their interest with a resource related to the post

As these prospects engaged with the post, it’s likely that they may have similar experiences with their SDRs. Which means they may have problems I can help with.

Let’s go back to the initial post. It’s a list of 5 tactics to use LinkedIn & Sales Navigator to its full potential. I could share the article you’re currently reading as a resource to help the prospects who liked this post book meetings with LinkedIn.

Now that I have my triggers, I can use a simple framework to write a message, or a connection request.

Trigger + Teaser: Paul, saw you also liked Florin’s post about 5 ways to use LinkedIn & Sales Navigator to its full potential. If you’re interested, I wrote a complete guide to booking meetings with LinkedIn.

Worth a peek?

As you can see, these texts are less than 300 characters, so they fit as connection requests, or direct messages:

Image #3

Step 4: Navigate conversations and book meetings with interested prospects

If the prospects I contacted are trying to use LinkedIn to book meetings (everyone is these days), then some of them will be curious to know about the resource I shared. When prospects reply, follow these steps:

  • Share the resource
  • Give them 2 days before following up
  • Ask them for feedback about the resource
  • When you get the feedback, ask if hoping on a quick 15 min call would be a bad idea

In my experience, if you follow this workflow, most people who are serious about solving the problem your resource is solving will book a call with you. The call will also be easier to start, because you already know about their problem, and you come with ideas to solve it.

And these are the 4 steps I follow to book meetings on LinkedIn.

TL;DR:

  • Step 1: Find a relevant LinkedIn post
  • Step 2: Extract prospects who fit with your ICP
  • Step 3: Tease their interest with a resource related to the post
  • Step 4: Navigate conversations and book meetings with interested prospects

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Enroll in The Prospecting Engine

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

A 15-seconds cold call opener you can’t afford to ignore

Today’s issue is sponsored by Replicate. It’s an AI cold call simulator that you can use to replicate any prospect, and practice before doing your cold call. Give it a try for free.

A 15-seconds cold call opener you can’t afford to ignore

In today’s issue, I’ll share a cold call opener I used to book a meeting with an AI avatar, when practicing with a cold call simulator. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m not a big fan of cold calling, mostly because I don’t like the direct rejection of a cold call, and because I have found a better system to book meetings.

But having the option to practice with an AI simulator is a great way to solve that problem and get more comfortable with cold calling, without worrying too much about what my prospect will think of me (it’s an AI after all).

A key part of a cold call is your opener, and the one I used in my simulation was incredibly efficient. Here’s how it’s structured:

Part 1: Salutation

I started the cold call by stating my first name only. I didn’t mention my company, why I was reaching out, and why the person should listen to me. In a real-world situation, this would help a prospect stay on the line (which is the goal of the first part of your cold call).

Example: “Hi, it’s Thibaut.”

I receive a ton of cold calls every day, and when people speak for over 30 seconds, without asking for permission, I always hang up because I know they are trying to sell me something I’m not interested in.

Part 2: Label the call

The second part of the opener is incredibly important. Instead of jumping in and trying to pitch my product, or convince the prospect to stay on the line, I explain that we don’t know each other, and this is a cold call.

Example: “Before you try to remember who is Thibaut, I just want to tell you that we don’t know each other, I’m a total stranger, and this is a cold call.”

This part of the opener is hard to master, it takes a bit of practice, but it’s an excellent way of addressing an objection before it even arises, and standing out to your prospect.

Part 3: Suggest to end the call

The last part of the opener is where you give the option to the prospect to end the call, or keep going.

Example: “So, do you want to roll the dice, and hear what I have to say?”

This last part is powerful because you’re not trying to convince someone who isn’t interested to stay on the line. You’re giving them an option to hang up, without turning it into a tensed situation. If they want to stay on the line, they can do it, if they want to hang up, they can do it too, and the rejection won’t be that hard to deal with.

Here’s an example of the entire opener:

“Hi, it’s Thibaut.

Before you try to remember who is Thibaut, I just want to tell you that we don’t know each other, I’m a total stranger, and this is a cold call.

So, do you want to roll the dice, and hear what I have to say?”

In case you didn’t notice it, I didn’t mention anything about my product, why I’m calling, and why the prospect should stay on the line. I just piqued their curiosity, and gave them the option to satisfy their need to know more, or escape the situation if they aren’t curious.

And if you’re interested in finding out the rest of my cold call, I have recorded a 4-minute video where I booked a meeting from a cold call.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Enroll in The Prospecting Engine

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

What prospecting and Netflix have in common

The Prospecting Engine is live! Go check how it can help you or your team book more meetings. You can choose to do it yourself, do it with a community of salespeople, or even add some 1:1 sessions with me.

What prospecting and Netflix have in common

In today’s newsletter, I will walk you through an important concept for salespeople. I call it “The Netflix Effect”, and it’s a powerful concept to help you start more conversations, and book more meetings.

It’s important because it will change your focus from trying to book meetings, to starting conversations by using a natural trait of humans: curiosity.

Let’s dive in.

The Netflix Effect

What’s the latest Netflix series you’ve been hooked to?

I’ve been religiously binge watching every season of Love is Blind with my wife, and it came down to one simple reason.

The producers of the show made it impossible to stop watching the show by adding a cliffhanger at the end of each episode.

They build tension by showcasing drama, and they cut to the next episode, right before solving the drama. Will Izzy end up with Johnie? Is Milton actually going to propose to Lydia?

There’s only one way to know – keep watching.

Teasing instead of giving

Here’s how I recommend using the “Netflix effect” when you’re prospecting

  1. Find a big problem your prospects are faced with every day: What massive problems are these people trying to solve every day?
  2. List symptoms of these problems: What concrete symptoms these problems create?
  3. Find resources to alleviate the symptoms: Are there resources you can share to solve these problems?
  4. Tease the resource into your message: Ask questions about these symptoms, and tease the corresponding resource.

Example: Selling a spend management software

For example, let’s say you’re a rep working at a spend management platform, helping finance teams track their expenses and increase their bottom lines.

Start by following the 4 steps from above:

Find a big problem your prospects are faced with every day: Let’s assume you’re building a prospecting sequence to start conversations with CFOs of B2B tech companies, with a ton of salespeople traveling and spending money to land new customers. A big problem is the considerable amount of expenses generated by the sales team, and the potential for expenses to spiral out of control. It’s a massive headache for a CFO with a tight budget.

List symptoms of these problems: There are tons of symptoms of this massive problem for a CFO. For example, they may do a monthly expense check and see a business class ticket booked by a sales rep, when they are supposed to fly in economy. Another example could be a $1.500+ restaurant bill, when the company limit is $250. You can’t get reimbursed for a restaurant expense like that, and if you work with a lot of salespeople, these T&E expenses can quickly get out of control.

Find resources to alleviate symptoms: Your company should have some free resources to market to your prospect. In our example, an Acceptable Expense Policy template would be incredible valuable to a CFO. They could share this policy and get it signed every quarter by salespeople, as part of their quarterly performance review.

Tease the resource into your message: Here’s an example of a cold message to a CFO:

“Martin, saw you hired over 40 salespeople in 2023 alone.

Curious to know how you’re preventing all these salespeople from spending way too much money on T&E expenses like flights and customer dinners.

If controlling your reps expenses is an issue, I have an Acceptable Expense Policy template you can directly share with your salespeople.

Worth a peek?”

Tying it back to you

If your job involves booking meetings with prospects (it should be if you’re in sales), picking their curiosity is the best way to start conversations. You can do it by listing concrete problems they are trying to solve every day.

Once you’ve done that, list detailed symptoms of these problems, find or build resources to help solve these problems, and include them into your messages.

This approach will help you start many more conversations, by using a trait all humans have – curiosity.

Hope this was helpful.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Enroll in The Prospecting Engine

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

4 steps to building a problem calculator

The Prospecting Engine is live! Go check how it can help you or your team book more meetings. You can choose to do it yourself, do it with a community of salespeople, or even add some 1:1 sessions with me.

4 steps to building a problem calculator

In today’s issue, I’ll share how you can create a problem calculator to use in your prospecting. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I love using big, massive problems to start conversations with prospects. If you can create a simple problem calculator, you’ll be able to tease it in your prospecting messages, and catch the attention of your prospects.

Here’s how, step-by-step:

Step 1: Find a big, quantifiable prospect problem

The first step is to have clear idea of a problem your prospects are trying to solve. It has to be a massive problem for them to care. It’s also important that you can quantify this problem, otherwise you won’t be able to create your calculator.

For example, a VP of Sales Development will care about outbound pipeline generation. If they have a goal of generating $150M pipeline in 2024, having a $20M pipeline at the beginning of Q2 is a massive problem.

Step 2: Find the metric your solution can impact

When you have found a big problem you can quantify, you need to find the metric your solution can impact. Your metric has to be directly related to the problem you have found in step 1.

For example, my Prospecting Engine has a direct impact on the pipeline generated by a salesperson taking it. The metric I’ll focus on is the pipeline generated.

If you were selling an expense management solution, a good metric could be the bottom line.

Step 3: Build a before/after calculator

Now that you have a clear idea of the metric your solution impacts, you can create your calculator. The easiest way to create your calculator is to create a before/after comparison so you can create a gap.

For example, in this calculator, I have created a comparison between a 100% focus on new logos only, and a 100% focus on expansion.

PS: If you need help building your own calculator, you can book a call to see how one of my programs can help you or your team.

Step 4: Tease it in your messages

The calculator I shared above is quite powerful as a reciprocity resource to use in my prospecting messages. Instead of directly sharing it, I like to tease it so I can capture the curiosity of my prospects, and get them to reply (and start a conversation with me), instead of sharing it and have them ignore me.

Here’s a prospecting template I would use to tease it to a VP of Sales:

“Mary, looks like you’re currently working with a team of 12 salespeople.

Salespeople who use my plays typically go from <5% reply rates to >15% reply rate.

With around 400 prospects contacted per month, per rep, this would mean starting conversations with 40 more prospects per rep, resulting in 480 additional monthly conversations for your entire organization.

That’s 5.760 additional conversations a year.

Worth peeking at my calculator to refine these numbers?”

And this is how you can build a problem calculator to get more prospects to reply to you.

Hope this was helpful.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Enroll in The Prospecting Engine

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

How I use triggers to get a 46.45% reply rate

The Prospecting Engine is finally live! You can grab the Do-It-Together package for 50% off before the community launches on the 21st of February.

How I use triggers to get a 46.45% reply rate

In today’s issue, I’ll share exactly how I use triggers to get a 46.45% reply rate. Without understanding intent-data and how to use triggers, you won’t book outbound meetings in 2024. However, if you use triggers to create relevant outbound messages, prospects will pay attention to what you have to say, they’ll reply more, and you’ll book more meetings as a result.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Understand intent-data

Before reaching out to your prospects, you need to understand what is intent-data, and how you can use it to make your prospecting more relevant. In short, intent-data is data about a potential buyer’s online behavior that indicates what they could likely do next or buy.

For example, your marketing team will use website visits, clicks on email marketing links, or a business card collected at a tradeshow as intent-data. They then nurture the leads until they request a demo, or pass them directly to you (the salesperson) to try to book a meeting.

This kind of intent data is interesting, but you have no control over it. That’s why I suggest using a second type of intent-data – the one you find on LinkedIn. Post reactions/comments, profile visits, LinkedIn event attendance are all great intent-data you can use.

Step 2: List potential triggers

Now that you know better about intent-data, you can start listing potential triggers you can use to start conversations with your prospects. This is what I call trigger-based prospecting – you focus on finding interesting creators and influencers who attract your ICP, and use the post reactions/comments as triggers.

For example, I love using posts from other creators to find potential prospects to reach out to. That’s why I recommend listing the types of triggers you want to track, so you are sure you know what you’re looking for. Here’s a cheat sheet to help you list your triggers:

Image #1

Step 3: Use these triggers

You now have a good understanding of intent-data, and how it translates into triggers. You can use this “digital footprint” as an excuse to start a conversation with you prospect.

For example, when prospects visit my profile, I use a variation of this message:

“FirstName, saw you recently landed on my LinkedIn profile. There are a few resources I can send your way if your team is struggling to get replies. Worth a peek?”

When a prospect likes a creator’s post, I use a message like this one:

“Thomas, saw you also liked Kyle’s post on next steps from bad salespeople vs good salespeople. I may have a resource to help your reps build a habit of setting follow-up calls in the same week. Worth a peek?”

As you can see, I always use the trigger as an excuse to start a conversation, and I tease a potential resource to help solve a problem that could be related to this trigger.

If you need more inspiration, you can find over 20 cold outreach templates in my swipe file.

These are 3 easy steps I follow to use triggers and get a 46.45% reply rate.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Grab the Do-It-Together package of the Prospecting Engine for 50% off (valid until 21st of January)

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

Designing your Power Hour: A Step-by-Step Guide

The Prospecting Engine is finally live! You can grab the Do-It-Together package for the price of the Do-It-Yourself before the community launches on the 21st of February.

Designing your Power Hour: A Step-by-Step Guide

In today’s issue, I’ll share the exact process I use to design my Power Hour. A Power Hour is an uninterrupted, focused prospecting block. Without a regular prospecting ritual, you won’t be able to create consistency, which is 80% of your success as a salesperson. But if you follow these steps, you’ll create the right habit to be successful in prospecting.

Here’s how to design your Power Hour:

Step 1: Protect your calendar

Start by identifying the moment when you’re the most productive in your workday. Personally, mornings are when I get most of my work done, and when I’m the most productive.

I’m not a big fan of prospecting (it’s boring and repetitive), but it’s the healthiest habit for my business and my pipeline. That’s why I prospect first thing in the morning, from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM.

When you have identified your most productive time, create a 30 to 60 minute blocker, and repeat it every day, indefinitely. This will help you protect your schedule, and avoid being booked by your manager, colleagues, or anyone distracting your from this ritual.

Image #1

Step 2: Plan your Power Hour

Now that you have a recurring time block, you need to plan what you’ll do during this block. Here’s how I structure mine:

  • Step 1: Follow-ups
  • Step 2: Find 5 new prospects
  • Step 3: Add them to my sequence

Step 1 is about getting in the groove. As mentioned earlier, prospecting isn’t exactly the funniest part of your job, but it’s one of the most important ones. By starting with follow-ups, you start with the easiest task (you don’t need much research), which is more likely to get you in the mood for prospecting. I personally use Amplemarket to keep track of my follow-up tasks.

Step 2 is about adding fuel to my Prospecting Engine. I calculated that I needed to find and contact 5 new prospects per day in order to reach my prospecting targets. I look for people who fit with my ICP in the following places:

  • People who viewed my profile/followers
  • People I had conversations with in the past
  • People who can intro me to relevant prospects
  • People who reacted to posts from other sales creators

With these 4 leads sources, I have no problem finding and contacting 5 prospects every day.

Step 3 is about contacting these 5 prospects. I recommend using a trigger to create a personalized prospecting message for each prospect. For example, if I was in a conversation with a prospect in the past, but the opportunity didn’t go through, I would send a message like this one:

“Martin, last time we talked your reps were getting a 5% reply rate.

I stumbled on a 7-step checklist to double your reply rate and immediately thought of you.

Worth a peek?”

Btw, if you’re struggling to get replies and book meetings, I have released The Prospecting Engine last week, and I strongly recommend you check it out if you’re trying to build a healthy pipeline in 2024.

Step 3: Find a Power Hour buddy

Building a habit to prospect every day is extremely tough to do by yourself. It’s like going to the gym at the beginning of a new year. At first you’re motivated, then comes the first weekend, blue Monday, and after a few weeks, you’re back to your old self.

Building a prospecting habit is exactly the same. That’s why I recommend finding a Power Hour buddy, jumping on a Zoom/Meets call, putting your camera on, your mic off, and executing. You can find a Power Hour buddy among your colleagues, or grab the Do-It-Together plan of my Prospecting Engine, where you’ll be able to join other salespeople in Power Hour rooms.

If you follow these steps, you’ll be ready to launch your Power Hour. Just make sure to:

  • Protect your calendar
  • Plan your Power Hour
  • Find a Power Hour buddy

If you do it for long enough (around a month), you’ll go from dreading prospecting, to making it a part of your working day, and getting more replies and meetings as a result.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Grab the Do-It-Together package of the Prospecting Engine for $400 off (valid until 21st of January)

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

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Categories
Tactical Selling

One small shift to unlock your prospecting

The pre-sale of The Prospecting Engine is finally open! You can grab it for 50% off until Wednesday the 31st. If building a healthy pipeline is high on your priority list of 2024, then I’d strongly recommend you join this week.

One small shift to unlock your prospecting

In today’s newsletter, I will walk you through an important mindset shift for salespeople:

Moving from booking meetings to starting conversations.

This shift will help you simplify your prospecting, making it more relevant to you and your customers.

It’s important because it will change your focus from something you can’t control – booking a meeting, to something you naturally do every day – starting conversations.

Let’s dive in.

The biggest mistake

Most salespeople who are prospecting have one goal: booking a meeting. This approach is understandable, because that’s what they are paid for (as SDRs), or it’s the best way to maximize their earnings (as AEs).

However, when you are focusing on booking meetings, you tend to skip the most important part – generating interest from the person receiving your message. Without focusing on conversations, salespeople tend to pitch their products, insert meeting links in their messages, and turn prospects off as a result.

Before you know it, you’re sending hundreds of emails each week, without getting any reply, and you start worrying about reaching your targets. You change your messaging too often, and your inner voice starts doubting your capacity to book a meeting.

A better approach: focus on starting a conversation

Here’s how I recommend building your prospecting sequences:

  1. Review your ICP: What companies are you trying to sell into? To which job titles inside of these companies?
  2. Find big problems: What massive problems are these people trying to solve every day?
  3. List symptoms of these problems: What concrete symptoms these problems create?
  4. Find resources to alleviate the symptoms: Are there resources you can share to solve these problems?
  5. Insert point 3 and 4 in your messages: Ask questions about these symptoms, and tease the corresponding resource.

Example: Selling a Global Employment Platform

For example, let’s say you’re a rep working at a Global Employment Platform, helping HR teams hire the best talent worldwide.

Start by following the 5 steps from above:

Review your ICP: You may be selling this platform to so many different types of companies. Pick one Ideal Customer Company and find two Ideal Customer Titles (Above The Line and Below The Line). For example, you could sell to remote-first scale ups with distributed teams in more than 3 countries. Your ATL could be a VP of People and your BTL could be a Payroll Manager.

Find big problems: VPs of People typically have issues navigating compliance when hiring employees and contractors. They have big risks related to local rules around employment. Payroll Managers are typically dealing with increased complexity for each new employee in a different country.

List symptoms of these problems: Let’s say your prospect’s company is expanding into the French market. They’ll have huge financial risks if hiring a full-time employee as a contractor. This is called “disguised employment” and could get your prospect’s company into legal problems, which is a headache for a VP of People. A Payroll Manager’s symptom would be the time wasted on shifting from country to country to fill-in the payroll documentation for each employee, every month.

Find resources to alleviate symptoms: Your company should have some free resources to market to your prospect. In our example, a cheat sheet of all countries that won’t ever consider full-time contractors as disguised employees would be incredible valuable to a VP of People. A checklist on structuring your schedule to fill-in payroll documentation in different countries would be great for a Payroll Manager.

Insert point 3 and 4 in your messages: Here’s an example of a cold message to a VP of People:

“Martha, saw your press release on expanding into the French market in 2024.

Curious to know if you’re adding employees or contractors locally. If that’s the case, how do you plan on avoiding the URSSAF from considering your full-time contractors as disguised employees?

If that’s a challenge you’re faced with, I have a cheat sheet on French-speaking countries that won’t ever consider full-time contractors as disguised employees.

Worth a peek?”

And for the Payroll Manager:

“John, saw your press release on expanding into the French market in 2024.

Curious to know how you’re avoiding wasting hours (and neurones) filling-in French payroll documentation.

If you’re into it, I can share a 7 point checklist on structuring your schedule to fill-in payroll documentation in 180+ different countries.

Worth a peek?”

Tying it back to you

If your job involves booking meetings with prospects (it should be if you’re in sales), start by reviewing your ICP, and listing concrete problems they are trying to solve every day.

Once you’ve done that, list detailed symptoms of these problems, find or build resources to help solve these problems, and include these into your messages.

This approach will help you start many more conversations, and help you focus on what you can control.

And if you want a step-by-step guide on doing this, and much more, then go check my new course, The Prospecting Engine. I’m making it available for 50% off until the 31st of January.

Hope to see you in there.

Cheers,

Thibaut

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

→ (NEW) Pre-order The Prospecting Engine for 50% off (valid until 31st of January)

→ (NEW) Need to train your team or invite me as a speaker? Book a call here

→ Sponsor my content & get 42K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get my free, 4 min weekly newsletter. Used by 5.800+ salespeople to book more meetings.

Categories
Tactical Selling

5 steps to turning your targets into daily activity

Last chance to join the waitlist of my Prospecting Engine. Pre-sales go live on the 24th of January, and the course will drop on the 31st of January. Join the waitlist and grab the Prospecting Engine for half the price.

5 steps to turning your targets into daily activity

In today’s newsletter, I’ll share 5 simple steps to turn your targets into daily prospecting activity. If you follow these steps, you’ll have a clear understanding of the daily effort required to reach your targets.

Here’s how, step-by-step:

Step 1: Review your sales goals

Start by defining or reviewing your goal. If you are an Account Executive, your goal may be a booking, MRR, or revenue goal. If you’re an SDR, your goal may be an opportunity or meetings booked. In both cases, having a clear understanding of your monthly, quarterly, or yearly goal is critical to being successful in your job.

In the example below, the goal is 138 discoveries performed per quarter:

Image #1

Step 2: Set your conversion rates

Now that you have a clear goal, it’s important to understand your conversion rates. This can be as simple as determining how many meetings you book per prospect you contact, but I recommend tracking the following conversion rates:

  • Reply rate: # of prospects who replied / # of prospects contacted
  • Meeting booked rate: # of prospects who accepted a meeting / # of prospects who replied
  • Meeting held rate: # of prospects who showed up / # of prospects who accepted a meeting

In the example below:

  • Reply rate: 38%
  • Meeting booked rate: 20%
  • Meeting held rate: 80%

Image #2

Step 3: Add 20% padding

Using these conversion rates, you can calculate the number of prospects to add to your sequences in order to reach your targets. However, I recommend adding a 20% padding to account for variations in your prospecting system.

For instance, you may not know your conversion rates if you start a new job, prospect into a new market, or simply try a new sequence. Adding a padding of 20% will reduce the risk of missing your targets.

Step 4: Run your calculations

Next, use your end goal and conversion rates to break down your end goal into a daily activity. In our example, performing 138 discovery calls per quarter means adding 2277 prospects to your sequence for the whole quarter, which represents 35 new prospects per weekday.

Image #3

This is how to turn a big goal into a daily activity target. By doing so, you’ll build confidence in your prospecting system and make progress towards reaching your targets.

You can also use my Sales Process Calculator (I used it in the examples above) to calculate your daily activity target.

Step 5: Execute

Finally, you need to execute daily to see any results. I recommend creating a prospecting routine so you can protect your time for prospecting. Having a 30 to 60 minute recurring block will protect your time, and allow you to create consistent results.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 5 ways I can help you:

→ Learn how to use AI to book meetings here (190+ students)
 
→ Build your outbound prospecting system from scratch here (300+ students)


→ 
Write cold messages that get a 38% reply rate and 27% meeting rate here (90+ students)

→ Sponsor my content & get 41K+ eyeballs on your ad

Subscribe to the Newsletter

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