There are two things I look forward the least in a typical work day. My 10 minute workout, and prospecting.
Yet, I know these two activities keep me healthy and wealthy.
In consequence, I have created a system to tackle these unpleasant tasks.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll share how I structure my daily prospecting block (I won’t share the workout routine though ).
Step 1: Start with follow-ups
Most replies I get come from follow-ups. And I found that starting with them is a good way to prime the prospecting pump and finish my prospecting block faster.
I start by opening my prospecting tracker, where I store all the prospects I contact, as well as the status of my outreach.
As I use a pre-defined sequence, I don’t need to find a new trigger when doing follow up, I just focus on sending the message, based on the sequence I have built.
This first step allows me to create momentum as each follow-up is done quickly, which gets me motivated (I love having the feeling of achieving something).
Daily effort: 5 minutes
(Quick hack: I love drinking coffee in the morning, so I created a habit of preparing one, putting it on the next to my computer, and drinking it only when my follow-ups are done. As I like my coffee hot, I’m extra motivated to get this task out of the way!)
Step 2: Find 5 new prospects
Now that all my follow-ups are done, I’m ready to find new prospects to contact.
I have calculated that contacting 5 new prospects per day would allow me to book 2 outbound meetings a week, which is what I need to reach my targets.
I start by finding prospects who fit with my ICP in the people who visited my profile, my recent followers, or people who commented/reacted on my posts.
It’s sometimes enough, but in most cases, I cannot find 5 people. When that happens, I look for influential people who speak to my ICP, and I locate interesting prospects in the comments/reaction section of their posts.
I did a detailed article about this tactic a few weeks ago.
Daily effort: 10 minutes
Step 3: Add them to my sequence
Now that I have a list of potential prospects, I add them to my sequence.
Adding them means sending a first touchpoint, based on our connection level on LinkedIn (1st or 2nd), and using a trigger to justify my outreach.
If we aren’t connected, I’ll drop a connection request mentioning why I’m reaching out. If we are connected, I’ll drop a prospecting video or a LinkedIn voice note.
In terms of message content, I typically use the following structure:
Trigger: A problem-oriented piece of information – John, noticed you also liked Charlotte’s post about boring hybrid events.
Question: A question related to the trigger – What do you think of the solution she proposed?
Daily effort: 10 minutes
And these are the 3 steps I used to structure my daily prospecting block. I’ve been running it for almost 2 years, and I get a consistent, 38% reply rate and 11% to 27% meeting rate (it varies based on the time of the year).
TL;DR:
Step 1: Start with follow-ups
Step 2: Find 5 new prospects
Step 3: Add them to my sequence
Hope this helps!
Thibaut
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