Outbound Prospecting in Times of Crisis

To overcome any crisis, you first need to break down what the real challenges are.

When it comes to outbound prospecting, we identified the following pains amid the coronavirus pandemic:

1 – Traditional Sales and demand generation methods that worked last month are no longer producing results

2 – Prospects are no longer at their office desks and their main priority is their Business Continuity Plan

3 – This means you cannot reach many of them on their landlines so you need direct dials to connect with them on the phones

So, how can you overcome these problems?

#1 Focus on your strengths

Ours are:

1 – We are already remote (phew!)

2 – We use great data sources & technology (Salesloft and Cognism big up!), which allow us to call direct dials, track cadences and prospect effectively away from the office.

3-  Between us, we have 50+ years of collective experience of B2B business development, sales, and marketing on shoestring budgets which have delivered huge results

4 – Our culture is that of resilience, team work, flexibility & transparency – More to the point, we are not letting some f***ing virus get the better of us.

#2 Adapt and change immediately

1 – All our messaging needed to be stripped out. This isn’t something as sales leaders you should leave with the SDR it needs to come from the top and pushed down. There’s a lot of chat about being empathetic (which is 100% valid) but that’s pointless unless you know you can help their customers with their immediate needs. 

2 – An increase in status update meetings – As the situation is intense, constantly changing, with emotions up and down like a rollercoaster, it’s important to keep regular contact to maintain communication and morale.

3 – We have adapted our strategies to focus more on video, more cold calling and more personalisation, not to mention some good old fashioned doubling down on our efforts.  

4 – Data enrichment – Cold calling works but only if you have the right data strategy. This typically means acquiring and managing data from multiple sources. Luckily we had a lot of this in place.

Final thought

Let’s be honest there are risks everywhere, we could all fail right now, but the best chance of success requires hard work, teamwork and a bold and brave strategy.

Our overall strategy is make friends and definitely don’t make enemies – I know that in the new world everyone will remember who helped and who hindered. Be honest, be helpful, make exceptions – we will get through this together not on your own. 

We’re definitely a friendly bunch here so if anyone needs any advice – we are  more than happy to jump on a call with anyone who needs it.

Good luck everyone – see you on the other side.