How do you research and qualify your leads before contacting them?

One of the mistakes that is often made, especially in the B2B tech sales space is thinking that the product is a fit for everyone in the TAM. This will actually slow your ability to penetrate into the market. When looking at your TAM and determining your ICP, you should use a combination of focus groups and buyer research to determine what is important to your market segments. Then focus on that particular segment as your initial GTM effort.

Consider identifying the verticals you would like to sell into. What expertise do you have already that would allow you to show up as a thought leader and give value to that verticals. Medical Financial Non-profit Manufacturing Etc. this can position you to be the expert in that verticals when selling your product.

Don’t neglect the power of in person industry events. This can allow you to connect and reduce the time you need to build your know like and trust with a prospect. In person event can take your 7-12 touches down drastically by seeing and engaging in person.

4 out of 5 users on LinkedIn drive business decisions. Today’s B2B sales professional much become a thought leader to help to turn a cold lead to warm and then hot and ready to buy. When I would with SDRs we develop an out reach strategy to turn their cold calls into warm follow up which turn into hot prospects for their AEs Get clear on the journey you want to take the lead through from cold to hot.

When you’re intentional about the lead journey you can build in qualifications such as questions, helping them to self identify if they’re in the right place at the right time by speaking to their pain points and challenges. This can help you have a productive call and increase your discovery call percentages over time.

Hmm I think a CRM is great for larger teams and businesses but I actually disagree with the need to have a CRM for most online solopreneurs. A simple spreadsheet is very very effective with colour coding and when you work alone there’s no need to spend time recording the minute details for each person we need to be spending time doing other things!

Every organization that’s looking to grow and scale must have a CRM in place to keep track of the people you’re looking to serve. If your only CRM is your Instagram follower as a solo-preneur you’re losing your audience to others. Roughly 10% of your organic content is shown to your followers. This is why solo-preneurs opts to create a Facebook community which in essence is an active CRM base. You still lose the core information of knowing who’s ready to buy and who’s not. B2B sales pros already sees the benefit of having data on clients that allows them to see where their efforts needs to go to get a deal committed.

My experience is admittedly somewhat dated. I made my career in Sales. Loved it, but in my time I did a lot of ‘cold calling’ which these days is frowned upon. Whilst calling on a client on appointment, I would always leave my calling card with nearby businesses where relevant, look for possible leads from client I was visiting (if appropriate) and try to economically manage my territory. Testimonials - gather as many as possible and use relevant ones to the prospect you are seeing. Didn’t have Social Media in my time, nor mobiles early days and I realise Social Media is massive now and needs careful management in able to target the right audience. CRM is also key, but follow legal guidelines in mail shots & data collection.