B2B Sales Prospecting Tips… How Much is Too Much

When it comes to implementing a B2B sales prospecting or lead generation campaign, whatever you want to call it, so many people ask me, "How much is too much?" 

Now, I always say, you know, "We're in the interruption business. If you don't want to interrupt anyone, crawl back under a rock and don't try and sell anything." 

When you're selling, you've got to be out there, you've got to be brave enough to know that some people will love what you do, some people will be all right with it, some people may well hate it and be fed up with you, never want to hear from you again. 

There is an element where you just kind of have to man up a little bit and go, you know, "Some people won't like it, some people will love it, some people will be, 'Yeah, this is interesting, but not really for me right now.'"

And the important thing is connecting with the people who really like what you do, and progressing that relationship, but you have to be relentless. I'm not saying you become an absolute pain in the neck. 

Sometimes you can send one email to someone, and they think...

"Why are you telling me this?"

or

"Why are you emailing me?"

....and they get totally furious about it. 

It's very rare. 

You know, I see people post on LinkedIn where they say "Someone just connected with me and then sent me an InMail that's epically long and irrelevant." 

And I agree, that is a completely ill-informed strategy.

It's just not effect and it's no way of starting a relationship. 

But I see people post on LinkedIn all the time, ranting about how people do that, and to a degree, I understand that, but at the same time, if you want to sell stuff, you've got to connect with people.

You've got to be brave enough to be relentless in terms of how you just keep on trying to reach out and connect.

You're interrupting people. 

You've got to be used to being interrupted these days, because with our phones, Internet, TV, driving along seeing billboards, we're having marketing messages bombarding us almost 24/7. 

Whenever you turn on the TV, pretty much, you get an advert. Whenever you go on your phone, on Facebook, LinkedIn, there are adverts everywhere. 

Whenever you Google and search for something, there are adverts.

So... you just have to get over it. 

You can't worry about thinking, "I'm in people's faces a bit too much." 

Be courteous, be polite, and with an email outreach campaign, make sure you really adhere to that: you're polite, you're courteous, you listen, and you ask questions.

You know, a conversation is a two-way street. 

If you're just blasting information at people, you're going to put people off quite quickly. If you ask the right questions to people, and you start a conversation, you've got something that you can move forward.

If you're just shouting and talking at people, you know, you're going to upset people fairly quickly. 

So it's just a matter of how you do it, but being brave enough to say, "I am going to attempt to speak to that person in one way or the other," and, you know, you've just got a structured way of actually reaching out.

Now, sometimes the best way of doing that is to test.

What is the fine line of how often I should be contacting people, or how little should I be contacting people? 

And of course, it can vary, but different marketplaces can vary, different messages can vary, and it's just ongoing.

Any sales or marketing number-one rule is... "Test, test, test, test." 

Refine and improve.

Keep testing and keep improving.

But please don't think that your sending out one email every six months is going to resonate with people.

Sometimes you send an email out, and the next day, they've almost forgotten who you are, because they get so many messages from so many different platforms these days. 

So you have to be a little bit relentless, be brave enough to actually say, "Right, I want your business, how do I go about building a relationship with you?" and then just keep pushing that. 

Hope that's useful.

Bye for now.

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