Sales Prospecting for Appointments by Email

By Shamus Brown
Posted Wednesday, February 2, 2005

A few months into the job and Sabrina's cold calling sales prospecting techniques were getting her almost nowhere. She would call CIO's and CTO's all day, and speak to maybe one sales prospect if she was lucky. The gatekeepers and voicemail were screening her out. Sabrina was "following up" her calls with emails, but she rarely if ever heard anything back.

Sabrina asked for help to improve her sales prospecting skills. A salesperson for a silicon valley software company, Sabrina was tasked with calling on CIO's in Fortune 1000 companies. Her cold calling skills were a bit rusty, and she was under serious pressure from sales management to produce.

After a few weeks of working on these together, I got the following email from Sabrina:

"My email script has gotten another F1000 appointment! I sent it to an admin who forwarded it to a Senior Director who had his admin respond in 5 minutes that he wanted an appointment. They are right in our sweet spot so this is a very good thing."

If you've done any sales prospecting to big corporations, then you know how great Sabrina felt when she got this appointment. Sabrina has secured numerous VP level appointments using her new email technique.
How did Sabrina improve her sales prospecting?

First she asked for help.

Upon working together, I coached Sabrina to sell only to the sales prospects that were most likely to buy. Sabrina developed a customer profile to guide her sales prospecting efforts. She determined what type of sales prospect would be most likely to buy her product.

Next she worked on identifying the pains that motivate her ideal sales prospect to want to buy her product. This took some research. She spoke to other sales reps, marketing management, and most importantly customers to figure out why people buy her product.

Sabrina used this to craft a short but specific email message to her best sales prospects. It was real-world due to all of her research and her prospects responded to it. The likely buyers were ones who could feel the pain that the email talked about. Those sales prospects jumped up and asked for an appointment.
What can you do to improve your sales prospecting?

1. Develop an Ideal Customer Profile to guide your selling.
2. Identify the Buying Pains of your Ideal Customer.
3. Craft Email Messages, Phone & Voicemail Scripts showing you can eliminate your Ideal Customer's pain.
4. Proactively call and email your Ideal Sales Prospects to find the likely buyers.

About the Author
Shamus Brown is a Professional Sales Coach and former high-tech sales pro who began his career selling for IBM. Shamus has written more than 50 articles on selling and is the creator of the popular Persuasive Selling Skills CD Audio Program. You can read more of Shamus Brown's sales tips at (http://Sales-Tips.industrialEGO.com/) and you can learn more about his persuasive sales skills training at (http://www.Persuasive-Sales-Skills.com/)