I’ve worked with some big clients in the past – Big websites – up to 12 million visits per month & over 6 million pages. In isolating how I got to work on those sites and big projects – I found some great tools that I thought I would share with you:
How To Contact and Sell to Large Businesses:
It’s much easier to laser-target your ideal clients than to spend a bunch of time cold calling or targeting everyone in the organization. This simple seven step process can take a ton of time out of your sales process.
So what’s this 7-step process? Here are the steps:
- Find your ideal prospect
- Contact your ideal prospect
- Make it about THEM – How can you help?
- Ensure they received your email
- Create a proposal for them
- Outline a mutual action plan
- Always follow up With Your Ideal Prospect
Now – let’s dive into each step and some great tools:
Tool #1: Create a Gmail Account.
Gmail has some awesome plugins. And you can use your own email address in it if you need to.
Tool #2: Create a Linkedin Account.
You need to locate and target your exact ideal customer. For us it is the VP marketing or Marketing Director in Medium sized companies.
This method of identifying your ideal customer saves time. (Where you identify your ideal customer type & only sell to them and no one else). By focusing your efforts – you will be able to improve your closing ratios and reduce time spent on people that don’t close.
You can use LinkedIn. LinkedIn works well for companies of all sizes. You will not only be able to find companies – but you will also be able to get the email address and – potentially – phone number of the exact person you want to contact within a company.
Tool #3: Find Your Prospect on Linkedin or Google.
By now you should have a list of potential customers along with their contact information. Before you call any of them – you should do a bit of research –look them up and their company on Linkedin (if you can’t find them) Google Search their company. So that you know a little about them what they do. This should only take 1 minute.
Tool #4: Install the Yesware Gmail Plugin.
With Yesware you get Free Email Tracking.
Get actionable insights into how your prospects and customers are reacting to your messages with our email tracking features.
Get alerts each time someone opens an email or clicks on a link.
Know exactly when to follow up with your clients and prospects.
Know where in the world your message is being viewed.
View the device that prospects are using to open your email.
Tool #5: Forward your gmail account to your regular email.
Tip: Use filters to forward:
If you only want to forward certain kinds of messages to another account – use filters to forward messages that meet specific criteria. You can create 20 filters that forward to other addresses. Learn more about filters.
Tool #6: Install the Raportive Gmail Plugin.
Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.
You can immediately see what people look like – where they’re based – and what they do. You can establish rapport by mentioning shared interests. You can grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn – Twitter – Facebook and more. And you can record thoughts for later by leaving notes.
Imagine relationship management built into your email. For free.
Tool #7: Tracking Your Ideal Client:
Before you send your email – however – make sure you use Yesware to track if they received – & even opened – your email. Once you see they opened the email – you will want to call them and leave a message letting them know your name – the company you are with and the fact that you sent them an email. The reason I said to leave a message is because it is very unlikely that you will be able to get a hold of them through the phone.
If by a slim chance you are able to get a hold of them on the phone – ask them if it is a good time to chat. If it is – proceed to step 3. If it isn’t – ask them what day and time would be good for a 15-minute call to learn about their business.
If they don’t have time to chat with you now or in the future – ask them if they can give you permission to talk to someone on their team. If they say yes – ask for an email introduction as this creates a “referral” – which should help that new person trust you a bit more.
Make it about them. During your call you should rarely talk about yourself. The call isn’t about you or your company: it should only be about them.
Within your conversation – you should be able to find the problems they are facing,
How is their website doing [Does it do anything for them]?
Are they using video?
Do they have Google and Bing campaigns going? How is it going?
Diagnose them and get to the root of the problem. This will help you determine how you or World Class Media can potentially help them.
Sometimes you may realize that your company can’t solve their problems. If that is the case, be upfront with them. Don’t try to sell them a promise you can’t deliver on.
Follow Up:
Although this is the last step – it should be used within each step. I would actually say it is the most important step because if you skip it – you won’t be able to close any deals.
You should never miss an email or phone call. Follow up each step of the way and be clear with your communication. Also – respond within a timely fashion… ideally within an hour or two and never later than 24 hours.
Conclusion
If you follow the 7 steps above – you should be able to lock in big deals on a regular basis. This process doesn’t just work for us; it also works for any new sales people we hire. & it has also worked for thousands of other companies.
When leveraging this process – make sure you don’t skip any steps. You have to put in the time & effort to make this work. If you do it right – you can easily close six-figure deals.
What other tactics can you use to close big deals?
