The purpose of the connect phase of your inbound strategy is to confirm that the prospect has a problem you can help with and to set up a time when you can explore that problem in depth. Typically, this can be accomplished in a single, short conversation; there's just one problem: there's a pretty good chance that you won't be able to get the person on the phone the first time you call. Modern buyers are busy, and they aren't eager to take calls from phone numbers they don't recognize. Similarly, some of the leads you connect with won't be ready to move to the explore phase. So there are three things you need to do: 1) keep finding helpful ways to reach out, 2) use technology to automate certain parts of your outreach, and 3) be ready to transition to the explore phase of your inbound sales strategy. Let's talk about each of these. First, you need to to keep finding helpful ways to reach out to your prospect so they'll think of you when they're ready to make a move. The keyword here is HELPFUL. If you ever use the phrase "just checking in," chances are you've run out of value you can add. One way to avoid that is to create a sequence of content you can share at regular intervals until a lead is ready to move forward. The most important consideration when you develop these sequences is to personalize every step of your outreach to the individual buyer. If haven't create buyer personas yet, now's a great time to do it. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data about demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. If you put in the necessary work to develop a robust buyer persona, you can use that to fill in blanks when you don't know everything about a particular lead. You'll be able to say things like, "I've worked with other people in your situation, and here's something that really helped them." Another important consideration as you develop the sequence content is to keep in mind that most of your prospects are going to be in the "awareness" stage of the buyer's journey, meaning they're still trying to diagnose the problem they have. So the goal of your sequences shouldn't be to sell them your product or service or even to get them to see a demo. Instead, your goal should be to build your credibility with the buyer so they'll trust your advice and want to spend more time with you. The best way to do that is to educate them on a goal or challenge they're currently facing. Here are a few additional best practices to consider when defining the content for each sequence in your outreach strategy: Inventory your existing content. Review any blog articles, ebooks, webinars, presentations, or case studies that your company has developed. Also, check your "Sent Items" folder in your email. Typically you'll find emails to prospects that will serve as excellent templates. Note any content that is particularly effective at addressing the unique perspectives of each persona that you documented while building your buyer personas. The gaps in the content you find serve as a content roadmap for you in the future. For example, you may find that you have lots of content for a particular type of challenge or industry or buyer role. However, there are other important segments you do not have content for. Or you might have a lot of content that's too generic and not specific enough to different personas. In the future, you can target your content development to fill those gaps. Keep messages short. Voicemails should be less than 15 seconds. Emails should be less than 200 words. Reference the buyer at least twice as much as you mention yourself. This feedback applies to company mentions, personal mentions, the word "I" and the word "you." End all emails with a question. The question should be short and on a separate line. It should be focused on identifying a challenge or a goal. For example, if you mention you've heard great things about their sales team, you should ask, "How do you find such great salespeople?" If you're asking for time, be explicit about how much you're looking for. For example, "When do you have 15 minutes to speak?" Focus on being helpful. Try to sound like a human who is trying to help a fellow human solve a problem, not a robot who's trying to make a sale. Personalize email subject lines. For emails specifically, the subject line is the most important element. It's the first impression your contacts get of your email, and if they don't like it, they won't open it. Figure out a way to express the goal you can help them with in three words or less. Try to keep it below 30 characters, because if your email gets opened on a mobile device, your subject line's going to get cut off at that point anyway. Use your personal voice and style. If you're using content that someone else at your company created, edit it to make it sound like it's coming from you. Following these best practices will greatly improve your success in connecting with your leads. A common question during this step is, "What if my company doesn't have much online content for me to share?" If that's the situation you're in, there are two important things you should bear in mind: First, useful content doesn't have to be from your company. There's probably a lot of content by thought leaders, authors, executives, and non-competitive firms in your space. If the content is high quality and aligned with your buyer's area of interest, share it. Your prospects are likely new to the goal or challenge you're helping them with. They don't have your depth of experience in this area. They'll appreciate your help finding high-quality educational content that's relevant to their situation. The other thing to keep in mind is that a free consultation is a great way to personalize an offer directly to the buyer's area of interest. It might be a consultation with you or someone else at your company. Either way, if you can provide them a consultation that's relevant to their goals and challenges, they'll likely appreciate the help. And you'll benefit by building trust and learning more about them. Once you know what content you want to share, you need to figure out a strategy for doing so. Ask yourself: Which mediums will you use to reach out to each persona? Phone? Email? In person? Social media? When will you reach out? Before work? After work? During lunch? If you don't connect on the first outreach, when will you try again? Will you reach out the next day? Two days later? A week? How many times will you reach out before you give up? Response rates often rise with each subsequent outreach attempt. But, when you surpass five touchpoints, the law of diminishing returns comes into play. In other words, a seventh touchpoint is not much more effective than a sixth. Is there a specific order that your content should be shared in? Does one piece of content build on the next? Is one piece more advanced than another? Make sure you're sending the content in an order that makes sense and will deepen the prospect's understanding of the areas they've shown interest in. By answering these questions, you'll be able to develop an outreach sequence for each of your personas. But once you have a lead you're trying to connect with, it's important to remember that lead is a person, not a persona. When you start working with a specific person, make sure you're using real information about them rather than general information about your persona. If the person matches your persona well, the broad strokes of your sequence shouldn't have to change, but you'll still want to personalize each step of the sequence to the specific person you're sending it to. Remember, personalization is at the heart of inbound sales, so every message you send should be personalized to the person receiving it. In many cases, this won't take more than a couple of seconds to do. It can be as simple as mentioning a sports team in their city or even the weather. These little touches don't take long to add, and the response you get from your leads will be much, much better than if you just send generic messaging to everyone. It's also worth noting that the rise of inbound marketing and social media has presented additional places to connect with potential buyers beyond phone, email, and in-person. If the buyer's company has a blog, you can subscribe to the blog, post new articles on your social media account, and comment on blog articles. You can also mention articles written on the blog as part of your outreach to the potential buyer to show them that you know the things they're interested in. If the buyer is active on social media, you can send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, follow the buyer on Twitter and retweet their content, and so on. If the buyer follows you back, you can choose to message the buyer as part of an outreach sequence. If the buyer conducts a webinar, you can attend and send a follow up email to the buyer regarding the lessons you learned during the webinar. Or, if the buyer hosts or speaks at an in-person event, you can attend the event and introduce yourself after the speech with a contextual comment around points you found interesting. As you incorporate these non-traditional mediums into your connect sequences, be mindful of the appropriate timing for each type of outreach. For example, don't send an invitation to connect on social media until after you've shared valuable content with the buyer. Make sure you've built up some trust and credibility with the buyer before attempting to strengthen the relationship. The next thing you should do during the connect phase of your inbound strategy is use technology to automate certain parts of your outreach. It's worth noting that you don't need advanced technology to execute a high-quality connection with a prospect. Most of it can be executed with Word documents and spreadsheets. However, the right technology can be helpful in executing a great connection. Here are some technology use cases you might want to consider trying. An email template tool to develop your persona templates. Ideally, the folders in the email template tool can be organized around the various personas. It's also helpful if the templates are accessible wherever you are, such as in your email, on the web, or in your CRM. People like this type of technology because it can drastically speed up the amount of time that prospecting takes and it helps sales teams get detailed analytics on what's working and what's not. A CRM that illustrates buyer activity that you can review as you prepare for the outreach. Easy access to buyer activity accelerates the process of uncovering buyer interests or additional mediums that help you connect with the buyer. It's especially helpful if the CRM automatically logs your outreach. Auto logging of your outreach means you can focus on helping buyers rather than being bogged down on administrative work. Also, auto logging of your outreach helps you be more organized with your sequences. A meeting scheduling tool that makes it easier to find a time for an exploratory call. You don't want the difficulty of coordinating calendars to be the thing that kills a sales conversation. There are a variety of tools that can automate this process for you so you can focus on having the conversation instead of just scheduling it. An email tool that helps you set up a sequence and automate some of its execution. When you decide which persona a particular lead falls into, you can save time if you can set up the entire sequence at that moment. The tool should prompt you when an outreach is due or could even automate the next outreach for you, if it's appropriate. So those were some examples of technology that can help you develop great connections with your prospects. Be careful with the following technology. Mail merge: Mail merge enables salespeople to email dozens or hundreds of prospects in a single click. Many salespeople like this feature because it's a quick way to surface one or two potential buyers in order to save a month or quarter. However, mail merge offers minimal personalization. Most recipients can recognize the impersonal outreach and immediately delete the message. Users of mail merge fail to account for the negative experience the buyer has with this tactic and the effects it has on the company's brand. Auto-dialers: Auto dialers rapidly call prospect lists and surface connections to the salesperson when a buyer picks up the phone. The issue here is the salesperson has no time to review the buyer's context before they speak with the buyer. The salesperson must revert to a generic, impersonal pitch with the buyer, which rarely leads to success. The last thing you need to do during the connect phase of your inbound sales strategy is be ready to transition to the explore phase. The time will come to make this transition, so you need to be ready for it. You'll know this has happened when they confirm they're interested in discussing a particular goal or challenge with you. At that point, you need to get buy-in for a longer exploratory conversation, which is the next phase of your inbound sales strategy. Here's what getting buy-in might sound like: "We're struggling to attract enough quality sales candidates to meet our growth goals." "I've heard that a few times. What have you tried so far?" "Not sure I want to share our secrets, but some of the things we've done is asking for referrals from our current employees, sending messages through LinkedIn, and offering a bonus to our current employees when they refer someone that we hire." "But that's not getting you the quality and quantity you need?" "It helped us increase the quantitiy, but not enought. Plus, the quality wasn't really as high compared to when I do it myself. I'm not sure what to do next. I really don't want to lower my quality bar, but I am afraid that might be necessary given the lack of talent out there." "Sounds like you're running out of ideas and it's time to fix this.. Is it a high priority at this point?" "Yes, very high. I need to make 10 hires this quarter, and I am way behind where I should be." "Based on what you're doing, I believe we may be able to help you. Would it be a good use of your time to talk through some additional ways you could catch up and then hit that target without sacrificing quality?" "Yes, If you can do that, it would definitely be worth my time." "Okay, I have som availability tomorrow. What time works for you?" "Around 11am or 4pm?" "11 won't work for me, but I can do 4pm. Should I call. you on this number?" "That'd be great. Looking forward to talking to you." To sum up, connecting with your leads might take multiple attempts, so you need to keep finding helpful ways to reach out, use technology to automate certain parts of your outreach, and always be ready to transition to the explore phase of your inbound strategy. Throughout it all, focus on being helpful. If you can help your prospect get a little bit closer to achieving a goal or overcoming a challenge, they'll reward you for it, and soon you'll be headed into the explore phase of your inbound sales strategy.
