How to create more new opportunities with Compelling Approach Plans

Hello Sales Reset Community

A top priority for most people in selling is to create more new opportunities.

We call it prospecting.

The best salespeople are always prospecting, both within their existing accounts and looking for brand-new customers. They have a “prospecting mindset”.

For many years, the main strategy in B2B prospecting has been to rely on lots of activity, hoping to get lucky. Conventionally, people have sent high volumes of cold emails and made many cold phone calls.

It’s likely that in your market, these high-volume prospecting strategies don’t work as well as they once did.

There’s a better way. It’s time to shift from high-volume prospecting to high-quality prospecting.

From the earliest stage of your contact with a potential new customer, you’ll focus on the outcomes they’ll achieve with your selling.

Instead of hoping for a prospecting result one time out of every hundred calls or emails, or worse, you can aim for success with every approach!

How you'll improve sales results this week

• What is high-quality prospecting?

• What’s an Ideal Customer Profile?

• Prospecting mindset to maintain your list

• How to create and use a compelling approach plan

• Potential challenges

• How to practice high-quality prospecting this week

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

What is high-quality prospecting?

High-quality prospecting means investing sufficient time to find and then carefully approach the people who are most likely to welcome the chance to speak with you.

These are the organisations and people with the greatest probability of achieving significant outcomes from using your products and services.

For high-quality prospecting, you’ll need to prepare and use three key tools:

1. ICP - Your “Ideal Customer Profile”.

2. Prospecting List - List of people to approach that fit your ICP.

3. CAP - Compelling Approach Plans that will enable you to engage these people in conversation successfully and reliably.

What’s an Ideal Customer Profile?

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) describes the organisations and people who will most likely benefit from your products or services. An ICP will tell you exactly who to target and why.

You or your company may have already developed ICPs you can use.

If you don’t have one, how do you create an ICP?

It’s easier than you might think. A good way to define your ICP is to take a good look at your current best customers. What are their common characteristics?

Why do your best customers achieve more value from your company than anybody else?

Then, simply list these characteristics to create your ideal customer profile!

There’s lots of advice on the internet about how to prepare and format an ICP.

Prospecting mindset to maintain your list

Now that you have your ICP, you can research and develop your prospecting list of organisations and people to approach.

Remember, this is high-quality, not high-volume prospecting. You don’t need a big list initially. Start with a list of just five or maybe ten organisations. You’ll be investing significant time in research for each situation, so ensure they earn their place on your list.

After doing this exercise for the first time, it’s hugely important to maintain your list. For this, you must have a prospecting mindset.

The best salespeople are ALWAYS looking for new opportunities, especially when they’re busy! They know from experience what it’s like to have too few opportunities at the start of their sales process.

How to create and use a compelling approach plan

Now you have your list, it’s time to work out how to approach them successfully. You need a Compelling Approach Plan.

We’ve prepared a template for a one-page Compelling Approach Plan for you. Click on the link to access and download the version you prefer to use.

• MS Word .doc version for editing in Microsoft Word

• PDF version for handwriting or editing in Adobe Acrobat

The template is easy to use, but it will take some time! Here’s what to do:

1. Download template: Download the template and save it where you can find it easily.

2. Create empty plan documents: Create and save a copy of the template document with a file name for each company or person on your list you want to approach. Alternatively, you might choose to print some templates and handwrite your plans!

3. Schedule time: Budget to spend at least 15-20 minutes filling in the blank cells in the right-hand column of the table for each prospect. Many top salespeople spend much more developing their approach plans! (You can use the time you saved phoning prospects who didn’t take your calls!)

4. Research: To research the information you need, you can:

   1. Search online and look at their company websites and recent news about them.

   2. Use LinkedIn (Look at company pages, profiles, recent posts, comments, etc.).

   3. Speak with your colleagues, customers and suppliers about them - what do they know?

5. Empathise: Put yourself in the shoes of your chosen person. From what you’ve learned in your research, and if you were them, what would they most welcome help improving? Based on what you can see about their character and way of working, how best can you approach them?

6. Choose: Now, you can choose how best to approach this person. You have many methods to choose from, such as email, phone, video, LinkedIn Inmail, a referral through a colleague, an introduction through somebody in their network, etc.

7. Approach: Write and send your email, prepare your script and make your call, film and send your video, set up the introductions, etc.

8. Review: After making your approach, evaluate what worked well and what can be improved next time.

Potential challenges

• Time: The research you’ll need to do will take time. And you have no guarantees that this research will lead to a meeting. But even when a specific approach is unsuccessful, you’ll learn and gain insights to increase your market awareness and value to your customers.

• Empathy: With your current level of knowledge and experience, it might be difficult to imagine yourself in the shoes of the people you want to approach. But empathy is crucial if you want to make your approach genuinely compelling. It’s definitely worth making an effort!

• Knowing when to stop: There’s so much information out there. When do you stop doing the research for each prospect? You should stop when you conclude that your approach is well-researched enough to be sufficiently compelling.

How to practice high-quality prospecting this week

1. ICP - Develop a sufficiently clear understanding of your ideal customer profile.

2. List - Initially, list 5-10 organisations and people to approach.

3. CAPs - Develop compelling approach plans for each of these people.

4. Improve - Before executing these compelling approach plans, review them with your manager or a colleague to identify ways to improve them.

5. Approaches - Make your approaches to these potential customers.

6. Review - Review the evidence of what happened to learn what to improve next time.

End of Week - Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this Weekly Sales Reset valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Here’s a link to a page explaining how these weekly newsletters are designed to help you learn and practice your customer success selling skills.

Please feel free to unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this email if these newsletters are no longer valuable to you!

Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

Does your sales team leader or coach subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Sales Reset Leaders?