Building a campign that works

Someone said to me once, someone much smarter than me, a new prospect has two dimensions... they don't understand and they need it made easy. That makes me think, how can I leverage that to my advantage.

Here is what it tells me, a sales pitch doesn't work. But what if it is a simple sales message? What if it was "Buy one, get one free!" Wouldn't that fit the paradigm? It is only simple if they fully understand your offer and they want cheap. A new prospect wouldn't possess that kind of knowledge. OK, a whole bunch of other reasons but we won't go into all of them. It is also not easy because there is no trust.

Developing a scoped project:

Start with campaign ideas (multiple ideas – “sell our high performance widget to companies that need an increase in widget performance”)

A campaign or project: an opportunity in a specific horizontal or vertical market^[1] in which we can exploit that market with a product or service. Accomplishments will be measured against a targeted goal and a precise record of the effort/resources required.

Some of the first scoping data that needs to be identified and agreed upon:

• Product or service
• Requirements or specifications to make viable (the offering)
• Competition or current solutions
• Ideal prospects (summery or description – full analysis will be done later)
• Timing
• Expectation
• Who is in charge of the project?
• Benchmarks from your or other’s experience (anecdotal is acceptable)

Step 1 – Meet with your team with the goal to develop the parameters for a scoping project. The conclusion would be one or more fully identified market opportunities. This should be a 15-minute process per market opportunity and more the better (let’s shoot for at least three).

Step 2 – Scoping the new project or campaign is our work and contribution to helping you make the decision on go/no go. Our initial deliverable is how we build, launch, and manage the campaign to those expectations. We apply our experience to your goals and ideas.

• How big is the market?
• Who is in it?
• What is the potential?
• What are base line expectations?
• What are the expected resource requirements?

Step 3 – We meet, along with your decision team and discuss the scoped new projects. Some may be combined, all may fail to meet the standard, but ultimately a good project comes from the process and you decide if it is the right project to grow your sales. The decision to spend money is made here.

To my friends just getting started

You are where the rubber meets the road.

Here is how it should work, all qualifying activity needs to be done inside ProspectStream, enter individual records via the home page or if there is a spread sheet send it to me and I will configure it for bulk import for you. This is so you can see your own effort vs results reports, not so we can beat you up. Prime call time should be spent on direct client communications (not email, snail mail, or faxes), proposals can be done in none prime time. If the ratio is 20 in proposal, 80 in qualification, 160 in cold calling (estimated ratio) you have to do 240 dials to manage your entire pipeline. 400 in a week is well with in you ability. Understand that we don't create this ratio, it is the bi-product of your work and we will figure it out over time. Each of your ratios will be a little different based on your particular skills. I have a spread sheet we can plug your metrics into to figure it out once you build up enough, that is why everything needs to be in ProspectStream. The simple equation is: result = goal x (((closed x proposals) x prospects) x cold calls or effort). You apply x amount of effort and it will net x amount of results. We can do a lot of good with that info and multiply your success. 400% increase in productivity would be nice, right? It can be done.

Effort and Skills - ProspectStream helps you manage and maximize the effort... the OPEN Prospecting system help you to maximize your skills.

Build your week around this effort, get excited, and you will succeed (and make a lot of money)!

Hi, welcome to the best and only blog dedicated to the science of "Cold Calling" which we lovingly call the Cold Calling Boot Camp. Over ten years ago my task was to grow a lead generation call center, what I ended up with was a system for success. I call it the OPEN system which is an acronym for Opportunity, Pain, Evaluate, and Needs. We also discovered the power of a few simple business rules for productivity, rules that if followed will increase your productivity by upwards of 400%. Not an estimate but a proven fact. We will be discussing these facts in this blog so strap on your boots and lets get started!