Sales, sales prospecting, and outreach. They’re always tricky. Agencies and consultancies rely on them, especially in the early stages of their business, but trying to figure out how to make these activities effective is a constant uphill battle. In addition, it's difficult to get it right without coming across as too salesy, and in a way that gets the right value in front of the right people at the right time.Meet Brooklin Nash, the Head of Content at Sales Hacker. Sales Hacker is a website that offers discussions, articles, podcasts, videos, and sales training. It's a community that is "100% geared to helping salespeople gain new skills or improve their game." If you're running an agency, are a freelancer, or are part of an agency sales team, that means you. So don't miss today's podcast. Sales are integral to agency success and Brooklin has some great insights from his experience and community.The highlights:[1:35] The importance of researching your prospects, and what you're looking for.[4:46] The right amount of time to spend on research.[8:20] Where a cold email strategy starts to go off the rails. [10:30] Good strategy for cold emails.[12:06] How Sales Hacker approaches content.[14:01] The most successful pieces at Sales Hacker.[15:28] Traffic sources.[17:56] Favorite sales outreach tools.[21:07] Brooklin's causes.The insights:The importance of researching prospects, and how to do itBrooklin stresses that anyone engaging in the sales process should spend a lot more time on research than they probably would otherwise think to."Don't just do a light search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, pull up a list, and then reach out to blast the whole list. Taking time to really qualify who you're reaching out to and why will be time well-spent before you ever send your first email." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIf3xD0mlQQAs for what you're looking for when you do all this research?"One, you're looking for a company matching your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If most of your clients are of a certain size and in a specific niche, start there."The other thing you're looking for is a signal that they might be ready for help with their marketing."They have a new Director of Marketing or a VP, and the new executive came from a place where they ran a strong content marketing presence the new company doesn't have, for example." Brooklin says hiring can be another signal."If they're hiring for their marketing team, there's a good chance they're going to be looking for external help too. They might not just be hiring those content marketing managers. They may be looking for contractors and agencies to actually execute on the work. You can look for those signals pretty easily with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and build your list from there."Finally, Brooklin says you're looking for information that can help you with your outreach efforts."A podcast they just did. An article they just published. A question they asked. Something that puts the value first and the content first. Instead of: hey, you're in marketing. We're a marketing agency. Can we help you out? Start with where they're at, first."The right amount of time to spend on researchWhen we already have so many demands on our time, all this research can feel like a lot of wasted effort. So how much time is optimum for making the process work?Brooklin admits it’s hard to quantify."It's going to depend on how much you're reaching out. But unless you're a giant agency, you're going to be better served reaching out to ten dream clients than even a few hundred clients that maybe don't fit your ICP or who might be harder to work with or might be past your niche a little bit. So take the time to focus on the right prospective clients and I think you're going to have better conversations down the line."Brooklin has spent up to 30 minutes on an email in the past. "Quite a bit of time from a cold outreach perspective, but it paid off. We were only looking for a handful of new clients, so it didn't matter that it didn't scale well." He has also tried other strategies where he sent out hundreds of emails and tried to automate the process."I spent a couple of hours and only used intent data. When I sent hundreds I got a 15% reply rate. Only one of them became a client."Where a cold email strategy starts to go off the rails"The number one place a cold email strategy goes off the rails is when you make it about you vs. them. And that's something you can scale. Not as well as those hyper-personalized emails that take 20-30 minutes. You can take the time to make it about what their problem is, and then as the footnote what your potential solution is."Brooklin stresses that you really can't make it about what an amazing agency you are."It's: hey. I noticed you were working on this. Or you started this campaign. Or you just started this new job. How's that going? Make it about them first. This is essentially Sales 101, but I think content marketers often forget that, ...
