The topic of sales prospecting emails is widely discussed in the sales and marketing blogosphere, and I agree with most of the other contributors that email prospecting can be an extremely powerful tool when done right. So if you aren’t doing it already, you should start, because it can significantly improve your prospecting effectiveness. If you are already doing it, like me, you are probably looking for ways to improve.

With all of the people out there commenting on the topic, I thought I would share some of my own experience, favorite posts, and top tips in a series of posts over the coming weeks.

In brief, these are the tips I will cover in more detail over my next five posts on “The Best Tactics for Email Prospecting.”

• Craft an engaging subject line
• Leverage the prospects content everywhere
• Be specific — both as to why you are emailing the prospect and what you are asking for in return
• Optimize for mobile
• Stay persistent

I will update this post with links to the new content as it is published. In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading some great articles and tips on the topic of email prospecting right now, here is a list of helpful posts and resources to get you started:

• http://www.slideshare.net/landmarkrecruiting/the-ultimate-guide-to-email-prospecting
• http://freelanceswitch.com/money/writing-email-copy-that-turns-into-sales/
• http://www.salesgravy.com/sales-articles/prospecting/5-secrets-to-effective-email.html
• http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/2011/06/five-elements-to-writing-an-effective-sales-letter.html
• http://www.agsalesworks.com/Blog-Sales-Prospecting-Perspectives/bid/12690/2-Rules-to-Email-By-for-Successful-Sales-Prospecting
• http://www.eyesonsales.com/content/article/8_tips_for_increasing_your_email_prospecting_response_rate/
• http://thesaleshunter.com/4-things-not-to-do-on-a-cold-call-email/
• http://thesaleshunter.com/email-as-a-sales-prospecting-letter/
• http://fearless-selling.ca/you-lost-me-after-hello/

I hope this is helpful and invite any comments.

Instead, the most successful sales professionals think of creative ways to get around the gatekeeper and sometimes even leverage the gate keeper as a resource to help with the sale.

Over the years I have gathered tactics for working with gatekeepers from many of the sales professionals I have worked with. Here are the top 10:

1. Don’t sound like a sales person when you ask for the contact:

• This is the first mistake that most people make. If you sound like you know the person you are trying to reach, you are a lot more likely to get through without any questions.
• Instead of: “Hi this is Bob for Acme Inc., I’m looking for Michael Ka…Kaplansky? Is he available?”
• Try asking with confidence: “Hi, is Mike there please?”
• The second approach will work much better, but you have to be confident, quick on your toes, and prepared to answer follow up questions like, “Mike who?” and “Who is this?”

2. Build a rapport with the gatekeeper:

• Make sure to get his or her name every time, and make a note of it for the next time you call – people like hearing their name, and it creates an instant bond. “Thanks Rebecca,” sounds a lot better than “Thanks, bye.” She will remember that touch the next time you call.
• Match tonality and empathize with the gatekeeper. If he sounds like he is having a bad day, show empathy by adjusting your tone: “Gee, it sounds like you might be having a bad day, would it be better if I called back another time?”
• Ask, “How is your day going?” Most sales people don’t do that. It will set you apart.
• Use humor.

3. Be friendly, brutally honest, and ask for help:

• “Ms. Gatekeeper, I have been trying everything to get in touch with Mr. Decision Maker over the last few weeks. I could really use your help. What would you suggest would be the best way to get in touch with Mr. Decision Maker?”
• Make the gatekeeper your ally, and she will want to help you.

4. Treat the gatekeeper like a concierge, not a bouncer:

• A concierge is someone whose job is to provide people with the information they are looking for or accomplish a task. Use the gatekeeper to get other relevant info that can help you with the sale, such as:
• Company info
• Contact info for other contacts
• Best time/way to reach the decision maker
• Other people who might be involved in the decision-making process
• Many gatekeepers will have access to their boss’s calendar – ask to get 15 minutes on the calendar.

5. Use flattery:

• “Gee Elise, I really like that name. It’s actually my daughter’s name” This typically works better when the gatekeeper is of the opposite gender.
• For really important deals, sending flowers, a bottle of wine or bourbon, or some nice cigars addressed to the gatekeeper with a note will almost always get you a meeting.

6. Leverage social media:

• Try connecting with the contact on LinkedIn or send an InMail to circumvent the gatekeeper
• Try sending a message via twitter.

7. Ask to speak with accounts receivables:

• If the company you are calling has an accounts receivables department, it may be your best way in. Usually when people call into AR it’s to pay a bill, so gatekeepers will not usually filter those calls. Furthermore, most of the AR professionals I have met are extremely friendly, and would welcome any phone call in which they don’t have to negotiate with an angry client who doesn’t pay on time. Once you get them on the phone just explain why you are calling and ask for their help. You may be surprised by what you find.

8. Ask a technical question:

• GK: “What is this call regarding?”
• You: “Well, I am putting together a proposal for Mrs. Decision Maker, and there were just a couple of other details that I needed from her to get this together. Do you know what the average daily site traffic and conversion rate is?

9. Send a calendar invite:

• Send a calendar invite to the decision maker the day before you call. Often, people will simply accept the calendar invite, so when you call the next day you can simply say, “I’m looking for Mike. He should be expecting my call. I sent over a meeting invite yesterday.”

10. Use an email return receipt:

• Send your prospect an email with return receipt turned on, so that you get a notification when they open it. When you get the notification you know that they are either at their desk or by their phone. That is a perfect time to call and get a hold of them.

There are plenty of great tactics out there. Please feel free to share some that have worked well for you in the comments.

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Image provided by: tochis

While working on a recent project with one of our expansion-stage portfolio companies in the life sciences space, I found myself floating in a sea of acronyms. One sales call that I sat in on sounded as if it were being conducted in a completely different language. It seemed like every other word that came out of the prospect’s mouth was a three or four-letter acronym. For sales and marketing professionals in any industry, understanding the language of the buyer is critical to their success. In order to get myself up to speed fast, and to help the company at the same time, I put together this acronym guide.

I was amazed at how many acronyms I was able to think of off the top of my head, after just having worked with the company for a few weeks. With a bit of additional research I put together this list of the acronyms I felt were most relevant to the company and their buyers in life sciences:

As I was doing this I thought about some of our other portfolio companies and the acronyms that would be relevant to them. For sales people working for technology companies there are a few “core” acronyms that are used in conjunction with other acronyms across a wide range of industries, products, and services. Understanding these can help sales and marketing professionals get up to speed faster in any industry:

Do you know of any additional acronyms that are used in the fields of technology or life sciences that are helpful to know? Please feel free to contribute in the comments section below. This is obviously not a comprehensive list, and new ones pop up all the time.

What acronyms are important to your buyers?

However, that type of loosely structured data is difficult to keep consistent and nearly impossible to report on, which is one of the primary points of capturing that information in the first place.

Though most sales organizations at this stage do not track sales by product, that information can be extremely insightful and help sales leaders improve focus, training, and incentive plans around specific products. As your sales team scales, this level of information will be critical to your success. If you haven’t already, you should invest in a resource to help you implement sales tracking at the product level.

If you are already using Salesforce.com as your CRM/SFA system these tips will help you implement products effectively.

Before you start implementing anything, review some of the overview documentation that salesforce.com provides to get a better understanding of how this module is designed to work and intended to be used. As a rule of thumb I always try to use as much out-of-the-box functionality as possible.

• Products, Pricebooks and Schedules Overview
• Admin Tip Sheet

Also, when implementing product tracking in your organization, there are a several relationships between objects that are important to understand. Before you start implementing make sure that you understand:

• The difference between the Products object, and the Opportunity Products  (opportunity line item) object, and the role each one plays
• The difference between the Price Book object, and the Price Book Entry object, and the role each one plays

The Products, Price Book, and Schedules Data Model provides a great graphical representation to help clarify the relationships.

Once you’ve completed the initial setup you may be interested in implementing some of these additional tools and features which are not obviously documented and available. Here a few examples that I have found useful, and some documentation to help guide you through implementation.

• Tracking annuity based products
• Mass Uploading Products and Price Books
• Requiring Products on Opportunities:
• First make sure that you have enabled the Enable Prompt for Products feature in:

Setup -> Customize -> Settings -> Prompt users to add products

This will not effect leads that have been converted. Also, some organizations only require products once an opportunity has reached a certain stage.

• If you want to take your implementation a step further you can implement one of these validation rules: (credit to Katherine Chilcote in the salesforce.com administrators Group on Linkedin)

When the stage reaches X, Y, or Z, sales reps are required to enter products and schedules. Before these stages, products and schedules are not required on opportunities.

AND( 

TEXT(StageName) = “ABC”, 

NOT(  OR(  ISNEW(),  HasOpportunityLineItem))) 

For Multiple stages, the rule is this: 

AND( 

CASE(StageName,  “Perception Analysis”,1,  “Proposal/Price Quote”, 1,  “Negotiation/Review”, 1,  “Closed Won”, 1,  0)  = 1,  NOT(  OR(  ISNEW(),  HasOpportunityLineItem))

• Tracking amount to goal by product if you want to incentivize sales of a certain product

If you have any other good tips for implementing salesforce.com please share.

image provided by: TheBusyBrain

The goal of the forecast review meeting is to go through and understand the deals that make up the current period’s forecast. In a pipeline review, the goal is to monitor the health of the overall pipeline, not just the deals in the current forecast. Everything in the pipeline is fair game. A pipeline review meeting will give you a much more realistic sense of how much pipeline you really have, so that when your SFA tells you that there is $5 million in the pipeline for Q2 you’ll know what that actually means. It is also your chance to perform some necessary clean-up and make sure that your reps are working on the right opportunities that will help them build a healthy pipeline.

Of course, the pipeline and forecast reviews don’t necessarily have to be two separate meetings, and you may find it beneficial to include elements of the pipeline review into your forecast review meetings. However, in many expansion stage SaaS companies, there are simply too many deals in the pipeline to discuss every single one. So in order to incorporate a pipeline review into your next forecast review meeting pick 5 to 10 deals randomly for each rep and ask the same questions that you would ask in a forecast review meeting. But instead of asking “How do we get it to close?” you should ask, “How do we get it to the next stage in the sales process?”

If you aren’t incorporating some aspect of pipeline review into your meetings with your sales team, you should start today.