Many say cold outreach is not a successful way to land prospect meetings. After owning a company for 25 years that only does outsourced Door Opening at the Executive level, here is my experience…
If the cold outreach someone is doing is NOT working, then they’re likely NOT doing it right!
Our Door Openers® initiate new conversations with key decision makers they don’t know every day and land meeting for our clients. As a result, our clients have more opportunities to close sales they couldn’t get otherwise because of the work our Door Openers do.
One Texas technology client wanted to get in the door for initial meetings with CIOs and VPs in the media and entertainment industries. None of the people on the list were people our Door Opener knew before making the first contact. Our Door Opener was successful securing meetings with NBC, ABC, Cablevision, HBO, Universal, and the list goes on.
Why was he successful when the salesperson at our client’s company had not been prior? Here are a few secrets:
- Identify exact right prospects (company/title) who meet your “A” level client criteria and don’t spend time on anyone who doesn’t fit that criteria
- Research the individual decision maker who is in the right position and find a reason why that prospect would feel F.O.M.O. (fear of missing out) if a meeting didn’t take place
- Plan the strategy of your approach (i.e. email, phone, reaching out to assistant, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Craft the sales message to use (strategic language that piques the interest of the right prospect) avoiding jargon and buzzwords
- Prepare answers for anticipated objections
- Go!
- Record all notes and plan your next outreach in your CRM
- Repeat
Remember, your prospect will likely not answer on the first attempt. Leave a short, meaningful message and try again the following week. There are 3 P’s of prospect follow-up: Persistence with Patience without being a pest.
Years ago I attended a Women of EO Leadership Summit in Aspen, CO, with 120 other women business owners. We were lucky to have Jennifer Hyman, founder of Rent the Runway as a speaker. Susan Lindner, of Emerging Media Inc., interviewed Jennifer in a fireside chat. Jennifer told us many of the lessons she learned in launching this $100 million-dollar business. While there were so many great stories, there was one that resonated with me most.
When she initially came up with the idea for Rent the Runway she wanted to speak with someone big in the world of fashion to confirm her idea had huge market potential. She wanted a meeting with Diane von Furstenberg. She didn’t know Diane and she didn’t know anyone who knew Diane. She wasn’t going to any events where she would meet Diane. In order to get that meeting she had to reach out to Diane directly, even though she didn’t know her. She told us that she did her research and wrote Diane a personal email. If I had to guess she went through most if not all of the steps above. While she didn’t share the email with us, she did share the results. Diane wrote back to her within 24 hours and said she wanted to meet with her the next day in New York at 5pm.
If I had to guess, Jennifer used a really good subject line and personalized the email so that it was relevant to Diane. She made it short and concise, with a clear call to action. She achieved her intended result. The lesson is, it is possible to get a meeting with somebody you don’t know by saying something incredibly compelling and by making that person so interested that he/she will want to cancel meetings with three other people to have a meeting with you.
Next time you feel powerless because you need to meet people you don’t know remember there are many Door Openers who successfully do this every day for our clients. Even though they are experienced at doing this there are also people, like Jennifer Hyman, who don’t do this every day and who are successful too. It is possible for you to get a meeting with someone you don’t know.