Tips on Executing on a Campaign

This is a part of a series that was cre­at­ed to help you get the prac­tice of out­bound prospect­ing built into your com­pany.  This series will walk through the process, nec­es­sary roles, in addi­tion to guides for each role to help your com­pany get started quickly.  In the next few posts, I’ll be releasing the contents of a quick start guide for Business Development Representatives to use to attain success during this process.

If you ever feel like you are blindly calling random leads, there is a major problem.

To have a truly successful cold calling campaign, a great deal of research must be done prior to your first
dial. Your efforts must be extremely focused, and when you speak with your prospects you should feel knowledgeable, confident, and empowered.

In an ideal situation, you know:

• The segment
• The market
• The persona
• Why the persona needs your product/service
• What content the prospect will need before scheduling the next step

For each campaign you undertake, your manager (and potentially your marketing team) will be:

1. Prioritizing campaigns
   1. Developing target segment prioritization schemes based on key criteria
   2. Prioritizing your target segments
   3. Launching campaigns in priority order based on the number of leads a segment(s) will return
2. Planning the campaign
   1. Researching the target segment
   2. Preparing target-specific content (e.g., e-mail templates, call scripts, use cases, buyer personas)
   3. Briefing you on the campaign
3. Qualifying leads
   1. Defining minimum qualifying criteria for leads
   2. Screening out bad leads based on minimum qualifying criteria
4. Provisioning the leads
   1. Provisioning leads on a weekly or bi-weekly rhythm
   2. Provisioning leads from New Qualified, Qualified Leads w/follow-up, and Qualified Leads w/next action in upcoming week
   3. Only provisioning you with as many leads as you need to hit your weekly targets

Additional resources:

Cold Calling in the 21^st Century: The New Rules, Part II, Wendy Weiss

How to Find New Customers and Increase Sales, Inc.com, Elizabeth Wasserman

Market Segmentation:  A Fresh Look at a Familiar Topic, Angela Stewart and R. Bradley, First Resource

In my next post, I’ll provide some tools to help communicate with prospects.