In the words of Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A-Changin’. Bob sang about changing times in the 60s, and it rings as true as ever today. With this new reality of social distancing, there’s no doubt that we’re living outside of our comfort zones—but we’re also doing something that we’ve been good at for ages: adapting.
Sales professionals are masters of adaptation. We’re good at engaging with clients and prospects in accordance with their schedules and personalities—and we’re good at helping one another. To that end, below are a few ideas about how to use BuzzBoard to help you meet your sales goals.
Filter for the conversations you want to have
BuzzBoard’s “Find Prospects” feature is certainly our most popular tool—but don’t stop there! Use the filter functionality to segment prospects based on the conversations you want to have. To optimize your list, apply filters to identify those prospects that indicate via multiple signals (compatible technology, digital practices, ad spend, growth trends, competition, etc.) that they are the perfect fit for your solution and highly likely to be open for a conversation. Think of this filtering process as step one to building genuine opportunities to engage.
For example, let’s say that you’re a broadcast media sales rep and you’re using BuzzBoard to build a prospect list of roofers in San Diego. That’s a great category. But it’s crucial to be able to engage with each roofer in an impactful way. What if you could filter that list to identify roofers in San Diego with their own YouTube Channel? You can! And this is where it gets really interesting. You see, I tell reps all the time that because YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world (Google is #1), chances are pretty high that there is a 7-year-old with her own YouTube channel making slime that gets more views and reactions than any one of those roofers. However, we accomplished a couple of very important insights by using YouTube as a filter:
- You identified those roofers who understand how important it is to communicate to an external audience.
- You now have an opportunity to maximize their efforts through the solutions you sell, positioning yourself as the consultant they genuinely need to help them rise above the noise.
Use the data to see where they are in their business journey, and where they’re headed. Understanding the bigger narrative allows you to engage in ways that are meaningful and impactful.
Save your lead list
At BuzzBoard, we understand that time is money—and having personalized conversations with the right SMB decision makers is what closes deals. The less time you have to spend researching or entering in data, the more time you have for building relationships—so please save your original lead list. You can go back to it and add or take away filters without re-creating the original.
Next: the list you save helps you meet important KPIs. Applying filters from the original list is part of the practice of filtering for the conversation you want to have, so the context you need for the phone call is already there.
Leveraging competition
Now that you have your list, you have phone calls to make. During that first phone call, you’ll want to keep it simple, and impactful. Time and time again, I hear reps trying to give too much information on the first phone call. They start talking about a business’s digital marketing discrepancies and sometimes go down “digital dark alleys” by trying to sound digitally savvy. But all they’re really doing is confusing the person on the other end of the line.
The Competition feature in BuzzBoard allows us to provide immediate value. For example, this type of opener is generally highly successful: I was doing research on businesses just like yours and I want to show you how some of their digital marketing strategies are increasing market share and revenue.
There are multiple variations of how we can phrase the above. Just remember to include two of the keywords that resonate with all business owners, decision makers and gatekeepers alike: market share and revenue.
Stay tuned for more tips on how to make the most of BuzzBoard and remain effective while adapting during these ever-changing times. If you have any questions, want me to help guide you through the platform or provide insight on closing a deal, you can reach me at phillip@buzzboard.com.
