By Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing
Late in 2015 we started producing a bi-weekly radio program called Sales Pipeline Radio, which currently runs every Thursday at 11:30 a.m. Pacific. It’s just 30 minutes long, fast-paced and full of actionable advice, best practices and more for B2B sales & marketing professionals.
We’ve already featured some great guests and have a line up of awesome content and special guests into 2016. Our very first guest was Funnelholic author and Topo co-founder Craig Rosenberg. Next we had Mike Weinberg, incredible writer, speaker, author, followed by Conrad Bayer, CEO & Founder of Tellwise. Recent Guests: Jim Keenan; Joanne Black; Aaron Ross; Josiane Feigon, Meagen Eisenberg, and Trish Bertuzzi.
We cover a wide range of topics, with a focus on sales development and inside sales priorities heading into and throughout the year. We’ll publish similar highlights here for upcoming episodes. You can listen to full recordings of past shows at SalesPipelineRadio.com and subscribe on iTunes.
Predictable Prospecting: Increase your consistency and results with Marylou Tyler
Paul: Welcome once again to Sales Pipeline Radio. It’s time to grab your board, catch a wave and ride the Sales Pipeline with Matt Heinz. Hey Matt!
Matt: How are we doing Paul?
Paul: We are doing good! We are doing good. Where are you surfing today?
Matt: We are surfing from Heinz Marketing international headquarters here in Redmond Washington.
Paul: Wow I can see that from like the freeway or something, it is a huge building over there!
Matt: It’s enormous! It just continues to grow. It’s a tower; it’s a Babylonian tower to heaven I tell you.
Paul: I think so.
Matt: Well right. Thank you everyone for joining us on Sales Pipeline Radio, excited to have everyone here with us. I’ve got another great show planned today.
Last week we were broadcasting live from Boston at The My Flip Funnel conference where I actually got to run into our guest today, Marylou Tyler who I’m excited to have here. We’ve got some great guests coming up in the next few weeks as well.
If you are new to Sales Pipeline Radio welcome, we are glad you are here. You can see our past episodes at www.salespipelineradio.com. I encourage you to check out all of our past episodes up there on-demand also available podcast form at Google play and the iTunes Store. And we regularly are covering topics of interest and importance to B2B sales and marketing professionals specific to guess what? Sales pipeline management, sales pipeline development and conversion.
Today, very excited to have our guest who is the co-author of the seminal book Predictable Revenue who just published a new book or who is publishing a new book now called Predictable Prospecting that you can find on Amazon and on her website as well. Excited to have Marylou Tyler direct from Des Moines Iowa I believe today is that right Marylou?
Marylou: That’s correct! Hello, hello!
Matt: Hello, how are we doing? So I know we all have like phone numbers know that we never have to change and so your phone number is Orange County but you are physically in Des Moines. Give a little bit of your background and history and how you came to be doing what you are doing today.
Marylou: Oh sure! I started out like most people, different path. I got my degree in computer engineering and electrical engineering minor so I am an engineer first and foremost a programmer. And throughout my career I was always working for startup companies, disruptive companies. One day I walked into the office and I was a sales engineer at the time and my boss came in and he said we fired all the salespeople and the assistant engineers are now salespeople. I bequeath you. So that was my entry into sales.
Matt: Wow! I mean it’s funny, a lot of people don’t necessarily study sales, many people don’t really expect to go into sales but it’s been a vaunted profession for many. And I think your background and reputation precedes you. The book – Predictable Revenue which you co-authored with Aaron Ross really spawned a number of successful sales organizations around the country. Talk a little bit about where that collaboration came and can you give any kind of back story of where Predictable Revenue came from and the impact that’s had for you as well?
Marylou: Yeah, sure I would be happy to. I was a consultant; I left corporate America pretty early on I think I was telecommuting before it was fashionable back in 1985. And I decided to specialize in lead generation so I worked a lot in contact centers where we were focused on the telephone. At the time they had predictive dialing which were machines that dialed phone numbers and once they got a “hello” they actually transferred the call to an agent. So I was really well-versed in lead generation cold calling 1.0 if you will call it that for the telephone.
I started working with clients, this was when the Internet started appearing on the scene and they wanted to leverage this new thing called the Internet and specifically email to be able to reach out to people that didn’t know to start conversations. So like any good consultant who didn’t know anything about the Internet, I looked online to try to find people in our industry, colleagues that have ventured forth into this mysterious world of the Internet.
And I found a webinar that was done by Brian Carroll was the author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. And he had a guest on his webinar by the name of Aaron Ross. So I listened to the webinar, I heard the right things, I immediately applied it to my knowledge of contact centers and predictive dialing and I realized Aaron had created this email thing, this engine, that allows us to leverage that technology sort of while you are sleeping to engage people in that first conversation.
So I reached out to Aaron and I chased him for my gosh, probably six months trying to get a hold of him to start talking to him about this opportunity. And we finally met and then we ended up collaborating and Predictable Revenue was the result of that in 2011 that book was released.
Matt: That’s a great story. We are talking today with Marylou Tyler who is the co-author of the book Predictable Revenue. If you are in sales and marketing you probably at least heard of the book if not read it. It has a lot of great best practices for those that are doing B2B and especially SaaS selling.
Her new book is Predictable Prospecting which I had a chance to read this last weekend, I think it was great. I noticed you’ve got some pretty impressive people that have endorsed it, have been reviewing it. Neil Rackham who those of you in sales will know, he is the author of Spin Selling I believe called it the Goldilocks of prospecting books. So I want to have you maybe transition us now from Predictable Revenue into Predictable Prospecting. Why was this the focus of your next book? Why prospecting? And talk a little bit about the challenge that you find many B2B marketing and sales people have around that activity.
Marylou: Sure. As you guys know I stay atop the funnel so I am always trying to figure out ways to start conversations with people we don’t know. I am an eternal dater; I am constantly dating trying to find new people to talk to. So what happened is if you are a Predictable Revenue fan, there is a formula on page 42 of that book so if you’re listening to this, go to your Kindle, go to your book, look at page 42 and there’s a formula there that gives you Predictable Revenue in terms of what you need to focus on.
So I took that formula and for the last five years, used that as my thesis working with clients in the field for the purpose of trying to really fine-tune and consolidate all of the learnings that I have in the field into growing that formula, really getting it scientifically focused so that we can essentially have a benchmark of conversion rates and ratios that will add up to a Predictable Revenue framework.
So Predictable Prospecting is the result of page 42 as a thesis and then running around with clients trying to hone in on exactly what the pieces are and the buckets are and the components are in order to be able to put this thing in, this channel, as part of a multi-channel marketing effort in order to generate revenue in targeted accounts that have the highest likelihood of closing with highest revenue potential and that in a nutshell is Predictable Prospecting.
So we are blending all of the knowledge. We love marketing because marketing creates some great content and we essentially flip it sideways and pull out the pieces that we think are going to resonate with people who are atop a funnel. So it’s really a culmination of taking the best from all these pieces that everybody works on and encapsulating it into one stream called outreach that is specifically set up to target large accounts that close quickly, higher likelihood and high revenue.
Matt: Marylou, you have a wide variety of great content available on your website as well, I want to point out the people who are listening at www.maryloutyler.com lots of great… you’ve got a blog, you’ve got a podcast, you’ve got your own videos. Definitely check out the books page you can sign up for book bites, that’s insights, specific excerpts from the books as well right on www.maryloutyler.com.
The idea of prospecting is a little polarizing sometimes for sales and marketing professionals. It’s clearly a required component of building pipeline. But you’ve got a lot of sales reps in particular that really see it as a necessary evil. It seems like there is an increasing volume of literature about prospecting and more effective prospecting. Why is this such a pariah so to speak for sales professionals and what are some of the strategies that you’ve seen best employed to help sales reps not only embrace it but enthusiastically approach the prospecting process that’s critical to them hitting that number?
Marylou: Yeah, that’s a great question because the premise in Predictable Revenue was what we call separation of roles. So we are going in with the idea that sales reps have different strengths in different areas.
Now some of your listeners may say look I’ve got a prospect and I’ve got to close and I’m really having difficulty trying to find that balance. And it is hard because prospecting; personality for prospecting is what I call the hard worker profile. They are more about habit, they are more about consistency and it’s funny because when I am teaching this piece of the puzzle, I actually throw up my daily calendar of my daily activities and I have been blocked out. That is the role of a prospector, they have to do calls, they have to have conversation. And it’s a little bit of a numbers game atop a funnel especially if you are targeting accounts where you have no inroads where you didn’t have the luxury of marketing warming up that chill and you’ve got to warm up the chill yourself.
So because that bit you are consistent reaching out, it’s sometimes difficult for sales reps to compartmentalizing that role with the role of opportunity to close because it’s more about I liken it to dating, is the prospector and now you are engaged and you’ve got to get to getting married so there’s a lot more handholding, there’s a lot more relationship, there’s a lot more stuff going on from opportunity to close and those are two really separate roles.
Matt: No, they really are and it’s actually a really good analogy. Often times when we talk about prospecting and building rapport with customers or with prospects early in the discussion especially with B2B and complex selling, this is not something you are going to do one on one call close, you’re going to ask your prospect to sleep with you on that first date. So it almost takes the pressure off both sides. It makes it a little easier for you as a seller, as a marketer to begin the prospecting process and simply focus on building rapport, building credibility, providing something of value; not so that you can close the deal but so that you can earn the next conversation, earn more attention so that you can further and deepen the discussion around a topic that is of mutual interest.
Marylou: That’s exactly right and atop a funnel we have to worry about five different levels of awareness as well. Because as the energy for that would be you are completely unaware but there are some clients that have disruptive or new products where they have to educate people.
And you have those people who they go to the fridge, they are hungry so they are problem aware but they don’t necessarily know what’s going to satisfy that hunger. And then take it a step further, now you are at the fridge, you see a chocolate cake, you are like okay, that’s going to solve my problem. And then the last thing is you are at the fridge, you have the chocolate cake and it’s Duncan Hines, perfect cake! So you know exactly the vendor that you want to look for.
So we have to really start to focus on where the heck are these people in their head? How do we start conversations with those people where they are at and how do we move them to the next mile marker? So it’s very systematic and it can be overlooked for some reps who have to also close.
Matt: It can but I think when I think about predictable I think about systems, I think about discipline, I think about consistency. We are going to get a lot more into those topics and how reps can make that part of their own habits, both the sales and the marketing standpoint.
Talking with Marylou Tyler here today who is the co-author of Predictable Revenue author of the new book Predictable Prospecting. I have more with Marylou after the break to talk about what’s coming up on Sales Pipeline Radio and more. You are listening to Sales Pipeline Radio!
[Break]
Paul: And now back to Matt and his guest!
Matt: All right having fun as usual here on Sales Pipeline Radio! Great guest today Marylou Tyler, the author of Predictable Prospecting.
Next week as in every week on Thursday at 2:30 Eastern, 11:30 Pacific, next week we’re going to have a good friend Steven Rosen who is a sales consultant. And many of you may know the name; regular blogger, active on the social web who’s got just tons of great feedback and insights on sales leadership, sales coaching in particular specifically for leaders and managers – excited to have Steven.
The week after we’ve got David Fortino from NetLine, we are going to talk about lead generation, how to find the right prospects, how to get the right organizations and the right prospects interested in you and build pipeline for yourself which is similar to what we are going to be talking about today with Marylou Tyler, author of Predictable Prospecting.
Before the break Marylou, I brought up the idea that to create that predictability there has to be the building of habits, there has to be discipline, there has to be something that you make part of your regular discipline and activity. Not always the sexiest part of sales and marketing but you know I find that when I talk to a lot of the best sales reps who hit their number and always go into to Presidents’ Club, they also tend to be the reps that spend the most time with their sleeves rolled up. They are getting dirty, they are doing the work on a regular basis and sometimes they find the most important time to do prospecting is when they’ve got the biggest pipelines. They know that they are going to flush that pipeline out and they are going to need to have prospects to follow up.
So talk a little bit about the importance of discipline and habit and regularity as part of the formula to Predictable Prospecting results.
Marylou: Sure. Well we have a concept called Block Time and that’s kind of left over from the contact center again where we are focusing on a block of time in the day that we are making telephone calls.
Now a lot of reps tend to confuse this with multitasking block time which is not what I mean. What I mean is the night before, you prepare your list of people with whom you’re going to have conversation during block time and then when you get into block time you are making call after call after call because you’ve done your research, you know where you are appositionally in the pipeline, you know what you want to say to them either it be a voicemail, maybe send them an email or on the phone but even the emails to send you don’t send them until you’re done with the block time so that one important concept.
And I will tell you a story about that because there is a woman in one of our clients who would put her coat on at 5:30 PM and go back, sit at her desk and she would not leave to go home until she had one more appointment. One more appointment a day times 22 business days a month gave her 22 appointments a month and over a 10 month period, that’s a lot of appointments. That’s what I am saying about habit is making it a priority to sit down and do calling because you get better. The more you are on the phone the better you are in conversations. You can’t switch back and forth between different modalities.
Matt: And there is a level of comfortability you get with that regularity I think it starts to break down what many reps face in terms of call reluctance of not feeling comfortable, not feeling confident in what they are doing. The more you do it the easier it feels the more natural it feels, the more likely you are to pick it back up and do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day.
Marylou: Right, right there is that and a lot of times people are reluctant. So what we do and I borrowed this from the outreach folks is, what we do is we warm people up with role-play. So we put an objection out there and we role-play the objection how they are going to handle it, what they are going to say to overcome it and what’s the next logical sales step that they will suggest to the caller to move that sale further into the pipeline or out if it needs to move out. And that 15 minutes of warm-up, it’s sort of like searching before a run or getting all the kinks out so that when you are ready to hit the phone and truly from a production standpoint you are ready.
Matt: We are talking to Marylou Tyler here today who is the co-author of Predictable Prospecting. You can find out more about the book and other work Marylou has done at www.maryloutyler.com. And Marylou I think this book is definitely written primarily, it seems like the primary audience is sales. But talk a little bit about what marketing can do to support this effort as well. You know from a sales enablement standpoint, from a prospecting support standpoint what are the best practices you’ve seen for marketing organizations to support this focus area?
Marylou: What we rely on in terms of content assets is essentially working through what pain points are resonating with each of the buyers that we may encounter top of funnel and we asked marketing to help us develop those content assets so that we are making sure that the value prop is included and that we are focusing on what’s in it for the prospect. So marketing is invaluable in terms of providing us with content asset. Now we may not use the long page white paper, we may chunk it down into something smaller and more bite-size but the assets that marketing generates are the inputs into a successful robust consistent pipeline for outreach.
Matt: Absolutely and I think there’s a lot of people that said listen cold calling is dead and prospecting is dead and I don’t know what the alternative necessarily is but you know as we move in to the stretch run of 2016 and into next year, do you see this… do you see prospecting waning at all? What does it mean to continue to be an effective prospector in the world when inevitably our buyers are busier than ever, they are getting inundated with calls from other sellers as well? How does the role and the importance of prospecting evolve in the months and quarters ahead?
Marylou: Well, I think the phrase that marketing especially has coined is adding value. Adding value to the conversation, adding value to any email you send, it’s all about them and not about you and really owning that so that when you create and craft an email or maybe you are working on a script or voicemail, that that script is all about the prospect. And I think I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone call me or send me an email saying thank you for finding me I had no idea this was available.
The VP at Citibank, when I was working at in the SDR role, contacted me saying I can’t believe you found us! Thank you for finding us, we needed something like this. We don’t have time to go look! We don’t have time to search. And so the fact that you reached out to us and give us a reason why, thank you. And so things like that where you are like I don’t think it’s dead, I think it’s just a matter of how you place the priority and importance of that person across the table. You have to think of it as one sales conversation at a time.
Matt: Amen to that. It’s so nice to hear so many of these conversations recommending different approaches to sales and marketing pipeline that come back to customer centricity and putting your customers’ interest and value for the customer up front.
I want to thank our guest today. It always goes way too fast. I thank our guest Marylou Tyler for your time and generosity today; co-author of Predictable Revenue author of the new book Predictable Prospecting. You can find it on Amazon. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of the new book but you can also sign up for more good information from Marylou as well as insights from the book on www.maryloutyler.com.
If you want to hear this interview again as well as some of our past guests, check us out at www.salespipelineradio.com. You can also download the podcast so you get every new episode downloaded straight to your smart phone either at Google play or the iTunes Store.
Join us next week at 2:30 Eastern, 11:30 Pacific. We’ve got Steven Rosen who is going to join us and talk about sales management, sales leadership best practices trends as we headed to the stretch run of not only Q3 but 2016. Look forward to seeing you next time, thank you for joining us; this has been Sales Pipeline Radio!
Paul: You’ve been riding the wave and surfing the sales pipeline with Matt Heinz from Heinz Marketing.
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The post Sales Pipeline Radio, Episode 30: Q & A with Marylou Tyler, Sales & Enablement Expert, Bestselling Author appeared first on Heinz Marketing.