Tips on Getting the First Conversation

When getting a fresh lead across your desk, determining the optimal contact model to get a conversation with a key decision maker is not an easy task. Witnessing this firsthand at OpenView Venture Partners with some of our portfolio companies, this sometimes can be one of the biggest bottlenecks in lead generation systems and is oftentimes not given adequate attention. Many times you can find yourself leaving messages for weeks with no call back. You should take time to figure out what the right approach should be and execute effectively against it (while learning and iterating based on results). If you are a sales manager, you must ensure your team members are all employing the same best practice tactics (as inconsistency is not good). If you are an individual salesperson, staying disciplined against your contact model and being organized is key.
As you are figuring out the correct contact model, below are a few things to consider:

• The first day you make a call and leave a voice-mail, remember to follow up with an email. Statistics have shown the combination of a voice-mail and email in the same day lead to a much higher conversion than simply leaving one or the other.

• Try calling the lead more than once the first day (while leaving a voice-mail just once). You don’t want to be a stalker and call the lead 50 times, but a couple times is not a bad approach.

• Determine the optimal amount of days between past messages left to reach out and make follow up attempts (it can be as short as one day or as long as 2-3). If you have much longer than one-week intervals in calling a lead back, you may find it difficult to get a conversation.

• Don’t give up calling a super hot prospect. Some leads may take 30+ attempts until you get someone on the phone. A lack of response does not always mean non-interest (people are often times busy!). Be persistent and patient — it will pay off.

• Use a CRM system to automate and track your calling approach. Excel does not cut it these days. Salesforce.com does a good job at managing the outbound contact method through tasks. Additional bolt on systems like Jesubi take it to the next level in terms of automating the flow of follow up calls and messages.

• Have your best outbound callers mentor those on the team that may be struggling. Coaching/feedback from a peer who is in the trenches doing the calling day to day will be better received than by management teams who may not have been there/done that for ages.

Hopefully the above are a few insights that will have you start thinking more about taking your outbound approach to the next level.

-KKF