Prospecting Hack: Increase Personalization

Prospecting is not as simple as it may appear to those not involved in B2B sales. If you find prospecting to be the most difficult part of your sales job, you’re not alone. More than 40% of salespeople say this is the most challenging part of the sales process – followed by closing (36%) and qualifying (22%). 

If you want to get responses from your prospects, you need to personalize your outreach. Did you know you are 4.2X more likely to book a meeting if you have a personal connection with a buyer?  

Many sales reps are under the impression that personalization is a time killer. I’m not saying you have to spend an entire day trying to find a reason to connect with your prospect. You can do it in just 10 minutes. 

The Most Important Part of Prospecting: Personalization

The truth of the matter is nobody likes being prospected. At the end of the day, personalization is key.

Sales professionals’ inboxes are full of generic messages. There are many ways to incorporate personalization in your cold outreach, some suggest personalized sales videos for example. 

Including a personalized image with your cold email is a great way to show your prospect that you have actually spent some time researching their company and background. Reply.io conducted a study with two sequences with identical templates with the exception of the 1st sequence containing a personalized image. The sequence containing personalized images generated 2X more warm replies.

Luigi Prestinenzi Co-Founder and Head of Growth at Sales IQ Group shares:

Prospecting Hack: The 10 Minute Game

The 10 minute game is something Ryan O’Hara came up with after studying why his sales team was performing low volumes of activities. It wasn’t that the sales reps were lazy or lack of drive, it came down to where they were directing their focus. 

Constantly going back and forth through tabs, poking around through profiles and judging contacts, and trying to look into who they are on LinkedIn, it’s very easy to get sucked into distraction. Add in other tasks and meetings throughout the day and the personalization piece of your prospecting is out the window, you now are focused on just getting activities done in general.

And just like that the 10 Minute Game was born. 

This is 10 minutes of focused prospecting. It gets sales reps committed to getting their task done, and done well. It gives enough breathing room to come up with a personalization angle quickly, but is still creative and thought through. It’s plenty of time to come up with something to connect to the prospect with, and if you can’t come up with something, it’s easy to just settle for the best thing possible. Deadlines will keep you moving. 

It creates urgency for the rep to get the activity done and done well, without sacrificing too much quality.

How the 10 Minute Game Works

In ten minutes, the rep has to find a new account, add that contact into your sales tools, research them, and do a touch. No gimmicks, no distractions.

The first step is finding an account and a prospect from that account that fits what you’re searching for or targeting. 

You then have 10 minutes to research this prospect. Search their LinkedIn profile, read articles they share or comment on, conduct a simple Google search, you know what to do. 

While you are doing this, take note of 5 things you noticed. These five things will later turn into talking points that you can use later in your outreach sequence. You won’t have to waste time later on searching for these personalization pieces.

What are the Results?

Back in 2018 when the game was invented, LeadIQ put this prospecting hack to the test. Once the sales team implemented the 10 Minute Game, the team’s activities shot up to north of 30 a day (about 5-6 an hour) and their response rate actually stayed the same. So they were able to almost triple their responses every day to 9. 

Since the outreach is personalized, more than half of those responses end up being really positive. There are going to be days where it’s hard to do this, but if you do it right, your team can see a pretty good bump in the number of opportunities they get.

As reps get more comfortable doing the 10 minute game, they’ll be able to change it to the 8 Minute Game for follow up. The 5 Minute Game for the social touch, and as you get better, your first touch may be able to get trimmed to the 5 minute game eventually. What it comes down to is more personalized outreach without sacrificing time.

This game forces you to only work on accounts you care about. Doing little sprints all day is better than the grind of a prospecting marathon. The calibration of working in 10 minute intervals works great. Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. 

Recap/Conclusion

What it all boils down to is that personalization is the key to seeing results. Connect with prospects other than in a sales pitchy way. Avoid aggressive approaches that go straight to the sale. Try sending neutral emails where you make the prospect feel good. Do your research and make a great first impression. 

Every rep has a different technique that works for them. If you are in a prospecting rut, slowly giving up due to the lack of results, try out the 10 Minute Game. 

Sabrina Jowders
Sabrina Jowders is a Marketing Coordinator at LeadIQ. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire in May 2019 with a B.S. In Business Administration: Marketing and a minor in Sales. She specializes in SEO.