Sales Prospecting During an Economic Downturn – Tips that Help!

Guest AuthorsOnline Meeting & SharingProactive Sales Engagement

By Tapajyoti Das On Apr 15, 2020

How to Do Sales Prospecting During an Economic Downturn

What can I say, these are strange times indeed. Over 50% of the world is in complete lockdown mode and we’re seeing unprecedented difficult times, personally and for businesses, all over the globe.

We have prided ourselves in helping B2B technology companies find in-market customers and grow their business, and today, we’re wondering how we can keep doing so with sincerity and authenticity.

After speaking to our customers, prospects and seeing discussions online in various sales forums – one thing that became clear was the uncertainty amongst sales professionals around prospecting in times of this global pandemic caused by the novel Coronavirus. We reached out to a group of Sales and Marketing experts to help provide some context around best practices for Sales Prospecting during these uncertain times.

1. Give a Sh!t…!

The Truth is that there is NO “right” way to do sales prospecting right now, other than taking a pause and thinking through the lens of empathy and caring for your prospects.

2. Stop all your Templated Messages

With the advent of Sales Engagement platforms – the empathy towards who we are reaching out has taken a back-seat over activity and results. Now is the time to flip it over. The first thing you need to do is pause all your automated and generic template sequences/cadences. This does NOT mean you should stop prospecting – just not the generic templated ones.

3. Do NOT Fake Empathy

Don’t leverage coronavirus or the current situation to make an irrelevant connection to your solution. Nothing is going to kill your chances of having that meeting with the prospect than your fake empathy or your lame attempt to connect work-from-home or Coronavirus to your solution.

4. Go Deep on your Sales Research

Just knowing the company or the prospect fits your ideal customer profile is not going to cut it now. Go 2-3 levels deep in your research before reaching out to anyone.

Where are they located. For example New York and the tri-state area is massively impacted right now, so I’d stay away from reaching out to anyone from that region.
Consider who your prospect sells to before reaching out. If the prospect sells to industries that have been massively impacted (i.e retail, travel, hospitality, etc.), I’d refrain from reaching out right now.
Do some research on the recent company news. Did they have to lay-off a big part of their team? Are they publicly talking about going on cash-conservation mode? I’d probably not reach out to them…

5. Add Value to your Outreach

I know everyone talks about adding value when prospecting, but it’s more important now than ever. No I don’t mean sharing a blog/white-paper/case-study you published 5-months ago. Think hard about what your target market is most worried about and make a collection of free resources that you can share, expecting nothing in return. Another idea is to get 5 of your customers on a panel and get them talking about how they are overcoming the challenges – record it, document it and then share it with your prospects.

6. Add Value Email Template

This is a real example of a followup email that I sent to a prospect of ours, providing value.

______

Hi Sarah,

Hope you and your family and friends are doing well!

I wanted to follow up and see if you got a chance to regroup internally and talk about LeadSift further. Let me know if you have any updates on the next steps.

Also not sure how your SDR/AE team is prospecting right now – but we got John Barrows to record a video for us talking about the how to prospect in the times of Covid-19 without coming across as tone-deaf and disingenuous. Feel free to share it with your team:

I’d love to schedule a quick update call, but if it’s not a good time to talk, please let me know, completely understandable.

Tukan

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This was her reply.

Hey Tukan,

Thanks for your follow up.
Your podcast with John Barrows was very helpful, and we shared that with our inside sales team struggling with just that: How are we supposed to sell in a time like this!? So thanks so much for sharing that.

Did we ever discuss pricing? Sorry, we’ve been on so many demos, everything is running together. Not to mention, this whole “lockdown” feels like one giant, continuous Monday lol.

If you can send pricing details over, that would be great.