“When are you going to stop for breath?”

One of the most embarrassing but defining moments of my work life.

I was rubbish at selling – despite being at least 4 years into my career as a salesperson. I was at a meeting with two ladies showing them our product (just as I’d been taught in training), telling them all the benefits (just as my manager had said) and generally following the script.

When they asked me at the end when I was going to stop for breath I realised I was doing it all wrong.

I didn’t know what they wanted or what was important to them. I hadn’t listened to that at all.

They didn’t go on to buy. But I learnt the art of shutting the hell up.

I found 3 ways to keep your pipeline moving and choc-full of leads:

Step 1 – Get your 5-a-day. And when I say 5-a-day, I mean identify by name 5 target prospects or partners for your business and reach out to them, either via Linkedin, Twitter or directly by phone or email. It never hurts to expand your network.

Step 2 – Focus on keeping everyone warm. If you leave it too long and try and contact everyone at once it makes it harder to tackle and can seem overwhelming. Always be sorting and filtering by ‘last activity/contact’ and keep in touch with those who haven’t heard from you in a while.

Which brings me on to . . .

Step 3 – Use your CRM correctly, it’ll help you keep your pipeline flowing. Keeping a log of everyone you contact and everything you do is critical to successful selling.

These 3 tips will make you better. What are your techniques for running a healthy pipeline?

How many hours have you put into building your sales pipeline? 

Loads. 

Once you add up all the calls you’ve made, events you’ve attended, email campaigns, social selling, face-to-face meetings and everything else it totals up to a big investment.

So letting that pipeline go cold is heartbreaking, and it’s even harder to get it moving once it’s frozen.

This post will show you how to defrost your frozen pipeline with a simple 30-word email. 

There are three easy steps and it will take less than a minute to contact each cold prospect.

Time to get cracking!

Step 1:  Identify something of value that you can send to your prospects.

The first step involves identifying something of value to your prospects, and preferably something you already have.

You’re looking to provide something specifically useful to them.  The idea here is to open up dialogue but also to create a reciprocal relationship where you have helped them so they will want to help you.

The thing of value can be anything really (and obviously if it’s something from your own business/website the so much the better!)  Good ideas include:

• A free ebook on a subject you know they are interested in
• A cheat sheet to help save them time
• A How To guide on something they might not know about

If you or your company genuinely doesn’t have any valuable free resources to send out, then a link to a blog they might find useful can be equally as helpful.   It’s all about the value it will give the recipient more than the format itself.

Step 2: Create the email

Create a short, 30-word email using the exact format below (of course, top and tail it in the way you would usually with Hi, Best regards, etc. – you want to keep in personable!)

Enter the resource title in the first paragraph, it shows you’ve taken the time to understand what might be interesting to them.  (N.B. don’t forget to also include the attachment or link to the resource – it’s easy to accidentally forget!)

Choose a date you’d like to set up a call and add it to the second paragraph.  Suggest just one option as a binary choice of yes/no is more likely to produce a response. For example . . .

Subject: Thought you might find this interesting

Dear [XXXXXXXX],

I thought you might find this resource useful on the subject of [XXXXXXXXX], an area I know is of interest to you.

Are you free to catch up by phone on [XXXX]?

Step 3: Send the email

That’s it, that’s all you need to do.  Now press send, move on to your next cold prospect, and do it again!