TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE
Chris Battis: On this episode of Intent Topics. We’ll be talking about what to do when your lead generation efforts stall out. All right, what’s up Logan? How’s it going buddy?
Logan Kelly: Great, you?
Chris Battis: Oh, not a lot. Not a lot. So, okay. So today, we’re going to talk about what to do when your lead generation stalls out. Okay. Right?
Logan Kelly: Yep.
Chris Battis: Now, this is a stressful topic, right? You feel the stress around this. I think most sales organizations must feel stressed around this. Why don’t you talk to that?
Logan Kelly: Yeah, man. I mean simply put, here at Union we have 30 clients. We judge our success, right or wrong on a daily basis. I can tell you that makes for some uncomfortable, uncomfortable days.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Yeah, I bet. It’s like you never give up, right? You constantly have to monitor it. You never get comfortable. It’s like parenting, right? I’ve said this before, but as soon as you get something figured out, something changes and you got to figure something else out. Right? You never get too comfy, never sit down, because you’re going to have to get up and keep going. Right? It’s just like a hamster wheel.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Battis: It’s okay. That’s okay. There’s things you can do. There’s things that you do with clients to keep it going. Right? You want to talk about that?
Logan Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. I think at the end of the day there are certain principles and factors that we look at to make sure that things pull up fairly quickly. So as I said, we judge performance on a daily basis. We’re looking for success quickly. We’re looking for often with all of our clients, which means to go a couple of days without getting a win, it’s a bummer and we feel that. I think anybody in a biz dev, lead gen or if you’re in part of the organization that’s doing the hunting for new prospects, there’s days, there’s weeks that suck. The idea that we have built Union on is that you’re always going to have more good days than bad days, but you need to understand what the factors are that play into success in any of these kinds of campaigns. Yeah.
Chris Battis: Yeah, yeah and how to kind of wrench on it so that you can make improvements. Right? If you don’t know what to do to make it better, well, where do you even start? Right?
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. It’s important, like there’s a balance doing the right stuff and freaking out and screwing everything up. That is what we need to get into today, because I see a lot of inconsistency with how … anything, marketing campaigns, but also sales, prospecting it and that’s why I love Union.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Cool. So, what do you do? Like what levers do you pull to get things going again when it’s time, when things stall out, when you get that kind of fear on the client [crosstalk 00:03:36] side, that we’re not producing? What do you do? You must have plenty of strategies, stuff that you do around this, right?
Logan Kelly: Absolutely. So, there’s four things, cadence or frequency, content, list and signals. Those are the four things that we’re looking at every single time.
Chris Battis: Say that again. So one is-
Logan Kelly: Cadence, content, list, signals. Those are the four things.
Chris Battis: All right.
Logan Kelly: Here’s the important thing with all this. These are not to be like the first time that you’re looking at these things in a campaign should never be when things start to go wrong. We need to establish KPIs around those, which is for another time.
Chris Battis: Right. Stay ahead of it, right? Yeah.
Logan Kelly: It’s important to stay ahead of it. Right.
Chris Battis: Yeah, okay.
Logan Kelly: So first thing, cadence or frequency is another way of putting this. That is how often we’re touching each contact in the database or each account. So, we see a lot of times, especially early in campaigns or early in engagements, getting the right, is it 5 days, is it 6 days, is it 10 days, what is the right amount of time in between each touch? Then what is too much time in between each touch.
Logan Kelly: This is something that needs to be like very disciplined in how we’re testing that, ensuring that. Once we identify the account, we’re assuming that you’ve got the right contacts in there. We’re assuming specifically in the cadence side. Then it’s how are we balancing the cadence. The other thing is we don’t want it to look like you’ve got somebody in some sort of a HubSpot marketing automation workflow when you’re trying to prospect them in sales, which is a whole thing where like if it’s the same amount of time where you kind of like you lull the people to sleep.
Logan Kelly: We need to change that up. We need to get aggressive on … sometimes just shorten it up, sometimes just let things simmer. Sometimes it’s replying in line, sometimes it’s calling at a different time. We need to look at what that contact cadence or frequency is and start to adjust it. As I said, there’s as many different things as we can think of. Like, is it a phone, is it text, is it email? Whatever that channel is, it can be tweaked and these little tweaks will make a difference.
Logan Kelly: Then we have content. So, one of the things that we saw early on in the life cycle at Union, we have these content approvals that we need to get from our clients, right? So, you never want to send … like early back in the day, we would never want to send this really short piece of content, like two lines or one line emails to a client. Like, “Hey, can you approve it? Like they’re paying for this.” What we needed to reconcile was people are paying us to generate them sales qualified leads, right? So, whatever the length or whatever the content is, that’s at our discretion. So, what we see is salespeople, marketers, whoever’s writing this content, they get so verbose, right? They get so long.
Chris Battis: Oh my God. Yeah. Totally.
Logan Kelly: But the thing is like if you’ve got a string of really long meaty emails, that can be good because you’re not constantly just asking for a deal. You’re really building that narrative. You’re getting the point that you want planted in that inbox. Things like you … and then when we look at content on the phone, it’s like, how quick can you get that conversation started? Are you just like rattling off some scripts that you prepared? Or are you thinking like, “All right, how can I get that prospect talking quicker on the phone? What are some of those things that I can do because I’m a professional to fix that?”
Logan Kelly: So, when we look at content, it’s like don’t try to overplay your hand, but like we know if it’s verbose, verbose, verbose, shorten out the email, reply in line, right? If it’s super scripted, super scripted, super scripted, nobody’s responding, bro it up, conversational, whatever that needs to be. That’s what we’re talking about with content. Just that little tweak, like all right.
Chris Battis: Yeah, totally. That’s interesting. I’ve never thought about … All right, well was a little bit of sidebar here. We talk about in some of our marketing material and when we’re talking to customers or prospects, et cetera about this connotation of what we call here a cocktail style email, right?
Logan Kelly: Cocktail parties.
Chris Battis: Yeah, cocktail parties. So, the idea is like, “Hey.” Like a very casual, direct, quick point. I never thought much about how well if you’re like a new client, you’ve done all this kind of onboarding information sharing and then if we were to put in front of them just like this super basic email after telling you about all the content needs to be created and thought out, it’d be like, “That’s it?” Right?
Logan Kelly: Yeah. I wouldn’t know. I don’t give a shit. Right?
Chris Battis: It turned out that that’s it. Right? At first, you should probably … so not verbose, but there’s definitely some level of kind of like thought out that you understand their business that they want to see in that content. Right?
Logan Kelly: Sure. Sure. Yeah.
Chris Battis: Then if you tweak, you might find the more direct almost tweet length email is more productive. That’s-
Logan Kelly: That’s the thing that I think … it’s just like frustrates me to even have this conversation.
Chris Battis: What?
Logan Kelly: When you go to the golf course, you bring a bag of clubs, right? You don’t use one. That’s like a whole other kind of golf tournament. Right? Like the one club kind of thing. Right?
Chris Battis: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Logan Kelly: So, the cocktail party style messaging. There’s a point to it. If I’m sending a one sentence or two sentence email like two or three actually, over and over again, “Hey, you want to have a meeting with me? You want to do a meeting? You want to do a meeting?” You call him. You leave him a voicemail. “Hey, it’s Logan again. Just calling to see if you want to have a meeting with me.” I’m seeing nothing. So, I have to at some point start providing value to my prospect, which means sometimes that email is going to be long. It’s not going to get a response.
Logan Kelly: It’s going to drive a click through to my website, read the blog. I’m not looking for you to set a meeting with me. I just want you to know that I know what I’m talking about. So when I come back to have that conversation with you, I have built some equity in the conversation. So, that’s what I mean by content, right? It’s not simple, but it’s what’s happening in your outreach right now and start to tweak it. Makes sense?
Chris Battis: Oh yeah, totally. Love it.
Logan Kelly: Nice.
Chris Battis: Cool.
Logan Kelly: Can we move on to list?
Chris Battis: Let’s do it. Number three, list.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. All right. So, new faces make a difference. Right? This is like that’s what I say. Then on the other side of my mouth, it’s like people who you’ve been reaching out to, there might be some of that equity in the conversation. So, you can’t give up on those people. So, we look at frequency, correct?
Chris Battis: So, that touch point, right?
Logan Kelly: Yeah.
Chris Battis: So, the touch point, so you can’t give up. Right?
Logan Kelly: Right. Exactly.
Chris Battis: It could be 9, 7, 9, 10 …
Logan Kelly: Exactly.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: Exactly. Right. So, it’s like you got your cadence. You’re understanding as you diagnose this, it’s like your cadence or when’s the last time I reached out to them, when’s the last time I reached out to them? You got your content … what am I saying? Then you look at your lists and you start to say, “All right, here’s my priority account list. Here’s my mid. Here’s my bluebird if I could get these. If I could do business with Whole Foods, that would be awesome, right?” You structure your day accordingly. So, when we talked about the list, it’s like fresh faces matters. So, let’s go find another couple of accounts. Let’s go find another couple of contacts. Let’s go into LinkedIn. Let’s cultivate that kind of fresh part of your outreach. Find some fresh faces.
Logan Kelly: Also, maybe there’s some people who you’ve forgotten about for 20 days. It doesn’t hurt to check back in with them. So, when you start to think, “Oh, I’m not getting any leads.” Looking at where the particular contacts and accounts are in relation to when the last time you reached out to them. This is not groundbreaking stuff. When’s the last time you reached out to him? What should you be saying? But also, let’s go find some fresh stuff. Let’s go dig up some stuff that maybe you killed last year that, “Oh, it’s time to check in. It’s buying season again.” These kinds of things. So, it’s like the list is not just go find a bunch of new contacts. Don’t bitch to your sales manager or don’t freak out and just remove all of the people that your reps are working in and replace them with fresh stuff. It’s find … let’s balance the priorities in these different buckets to … I would say not balance but rebalance and-
Chris Battis: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:14:30]
Logan Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Did I make sense there? I feel like I knew what I wanted to say, but yeah.
Chris Battis: Let me say it back to you. So, think of it as like a pond in this section of river, right? Refresh with your list, but don’t give up on the water and the pond. Keep [crosstalk 00:14:49]
Logan Kelly: Absolutely.
Chris Battis: Keep working to do that.
Logan Kelly: Yes. Exactly.
Chris Battis: Right?
Logan Kelly: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Chris Battis: The point is look at the list, pay attention to the list, make sure that you’re doing the number of touch points that you think are required. Also, add new list and actually probably remove stuff that you just have determined as junk, right?
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Get rid of the dead stuff. Yeah. Absolutely.
Chris Battis: So, I’d say you nailed it or at least I nailed it.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, good job man. Thanks bro.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Want to trade jobs? We should trade [crosstalk 00:15:16]
Logan Kelly: Now, you can do the SEO.
Chris Battis: [inaudible 00:15:19] Yeah, there’s a lot today. Okay. Next item. Next lever to pull, right? That is signals.
Logan Kelly: Signals.
Chris Battis: Tell me about signals. Yep.
Logan Kelly: Cool. So, what was the last episode we talked about the different kinds of intent data? Let’s look at the first party intent data. Let’s look at the third party intent data. I don’t think many reps have access to a second party data. I don’t think there’s been any reps that are going into the Edwards account.
Chris Battis: Yeah. They could be getting provided that info from a team or something. Right? I’ve been-
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Just-
Chris Battis: [inaudible 00:16:05]
Logan Kelly: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:16:05].
Chris Battis: Whether they look at it or use it or whatever, but there’s people doing sales enablement at a lot of companies.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, exactly. I mean, what is the second party data matter to a rep? I think it’s like let’s look at where people were … how are we interpreting different things that are happening on our website? How are we interpreting intent data? Let’s go to our closed one stuff. Let’s look at like if we’re using intent data, how long ago were most of our opportunities beginning to surge? What percentage of these opportunities were surging? Let’s look at the activity on the website that an opportunity that is closed one had prior to being closed.
Logan Kelly: The reason that we want to do this is there might be something that you have forgotten because in this game things move so fast and it’s, what have you done for me lately? It’s not like I’m going to take inventory of everything that I learned today, that’s uncommon to be able to just operate at that level. So, it’s time to go back and look at the signals that might be helpful. Part of this is just to inspire yourself, right? It’s like things kind of suck, but check this out, you did a bunch of good stuff before. Let’s look at the signals and try to dial in on what should I look at in my current group of people that maybe those are the first people that I reach out to, maybe I push a little bit harder, maybe I get a different person in the organization involved. Maybe there’s a heavy hitter that can come or if you’re the manager or the sales leader like maybe you make the call and kind of juice stuff up.
Logan Kelly: So, that’s what I’m saying with signals. If you have the right systems in place, there’s a lot of data that it kind of tells you what helped you when before. Sometimes kickstarting a lead generation campaign is just seeing what worked before and going back to it, because sometimes we go away from that. So, none of these are a silver bullet, but we don’t have silver bullets. There’s no silver bullets in sales, period. There’s best practices, there’s levers we pull. It might take a day. It might take a week. It might take two weeks, but a week doesn’t make a month. A month doesn’t make a quarter. A quarter doesn’t make a year. So, there’s plenty of time. We just need to start fiddling with stuff.
Chris Battis: Yep. Yep. I love it. So, cool. So, why don’t we … as we kind of wind down here, why don’t you kind of summarize the key takeaways here for someone who’s stressed out about their lead generation stalling up?
Logan Kelly: Cool. Yeah. So number one, don’t abandon what you’re doing. As I said, you can alter your cadence. You can adjust your content. You can look at your list. You can optimize your lists. You either add fresh stuff, kill stuff, put stuff on the back burner, bring stuff in the front burner and look at your signals. Look at the stuff that you have going on. None of those four things say tear up everything that you’re doing and throw it away. You got to keep out what you’re doing. Likely you’re doing it because you believed it was going to work or it has worked in the past.
Chris Battis: Uh-hmm (affirmative).
Logan Kelly: Number two, be scientific. Okay? So, I hate when marketers tell me you got to AB test everything. That’s stupid when you need to move fast, but record what you changed. Look at … you want to create a little bit of chaos when you’re doing this, right? If there’s not a lot of activity, you need to get the tornado spinning. Right?
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: That doesn’t mean don’t abandon like these are the four things that we did. Don’t just start doing things where you break stuff, where you make your data dirty, like sort of data integrity and best practices in place. Yeah.
Chris Battis: Make a mess and let the patterns emerge. Right?
Logan Kelly: Yeah, exactly.
Chris Battis: I’ve never personally been one to very scientifically AB test anything, right?
Logan Kelly: No.
Chris Battis: It’s always just takes too long. Like let’s just go, I’m a ship it guy. Let’s get it going. So, I love that. Just like be a scientist. Be analytical but get shit going. Right?
Logan Kelly: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s like we’re salespeople, but like err on the side of you need to not screw things up and you need to make sure that you understand what you did, but you want chaos. Chaos sells. That brings us into the third one, which is take a risk or two, right?
Chris Battis: Yeah. We kind of merge those two, right? Take a risk, create a tornado, but be a scientist about it.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Well, I think … yeah. Yeah. I think like when we say be scientific, it’s like do things in a way that is methodical. Take a risk or two piece of content, maybe it’s 48 hours before your next touch. Maybe it’s taking a shot at a company that you didn’t ever think you’d get a response from. Whatever those risks look like, take them. Right?
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: We stopped taking risks when things are going well. Right?
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: A lot of times. The best take the risks when you know things are going well because that’s where you really start to get the momentum going, which kind of brings us into the last one and that is keep swinging. So, you’ve got stuff going that you’ve got stuff in process, you can’t stop. It might suck, but you can’t let whatever little momentum you have die. It’s got to be coming to work, we figure out what the next thing is. We try it. If it doesn’t work, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. At the end of the day, it’s about knocking on doors, right? It is just about at-bats, doors, whatever it is. Just keep on swimming.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have some confidence. Right? By definition, if something has stalled out, right? So, if your lead generation has stalled, it was at one point going, right? So, don’t question everything. Keep going. It was working unless something’s clearly changed you probably have noticed that whether it’s market conditions or your product’s got a competitor, whatever, but it was working at some point. So, keep swinging, keep going. Think macro, not just micro. Right? You had a tough few days, but maybe you’re doing great for the month or whatever. Just smooth out the line, keeps swinging, right? That’s [crosstalk 00:23:38]
Logan Kelly: Right.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Cool. All right. This wraps up today’s episode of Intent Topics. I’m Chris Battis.
Logan Kelly: And, I’m Logan Kelly. Thank you so much for stopping by. Please give us a five star review on whatever podcast you listen on. We will see you next time.
Chris Battis: Take care.
