In today’s newsletter, I’ll share a useful prioritization framework if you have to deal with inbound leads. It comes from a 1:1 coaching session we did with a customer who is dealing with an important flow of inbound leads.

It may come as a surprise, but inbound leads aren’t always worth pursuing. This framework will help you understand where to put your effort.

Here’s how, step-by-step:

Step 1: Score your leads

Before contacting a lead, you need to give it a score. A score is related to the behavior of your lead. Everything from website visits, webinar signup, demo request, and so on.

There are countless intent-signals and triggers you can use to score a lead. For example, your marketing team may send you unprioritized leads lists with details about their activity. A lead who signed up for a webinar 3 months ago has a low score. They most likely aren’t in the market for your solution.

On the contrary, a lead who visited your website 10 times in the last week, downloaded more than 3 resources, and has been viewing the pricing page a few times has a high score.

Step 2: Grade your leads

Second dimension of our matrix is the grade of a lead. The grade has to do with the profile of the lead. Look at the firmographic and demographic data about the lead. What company are they working for, what’s their job title, have they recently switched jobs?

All this data will give you a good understanding of the quality of the lead. For example, an intern at a shady company on the other side of the world has a low grade. On the contrary, the CRO of a multi-million dollar tech company has an excellent grade (if you’re selling to this type of people).

You can build an ICP Matrix if you want to have a benchmark to help you grade leads.

Step 3: Prioritize your leads

Meet the Inbound Lead Prioritization Matrix

In today’s newsletter, I’ll share a simple tactic you can use if you want to book meetings at in-person events. Q4 is usually jam-packed with trade shows and events. Marketing teams spend a ton of money to get a booth, yet most sales reps don’t maximize these events for pipeline.

The system I’m about to share is one that a sales rep I coach has been using successfully at Web Summit to book 8 meetings. He even managed to close two deals, while he was at the event.

Step 1: Build your profile in the event app

When you go to an event, there’s usually an app to help the attendees get to the location, understand the schedule, and communicate with other attendees. Most salespeople sleep on the opportunity to use this app to book meetings.

Instead of just using the app to plan your event, take some time to build your profile. It’s usually similar to a LinkedIn profile, with a picture, a headline, a bio, and a a few options to get in touch with you. Get all these elements right. You can apply the concepts in this free guide to help you.

Step 2: Build your list of prospects

Now that your profile is ready, you can start building a list of prospects to contact. Just like any other list, start by updating your Ideal Customer Profile. Find the types of companies you’d like to contact, and find the ATL and the BTL you’d like to start conversations with.

When this is done, you don’t have any excuse to start prospecting. You have a list of people who will be in the same room as you (even if it’s a big one), so you can get to work.

Step 3: Send a short, direct message

This is where most people who use the event app make a mistake. They craft a cookie-cutter message and they send it to everyone. They pitch their company, and ask for a meeting at the event.

Stop that immediately.

Instead, write a short, direct message. Something like: “FirstName, when can I come to see you at your booth?”.

You’d be surprised. The rep I’ve been coaching for that event was able to book 8 meetings. He did his homework, he built his profile in the app, he created a list of prospects, and he sent them this message.

As a result, he was able to get a 30%+ reply rate, he was able to start conversations, and he navigated them to book meetings.

Step 4: Meet at the event

I’ve been to a few trade shows myself, and I wasn’t prepared as I should be. I was wandering around, looking for people to approach, without meetings lined up. I ended up collecting a few business cards here and there, with almost no opportunities generated.

That was back when I was starting my career as a sales rep. Luckily, my coaching customer didn’t do the same.

With all the meetings lined up, he showed up to booths at Web Summit, had a ton of conversations, and he was even able to close two deals, while being at the event.

He didn’t approach people to pitch his product, instead he tried to understand their plans for the rest of the year and for 2025. Conversations flowed naturally, he was able to find problems, quantify them, and craft a solution with his customers.

And this is how you can book meetings at in-person events. Use the event app, build lead lists, send them a short, direct message, and have natural conversations with them at the event. This will help you maximize the opportunities from events, so try it next time you’re at one.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris

P.S. If you’re interested in getting coached individually like my customer, I’m opening a few coaching slots. Right now, I’m working on a weekly 1:1 coaching, unlimited WhatsApp async conversations, and custom projects when necessary. I charge €600 per month or €1.500 for 3 months, cancel any time. If that’s interesting to you, you can book a quick chat so we can see if we’re a fit.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll share how you can organize your day as a remote salesperson. When working remotely, self-discipline is critical. If you can’t stay organized, you’ll spend your day procrastinating, and your results will immediately suffer.

Good remote sales jobs are hard to come by, but they still exist. If you want to find or keep a good remote position, you need a system to understand what to focus on to be successful in your professional and personal life.

Here’s mine, step-by-step:

Step 1: List your projects and tasks

Selling remotely isn’t just about running discovery calls and sending Docusigns. There are tons of different projects and tasks you need to execute to make sure you perform. There are also tons of projects and tasks that won’t help you.

The first thing you need to do is to list the projects and the tasks related, so you can have an idea of the ones that are important.

Let me give you an example. We recently moved to Mexico with my wife and my son, and the first few weeks have been super hectic. Between the move, furnishing the house, and starting new businesses, I kept getting behind my work, so I decided to list the projects and tasks that were important to make sure I could keep selling. Here are 3 projects I worked on:

Restart prospecting routine

• Define daily ritual
• Catch up on follow-ups
• Add new daily prospecting blocker

Revamp content strategy

• Review top-performing content
• Build video recording studio
• Add new content planning and building blockers

Launch weekly mentoring offering – Send me “Mentoring” on WhatsApp if you’re interested

• Survey newsletter subscribers
• Prospect existing customers
• Build mentoring packages

Step 2: Do an audit of your day

Now that you know what projects you need to focus on, you can start auditing your day. It’s often the last thing you’ll want to do when you’re busy, but I guarantee it will help you get more clarity and reduce the stress related to your work.

To audit your day, write down everything you’re doing in a given day (you can do more than one day to get a better view of what you’re working on). Do include all the personal tasks that fill your day. If you’re working remotely, your personal and professional life will often blend. For example, here was a typical weekday for me, before reorganizing my day:

• Wake up and take calls, catch up on messages before my son wakes up (15 min max)
• Comment and catch up on my LinkedIn post while preparing breakfast for my son
• Bring my son to his kindergarten
• Clean up the kitchen, take a shower
• Go back to working (it’s already 10AM by the time I get started)
• Go down to grab a coffee
• Work a bit
• Eat lunch
• Try to work and realize I’m too tired
• Take a nap instead

When you do this, you start seeing patterns and realize how much time you’re wasting by switching tasks. In my case, I realized that:

• I was working 2 hours max, because I kept getting interrupted
• I was not present for my son when he was waking up
• I would do sport irregularly
• After 2PM, I’d be so drained by the constant task switching that I wouldn’t be able to get back to work

I was basically letting my work permeate into my personal life, making both less enjoyable.

Step 3: Reorganize your day

With this audit, I had a clear vision of what was wrong. I understood why I felt like there wasn’t enough hours in my day. That’s when I made a few changes that have drastically improved my efficiency and the pleasure I took from working from home.

Here’s how my day looks like now: