Try this prospecting tactic to book more meeting

2022 is in full motion and I have recently discovered a prospecting tactic that allowed me to book 4 meetings for Tolstoy. It’s inspired by one of my students, Jack Lancaster.

Jack is the co-founder of Spoke.ai and a product guy by nature. He has been working at N26 for a while, before launching d a few businesses successfully. Now he’s trying to help Product Managers share information across remote organizations.

He has decided to try user research as a trigger to get in touch with product managers, and book meetings with them. Here’s his tactic and how you can use it too:

1. Have a clear ICP

First thing to do is to understand who you’re trying to reach out to. I typically separate prospects into two categories:

• Above The Line Buyer (ATL): Fiscal buyers, typically decide/change budgets based on their key initiatives
• Below The Line Buyer (BTL): User buyers, typically own budgets and cannot go above without the ATL’s permission

For example, a CRO (ATL) of a €200M ARR SaaS won’t have the same problems as the Head of Sales Development (BTL) of a €10M ARR EdTech business.

2. Know your prospects’ problems

ATLs and BTLs have totally different problems and initiatives.

ATLs will typically worry about strategic problems and initiatives like risks, market shares, brand, or time. BTLs will focus on more specific problems like how to get a raise, how to avoid being fired, how to hire people fast enough, and so on.

For example, a CRO is worrying about reaching her €300M ARR target within 12 months, when a Head of Sales Development is freaking out about his +30% opportunities quota.

These goals come with a series of problems and challenges to overcome.

3. Lead with these problems

Now that you know who to speak to, and what problems they care for, include the exact wording you found in your outreach. Be as precise and descriptive as possible.

For example, I’ll ask the CRO what she’s doing to prevent sales reps from quitting when she announces that every one of them has to generate opportunities through outbound.

For the Head of Sales Development, I’ll ask how he’s planning on reaching his goals with a team of SDRs who only deals with inbound leads.

4. Ask if a user research call would make sense

Finally, ask if they would be interested in telling you more about these challenges, because you may have something of interest for them.

For example, I’ll write:

“If any of these issues sound familiar, would it be a bad idea to hop on a quick chat so I can give you insights on how to mitigate them?”

And I insist on the “would it be a bad idea”. It’s a negative reversing sentence that works extremely well in cold outreach.

In summary:

• Know your ICP
• Know their problems
• Lead with these problems
• Ask for a user research call

Be an aspirin, not a vitamin.

And if you need a simple framework to find your Ideal Customer Profile, find out what problems they are working on, and build your outreach sequence based on them, go check the New Outreach System. Use the code “week2email” on checkout to get a €20 discount.