Sales Prospecting: My 4-step method for pipeline growth

Course details

Ultimately our prospects and clients care about business value and at the end of this course you will have the confidence to discuss business value with your prospects in their terms.

This course shares with you the best of my learnings and experiences from over 30 years of strategic selling and you will be introduced to the 4 steps in my method:

1. Segmentation.
2. Business value.
3. Relationships.
4. Unique business relevance.

Each section can be executed on its own or in any combination.  Importantly, each step contributes to you identifying your best prospects and accelerating your pipeline growth.  By structuring and executing your go-to-market in the sequence of the sections in this course, you will have a repeatable process that will support your success year-on-year.

Before we get into the course proper, I will set the scene of each section:

1. Segmentation.
   • This section ensures that you have given thought to differentiating your territory and then prioritizing your accounts within your territory.  By taking the time to segment, you are giving yourself the reason to be focused in a set of accounts. Without this self-belief and understanding it becomes too easy to flip accounts at the first evidence of buyer resistance.
2. Business Value.
   • This section is the centre piece around which all else stands or falls.  You will finish this section with a framework that I have developed and road-tested for over a decade.  By using this framework, you will never have to shy away from a challenge around the business value you bring to a prospect.  In fact, you will lead with this discussion and in so doing immediately differentiate yourself from your competitors.
3. Relationships.
   • There are 2 types of relationships.  Those you have and those you want to have.  You will build on the Business Value section through this section and develop a repeatable process for the identification of key relationships you need and I will equip you with a way to understand what matters most to each prospect - business value.
4. Unique Business Relevance.
   • In this stage, you combine a detailed understanding of your competitive environment with your capability or solution. This is where you need to think deeply about whether you can win or not. In addition, you will give due consideration to the value of competing alone or with business partners.

To wrap up this introduction, I would like share the following for context:

• I worked for a start-up for 3 years then worked as an account manager on a major global bank for 5 years and my learnings from that 8-year period profoundly impacted my approach to prospecting.
• My learnings from that 8-year block is what I have honed and share with you here.

So, let's get started.