Ep24: Research Prospects to drive conversion w/Kent Murphy

Hey Kent, it's really great to have you back on the podcast. It's been a while since you've been with us. It feels like that. Happy New Year, Kyle.

Happy New Year to you as well. Hard to believe that 2022 is over. It was a busy year for us, wasn't it, personally? It was a very busy year, hence the gap between last episode and this one to kick us off here in 2023.

So the honeymoon is over? The honeymoon's over, yep. All married. Honeymoon was great.

Now back to business. And as you know, my oldest daughter was married last summer as well. So we both married off, so to speak. But again, Happy New Year.

Glad to be back. Awesome. Well, that's great. For any of our listeners that don't know, Kent here at Atlantic Growth Solutions is our COO.

He leads our BDM and SDR teams that work day in, day out to qualify leads on behalf of our clients. and consistently those teams are able to achieve a 70% MQL to SQL and SQL to opportunity conversion rate. And today we are here to talk about research as a part of the reason why those conversion rates are able to happen in the leads that we generate for our clients. So Kent, let me maybe toss it over to you first.

In your words, why is prospect research an important part of the sales process leading towards that type of conversion rate? I think for two reasons, Kyle. First of all, you have to understand who your ideal customer profile is to determine if there is a business fit. So you do your research basically to confirm that the prospect you're about to call meets the profile of your ideal customer and is a fit for the solutions that you are selling.

And then secondly, today we do get prospected a lot, as you and I both talk about often. And you can just feel like it's a mass effort on behalf of the seller who's trying to sell to us. And there's no demonstration of show me you know me. I feel like I'm just a name, a number in their CRM, frankly.

And for that reason, there's no trust or credibility. And I truly feel that that's how, you know, our BDMs and SDRs need to differentiate themselves. Our future buyers, our prospects, you know, are being, there's so much battle for their attention. The least we can do in our research is show them that we know them in an effort to build trust and credibility.

Absolutely. And I think it's important for us to know, too, that that works or is important in both inbound and outbound. right as that inbound lead comes in research so that you're able to respond back to those individuals with the same level of you know insight and show me you know me as a cold outreach which is typically what we're getting prospect with and same with our listeners you know marketing leaders sales leaders revenue leaders every day are getting hit by technology uh sales sales professionals by SEO, digital marketing, sales professionals, etc.

And like you said, I think it's quite easy to quickly understand do they know anything about my business or not? And it's really easy to push the ones that don't aside quite quickly, right? If your email client isn't already doing that for you. That is so true.

No, you are 100% correct. It's the least you can do. You know, everything looks the same. The messaging is confusing.

it's not clear that you know who I am or I can't understand how your solution is even a fit for me in my role. So knowing that, being on the other side of the inbox, you don't want to make that mistake when you're doing the outreach, especially whether it's inbound or outbound. So where do you have your teams, if you were doing this or your teams are doing this, where do they go to start to research that prospect? You know, it is the golden age of information.

We go to the internet, Kyle. I started my career in sales, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s. And I can remember going to the library and looking for books and pulling books off shelves and reading pages upon pages, going to the library to find the microfiche department. And it would take ages, hours to find information.

But, you know, it's just as simple as, you know, first of all, getting on the company's website, going to LinkedIn. And if you're fortunate enough and you invested other tools, you know, there are additional information. You can get insight on the company, the industry in general as well. There's just so much information, whether there are media sources, social media, the company's website.

It's almost endless. You do have to kind of, you have to limit yourself, of course. But, you know, again, it starts with the internet 100%. Awesome.

And I guess the natural follow-up to that is now that you've found those places, what is it you're looking for? What is it your teams should be truly on the hunt for when it comes to research? Oh, 100%. You know, whether you're applying for a job, you're seeking a corporate sponsor for a charity event, or you're prospecting, you absolutely need to know who the company is.

And when I say that, I mean, what products or services do they sell? Who are their customers? How do their customers use their products and services? I'm curious.

Who is their competition? Who is their competitor? And amongst their competitors, where would they rank? These are just some basic things that if I'm calling a prospect, I need to understand.

And those are simple, simple to find as well. In addition to that, the person you're speaking to, again, remember, we're not selling to businesses. We're selling to people. People just like you and I, frankly.

so understanding you know from linkedin perhaps their role in the company where they went to school how long they've been in their role maybe perhaps they've they've they started as in a junior level role and now they're in the c-suite knowing that and is helpful in terms of your outreach and communication as well they have a lot of insight into that company maybe perhaps they started their career in another organization a competitor and have come across um in a more senior role recently These things all matter and they should influence the conversation that you going to have as well But most importantly, where do they sit in the influence of, say, decision-making?

You know, are they the decision-maker? Are they the influencer? And sometimes you get little clues about, from LinkedIn, for example, what do they care about most? Do they care about efficiency?

Do they care about saving money? sometimes that comes up in their profiles or descriptions as well. And I think from both the company and the contact, you can start to find your common ground personally. If you can tie your interest, not only personally, but business to business with the company or the prospect, the ability to be able to bring that into a conversation is important as well.

So knowing the company, knowing the contact, and finding your common ground can be established through really good research. And is there a prerequisite that these sellers that are out there doing the research have industry knowledge and experience in order for them to be able to research these individuals properly? I think the simple answer, Kyle, is probably not the answer you want to hear or the listeners want to hear, but it's no. It's not.

There's no prerequisite, but it helps for sure. but you know i think it comes down to you have to have a process you know like i mentioned earlier about you know when i start researching a prospect you know i always like to start with the company then i'd like to go find the individual that you know is the right persona in that organization to speak to what's my common ground you have to have a process and and it's it should start with the company the contact and the common ground and practice you know a lot of people complain about researching oh it takes too much time slows me down it feels like admin work like it is not admin work at all it is it gets easier and you get better at it and you get faster over time so practice is critical as well and you know i um i and google what you don't know if you see something on a company's website or your contact has a has had a previous role and you don't understand what that role was and you can't relate it to their current role google it you can literally google a question and it'll come up with the answer i have a funny story i was uh i came across it was geotechnical engineer geotechnical engineer and i had no idea what a geotechnical engineer was so of course i google it and wiki was very helpful you know what i learned was it's a branch of civil engineering i get that but it's concerned about the behavior of you know earth materials so basically soil and rocks so i'm thinking to myself you know we live in the beautiful st john river valley we have the mack to quack dam i'm glad there's geotechnical engineers out there because i think that's pretty important but imagine now you've done your research on the company and the person you're about to call studied geotechnical engineering and you have no idea what it is.

Google it, you know, be curious, find answers. It is, it is so helpful. And there was something you said in that response around the common ground, you know, in, in a, in a former career of mine, face-to-face sales, I was fortunate that I had customers coming to me, right? They'd walk through the door and I'd be able to engage with them.

But that concept of being naturally curious, wanting to establish that common ground as you get talking to them, Where are they from? What does their family do? Do they have kids? Do they play sports?

You know, we live in a relatively small city and with a relatively large network, there is almost always a way that I could find, you know, one or two degrees of separation with those individuals. And it was going to help me be a better salesperson to them. It was going to build more trust. It was going to build more credibility and, uh, and really make sure that, that my goal of selling them the best quality product that we, that we carried, uh, was, was still on the table.

And it seems like that's exactly what you're saying here. It's just, we don't have the luxury all the time of somebody walking through our door, walking into our email inbox saying that they're looking for something and then having to go, uh, being able to go do that research. So doing that effective research, right? Looking in the right places, being naturally curious, finding something that can establish that common ground with the prospect should lead you to a higher converting sales process down the road.

So I love that response. The piece you said about no admin work, right? Or not wanting to do admin work. I think you have to, as a revenue leader, marketing leader, sales leader, step back and say, are we achieving the conversion rate that we want?

And if we aren't, what things can we do? Because there's not, in your opinion, is there ever a silver bullet? If you want to make that conversion rate better, is there one thing you can do to make it better? I don't think it's a combination of things.

It's, you know, doing all the right things consistently over and over and over and being patient about the process. It will pay off. And that's why we're here today, right? We feel that research is one of those pieces, one of those components to an effective sales process.

And, you know, if your sellers are saying they don't like to do that admin work, but we're over here saying that our team is able to achieve, you know, a higher than industry average conversion rate because of the level of research and the process behind that research and the intention behind it, then maybe it's time to just kind of take a step back and see if there's a way that we can, that we can, you as an organization can improve your team's process around research in order to start your journey towards a higher conversion rate.

And that's, you're absolutely correct, Cal. And I just wanted to add one thing. In addition to doing research, you should follow, if your ideal customer is in the financial services industry, as an example, and we're lucky enough, we have a large fintech client and we've learned this, you know who sells collections solutions solutions that help banks and credit unions more effectively manage and collect any arrears We know the impact that COVID has had on employment higher interest rates the pending recession perhaps in North America These are all going to influence arrears, debts that are going to fall.

if I'm a BDM or an SDR and I'm calling into the financial services market I should be listening and reading the news as it relates to the financial services industry the impact that interest rates in the recession are having on the economy the workforce and these types of things because you can be assured that your future buyer is paying attention to those things as well so it's important to, you know, create your Google alerts, you know, push notifications on certain types of news so that you can stay current because often that can be your greatest source of common ground as well.

Absolutely. And talk about a conversation starter too, right? Like we're always, everybody's looking for, well, what's the best way to start a conversation? What's the best way to start a cold call with a prospect?

If you have that relevant research, insight, industry event that you can talk about and just use that as a soft landing with that prospect. Like what a better way to show them that you're in their industry, you have a sense of what it is that they're seeing and going through every single day on your journey to building that trust and credibility with them in the hopes of having an effective sales process. Exactly. I think you're exactly right.

So, okay, how would you coach someone who doesn't know the industry well to do that effective research? I know you said that it wasn't necessarily important that they have deep industry knowledge or deep knowledge of the solution or the prospects, but how would you coach them to do that effective research? Well, I'll just go back to the first point that I made or the last point that I made. Make sure you're tuned into the news.

if your your clients or future buyers are you know fortune 500 or fortune 2000 companies whether maybe you subscribe to bloomberg or msnbc you know sometimes the interviews with the cfos and the ceos of those companies are broadcast they're going to share with you their number one challenges their goals their focus and if you're a company who sells products or services to fortune 500 or fortune 2000 companies what better source than to be tuned in and hear an interview you know designed at you know designed for that c-suite to give you exactly what their focus is that's invaluable to me so i believe bdms and sdrs first and foremost be curious Go out and seek information and subscribe and set up your Google Alerts and just start consuming information.

Just be curious about the world around you and especially the world that affects your ideal customer or your future buyer. I think the second thing, too, is really take inventory of what you know and what you don't know. And start asking those things that you don't know. Go find them out.

Do your research. Go and look them up. and and most importantly do write it down take don't trust your memory write it down take good notes if you're using a crm i think it's critical that you know you write down your research you um i you know i i often say you maybe you template it you create a template sorry or you you make it you organize it in such a way that when you're talking to the individual you're glancing down your notes and your notes tell you exactly you know who the company is what their products and services are those things that i just mentioned uh earlier don't copy and paste how many things do we copy and paste and we remember very few of them put bullet points in so you can just look at the bullet point and go oh that bullet point is and then and then you know exactly how to finish that statement because you want to be able to have the ability to have a conversation listen but also be reviewing your notes at the same time but be listening as well it's really really important and i think as you were asking you know how to coach somebody you know get in the practice of writing down good questions you know we lost uh you know barbara walters this past uh this past holiday she was probably one of the greatest interviewers and the time and preparation and the number of questions that she would prepare in advance of interview is amazing.

And I think, you know, having great questions ready is a great way to coach your BDM and SDR, how to control the conversation and demonstrate trust and credibility through asking intelligent questions. And then again, find your commonality. Everything has to be relevant and and you know I often reserve a certain amount of real estate in my CRM just for my notes I don't want it to be too long I want it to be just just right and I make it as relevant as possible so that I can in my conversation I can be looking glancing down I don't have to read it there's just a single word and that single word just reminds me it's like tying a you know a string around your finger.

It just reminds you to bring up a certain point next. The piece you said around templates, I'd like to explore a little bit further. How does your team use a template in their research? Is it something that's included in their sales force or in their CRM that they assign to each either target account or prospect?

We started to do that, Kyle. That's a good point. We did a masterclass recently because I was seeing that people approached it differently and and i wasn't hearing the research actually being used in calls so i wanted to make sure that we all had a process that we would follow and we just simply templated company contact common ground and we refer to the common ground as you know find your find your symmetry find your common ground with that particular individual and we highlighted those things as well and you can creatively do that in crm as well and we're using a version of CR of Salesforce called high velocity sales and the customization we able to create We have open fields specifically designed to for a bdm or sdr to put in their research in the company contact and common ground section and we often will we also create lead scoring so we ask ourselves a specific question and based on the the yes or no it indicates whether that is an ideal customer or not the higher the more yeses the higher the score and of course i hope the research is more relevant um as well but i believe right right now i mean if you want to improve your time to first call you know knowing where to go to get the information um you know making taking the most relevant information that you're going to use and populating that in your crm is going to be highly effective and you also i mean your focus has to be on optimizing your connect with your prospect as well because it's important to get to establish the trust and credibility early, or you're just not going to have the attention of your prospect.

They're not going to take you seriously. You know, we here at AGS, we talk often about that time to first call, right? And how long would it take if you dropped a new target account into somebody's sales force before they could make a confident first call to that, to that prospect. and I feel that doing effective research you know with a process specifically looking to confirm certain details in order for that first phone call to happen like those two things go hand in hand if you're effectively researching towards being able to call that prospect as quickly as possible but with a high level of confidence like those those two things add up among other things towards a higher converting sales lead.

Do you feel the same way? I do. I mean, I've asked BDMs and SDRs just to walk me through their process. We've timed it.

They give me feedback and so forth. But it can be anywhere from five to 10 minutes for someone who's very, very quick and is quite astute to the industry and the market in general. But someone new who's just starting off in a career in business development or sales development, it may take them 20 to 30 minutes. But again, with practice and having a process, you can minimize that and be more effective once you know what you're looking for and you know how your prospect will respond, you know, what certain things.

And then you go look for those specific things and you'll learn. It's a learning process. And we're finding more and more now. You know, 10 years ago, I could create a playbook and felt pretty confident that if you ask these questions and you say this, it's going to get you the result.

Just do the activity and do that every day. It's changed. It's changed so much. There's not a single playbook that you could use this month that's going to help you be successful in three months.

You've got to be constantly asking yourself, why? Why is this working? Why is this not working? And seek those answers and test them.

And again, it comes back to that, be curious. When you're coaching people, coach them to be curious. Hopefully you're hiring people who are curious, but you got to teach them to be curious, you know, by asking, you know, what do I know? What do I don't know?

You know, keep asking questions, but the questions are, keep asking questions of yourself in your research and prepare your questions because there's only certain things you can get from researching online. And then there's other things that you're only going to get by asking effective questions. So even researching the questions you're going to ask is just as important as well. And I think the combination of the two add to trust and credibility and will optimize our connect rates and subsequently our, you know, our ability to have meaningful conversations that lead to pain points, which lead to qualified leads, which then leads to sales opportunities.

We, those numbers that you had said are interesting. I wonder if the revenue leaders that listen to our podcast would have a sense of how long it takes their team to research one target account or one prospect. You said, let's say on average, you said between five and ten, seven minutes for somebody that's fairly well experienced and likely has some sort of process. If they get 40 new target accounts a week or even every two weeks, that's 280 minutes.

Wow. That's what, four and a half hours of their week? Yeah. If you look at somebody that's 15 minutes to research a prospect times those 40, that's 600 minutes.

That's 10 hours of their week or, you know, two weeks, depending on how many new target accounts they get, that they're spending just trying to get to know that list. You know, I don't think there's anybody that listens to this that couldn't tell me that an effective process with some sort of template or checklist, right, in place for their sellers isn't going to make them more efficient. And we're saying the added benefit of that is your conversion rate's likely going to go up.

Sounds like a double win. Totally. Totally. I love the, I love numbers.

I love the fact that you've calculated that. And, uh, you know, I'm convinced too. You've got me convinced. Well done.

Awesome. Well, Hey, I think that's, you know, we always like to wrap up our episodes with some sort of practical tip that our, uh, listeners could take back to their teams and, and leverage right away. It sounds to me like it's something around a template that they come up with that gets handed out to their team or that their team buys into or creates, you know, together as a group, but that is consistent among them so that they're always working towards trying to find that same information and not everybody's trying to do it differently, which usually causes inefficiency.

Would you say that's a good practical tip to take away from this episode? Absolutely. I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a great tip and, um, I can't wait to see, I can hear the feedback from people who start trying to, trying to use it and see firsthand the benefit it can have. Awesome.

Well, Hey Ken, I really appreciate it. I think next episode we, we take this one step further and we start to talk about how effective research starts to make its way into either the written or verbal communication that you start to have with these prospects. I think that's naturally the logical next step for this, right? What now that we have the research done well and efficiently, where, where do we take it next?

Can I, Can I count on you to be a guest with us on the next episode for that one? Absolutely. I can't wait. Awesome.

Kent, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Happy New Year. My pleasure.