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#87: Listen as Stephen Beach, Co-Founder and CMO at Vantage Impact, discusses following up and nurturing prospects who may not necessarily be ready to buy right now.
Explore the human side of sales and business with host Tyler Lindley. Leaders in their field share a dose of inspiration through stories about life and business. Sales professionals provide tactical tips you can put into practice today. It all comes together to help you chart your path forward.
Achieve your goals on your terms — get inspired by stories from extraordinary people, elevate your performance with the latest outbound tactics, and find the lift you need to take your career to the next level.
The Sales Lift Podcast
Episode #87
Nurturing Prospects that Aren't Ready to Buy Yet w/ Stephen Beach
Hosted by: Tyler Lindley
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[00:00:00] Tyler Lindley: Hey, Sales Lift Nation it's your host. Tyler Lindley. Today, I have Stephen Beach back on the podcast. Hey Stephen, how's it going?
[00:00:10] Stephen Beach: It's got a good guest on there and humbled to talk to you today.
[00:00:14] Tyler Lindley: You joined a small and exclusive group excited to have you back on Stephen reminder as a co-founder and CMO at Vantage Impact is located down in sunny Tampa for.
Today, we're going to be jamming on following up and nurturing prospects who may not necessarily be ready to buy right now. They're in your pipeline. There's going to be a delay. So they're not ready to buy today. How do you nurture those prospects? How do you stay in front of them? First of all, Stephen, why is this nurturing even important?
Why should sales reps and sales teams be nervous? And their prospects who aren't ready to buy today.
[00:00:48] Stephen Beach: I think a lot of times we put the emphasis on generating new prospects, generating new conversations. We do a lot of grinding on cold email, phone calls, all the different social selling, whatever you do.
And a lot of the emphasis is always go get more, go get more, go get more. And I think sometimes we can overlook this. That it's actually more valuable and a lot of times faster, more efficient to nurture your prospects, that you've already done a lot of the leg work to get them out of the gates. It's actually a more powerful channel to put a lot of time and energy into it.
I want to talk about that a little bit, just to give some really practical tips and tricks things that I've seen our clients doing that have worked things that I've done that have worked well for us to nurture your prospects, especially over a longer sales. We're not selling a pair of shoes that somebody can make a decision on in an hour.
This is can take days, weeks, months for a couple of our clients. They don't take over a year. Wow. For really the full sales cycle to go through. And there's a lot of time there that you're spending on building the relationship. And it's bigger than just getting the next one in the door. Once they get in the door.
How do you invite them to sit down for dinner and have a drink and have a conversation with you? I think there's quite a bit of opportunity. I
[00:01:56] Tyler Lindley: totally agree. And I think a lot of people listening to the show, B2B sales, right tech sales, it is more of a considered purchase where it is a longer sales cycle and it's not transactional in nature.
And it does require, like you said, building that relationship over time, nurturing that prospect and educating them. You brought up some tips and some tactics. What do you recommend that folks do? Cause you, and I hear this question a lot. How do I stay in front of this prospect over this span of months without just checking in.
It's easy to check in, but you're not really adding any value. So how do you do that without just checking in, but you also want to stay top of mind on these longer sales
[00:02:32] Stephen Beach: cycles. That's a great question. That's what we hear from our clients. I'm getting annoying to my prospect. I feel like I'm just annoying that I've already sent them three emails.
It's been three. I feel like nothing's really happening on their side. I don't want to be the annoying salesperson. Totally get it. Awesome. I'm there. First thing I think practically speaking is double-check yourself that you're not telling yourself a story and we can do this as sales reps all the time.
And you may be telling yourself a story that you're annoying. Whereas in fact, if your product or your service is really going to. Your prospect and you know, this, assuming that is the case, which I am, because otherwise the people listening to this show probably have moved on to the next job, if that wasn't the case.
So if you truly believe in your product or your service, you know, deep down that it's going to help, that's your mindset. HubSpot talks about this really well, helping not selling and telling ourselves that story of helping because that unlocks all these other tactical things that we're going to talk through today.
So that's the first thing is realizing and understanding that by working with. You're assumed to be customer. You're going to be client, got at least closer to solving their problems.
[00:03:35] Tyler Lindley: Do you think it's the belief almost belief in your product and your service and the fact that it can help them almost.
It starts with that. If you don't have that belief, then all this nurturing and trying to stay in touch with them is going to feel probably a little bit desperate. Yeah,
[00:03:49] Stephen Beach: it's going to fizzle out if you do that, especially like I said, it's consultative. It's relationship based. It's not transactional. If you don't truly believe that it's anything you do is going to fizzle out.
You're going to lose motivation. You're going to lose your energy. And we know what happens from there.
[00:04:04] Tyler Lindley: The deal slowly dies a painful death. There's just
[00:04:06] Stephen Beach: this slowly wilting flower that just dies
[00:04:09] Tyler Lindley: on the bottle. Exactly. If you do feel like that, I feel like you would think that your continued outreach would be annoying because you probably are just checking in and you're not doing it with any kind of enthusiasm and you're not really trying to build a relationship.
And you only halfway believe that you're helping this person long-term, that would be annoying. You would be annoyed in that same circumstance. Exactly.
[00:04:29] Stephen Beach: It's embracing the customer centric mindset, the client centric mindset. Thinking about it from there. What am I going to say? It's not gonna be. But still lets me get in front of them so that I can stay in touch so that they know I'm here so that they know I'm trying to progress their deal so that I can help them.
That's in a nutshell, if you look at it that way, step one. And then I think there's a few things that we'd done. Tactically speaking, that I'd love to share people. Talk about industry news articles. That's one, find an article that's relevant to your client. Come across on your LinkedIn feed or whatever it is and your Google alerts and just copy and paste the URL and send it over to them.
Hey, I saw this article this morning, thought of you, hope you're doing well. Don't ask for anything. Just send that.
[00:05:07] Tyler Lindley: It sounds like in order to do that, Stephen, you mentioned Google alerts, LinkedIn newsfeed. So almost like staying up to date on what are some of those articles coming out as a sales rep, you need to be compiling those kinds of things so that when you see a connection.
Prospect Jeff over here might think that's interesting. I should send that to Jeff. You almost have to have a repository of those and be staying up to date or how do you do that? That's a good
[00:05:29] Stephen Beach: question. I stay up to date with that. You stay mindful of the questions, the topics that people are asking you about.
That's the first piece, and then you have a marketing team. Do you have any kind of marketing support, go to the, whatever the emails are that they're sending out and the collateral that they're producing, they should really. Compiling and database of this type of stuff that you could just pull from. But other than that, the thought leaders that you may follow on social channels.
And like I say, Google alerts, little things like that. You want to make sure you set it up so that you want to spend a lot of time on it, unless you want it to be really fast, but something that you grab really quick and shoot it over to your.
[00:06:01] Tyler Lindley: And this doesn't necessarily have to be content. The sales reps company has created themselves.
This can be third-party content.
[00:06:08] Stephen Beach: Correct. And a lot of ways it's more powerful that way. Oh, I saw this Forbes article that reminded me of you. They were talking about the minimize your time spent on zoom calls, whatever the topic is that you think might be relevant to your prospect. And in a lot of ways, I think that's actually more powerful because again, you're helping, you're not selling the prospect sees it's like, all right.
And engaging with me in a way that's not just, Hey, I'm checking in. Are you ready to sign my proposal yet? It's way more
[00:06:33] Tyler Lindley: helpful than that. Yeah, exactly. Which I mean, by the way, could lead to that conversation, even if you're just sending over, like you said, the Forbes article or just, Hey, I saw this thought of you.
They could have a question, they could have something and update that it's like, oh, I should remind Steven what's going on because there's an update on the deal or this has changed or whatever. These can start conversations that other. We'll be hard to start because if you're just checking in and that's just annoying, but if you're adding value now you've got that open space for dialogue that maybe can take place.
[00:07:03] Stephen Beach: Exactly. Third party news articles and other one that's similar. It would be third-party tools that you're using that you think might be helpful for your prospect to, because honestly, I think this is something we all do we use. I don't know how many tools you actually use in a day. I can think of 10 off the top of my head that I use tons.
Recently, I came across a couple of new ones that I've really. And I just sent him to a few people that I've been working with, uh, prospecting with. And Hey, Maggie thought you might like to see the sales reach tool. It's really cool. And here's what you can do with it. Here's what I'm doing with it. Maybe look under the hood thought, I'd share it.
We worked with financial advisors a lot. One of the things that I've been using is one-to-one video. You and I have been doing this for a long time. Loom video card soapbox, one-on-one video. So much
[00:07:42] Tyler Lindley: opportunity to use those tools. Like you just you're using that example. You could show them, could share your screen.
It makes it somewhat more personable and.
[00:07:50] Stephen Beach: I say, Hey John, great talking with you few weeks ago. Curious if you've ever used a tool like this, I'm using this tool called loom. It's very slick. Just like I'm on video with you right now. You can touch base with your clients like this. You can touch base with the prospects.
Let me know what you think. Talk to you later. That's all I do. And now he's introduced to this tool. He sees it working exactly. He sees a good example of it. And by the way, the whole time I'm there, I'm
[00:08:12] Tyler Lindley: in front of him. Exactly. I never have really thought about it that way at the industry news articles is like a little bit more top of mind.
I think when people think of how do I nurture it, let me just send them an article. I think that might be interesting, but showing them a tool that might be interesting, whether that's related to your business or not. Hey, this is a tool I've been using thought you might. Taking a look at it. That is really that helping mindset that I think would really allow you to stand out.
I think it also continues to position yourself as that consultative almost friend versus, oh, the sales rep, which can have a different kind of connotation. Sometimes people think, oh, sales reps are always after something they're always after the deal. They're always after their commission, this commission breath, I can smell it from a mile away versus you just being helpful and being upfront.
I think that could be a way to differentiate yourself against a lot of the other sales reps.
[00:08:59] Stephen Beach: Commission breath. I'm going to use that on if you don't mind.
[00:09:02] Tyler Lindley: Yeah, no doubt. That's when the rep is really getting aggressive. Only thinking about that. Exactly. Prospects can hear it too. Prospects can hear it in your share your third party tool example.
It would be almost impossible if you have commission breath doing something like that, just because it's almost unrelated to the deal, which is interesting. Steve. Some reps might be like, ah, I don't want to send them using loom or whatever I'm using these new tools because that has nothing to do with closing the deal.
What would you say back to them if they gave you that feedback? I think it has
[00:09:31] Stephen Beach: everything to do with closing the deal. How do you close the deal? Ask yourself that. How do you close the deal? I think a lot of the times the answer is continue to show value to the prospect over and over and over again.
Yeah. During the sales person. Ask yourself. How do you close the deal? It can't just be simple as I lower the price. If you did that, you'd have already exited your business. There's something deeper than that. Ask yourself, how do you close a deal and probably your answer's going to come back to, I create a relationship.
I continue to stay in front of the. For as long as possible with them engaging with me the way you do that, as you keep showing them value as many things as you can, that are directly related to them. And then you do that over and over and over and over
[00:10:11] Tyler Lindley: again. I think you said, especially in this case that we're talking about where you've got a longer sales cycle, just dropping the price, you could drop the price at month one and there we're still 12 months out from really being able to do anything.
So what's the point. Why would I give up that margin? When you don't even need to, when you're half to build this long-term relationship and really that's what we're talking about here. I liked that you brought up relationships and value at the end of the day. As we're nurturing prospects, we're trying to build a relationship and we're trying to continuously add value over and over and over and over
[00:10:42] Stephen Beach: again.
Exactly. I just thought of something else too. So now that you said that the other thing that this will do is you continue to build a relationship. You add the value. Are you using loom? Let's go back to that and say, I'm using this. It's really cool. Whatever. I'm not afraid to ask for a referral or somebody else that I could talk to.
That's similar to my prospect that I'm engaging with as well at that point. Hey, I'm helping you. This is awesome. I know your deal is six months out because of timing or because of budget. Because of whatever, but you can understand what we do. Do you understand the services that we provide or the product that we provide?
Is there anyone in your network that would benefit from talking with me or just having a 15 minute introduction? And actually a lot of times I get good response to that. Because again, if you position yourself as the helper, the dynamic helper, that's out there just helping, helping everyone then who doesn't want to share that kind of person.
One other thing on that is you could do. I asked for a Pearl, but you could also give a referral or somebody to work with. Again, recently, Courtney, my prospect will probably work with her, but it'll be nine to 12 months away, depending on a number of things. So that's fine. But I know she had mentioned a few different things like PR she mentioned video, all this stuff.
I'm like, actually I know a PR person. Would you like an intro? Just say, oh yeah, I'd love one. Okay. So I put them on. Yeah, that's the touch. Introduce somebody else from your network that could be valuable for your prospect.
[00:12:03] Tyler Lindley: I love that you're talking about doing this before you've even sold. When we think about referrals giving or receiving, we think, oh, that's limited to post sale.
That is a post-sale activity. They've signed on the dotted line. Now, do you know anybody else that you can help or let me introduce you to so-and-so whereas in this longer sales cycle, that can be another one of the. Adding value activities, especially I love giving them a referral, introducing someone to them that they might could help, or they might could work with or whatever that to me is huge.
Not just asking for them from them, but giving them proactively to the prospect
[00:12:37] Stephen Beach: as well. DACA that goes such a long way. You do a good job of this with your network through the podcast, especially, but it goes such a long way. There's a lot of power in somebody who has a big network. That's deep that's experts in what they do.
And that you're just willing to share without getting anything in return. That's extremely
[00:12:54] Tyler Lindley: valuable. There's a lot of books that are written about this, but it's just that network. We're all that six, seven degrees of separation, whatever is totally true for me and you. This podcast episode is a great example of that.
Stephen. We worked together year or two back, and then we decided to reconnect to do some podcasts. Now we're doing our second podcast episode. It's led to some cool conversations outside of the. And it's just a way for us. So we're almost nurturing this relationship. You've got to be nurturing relationships with old colleagues, with friends, with prospects, with your internal colleagues, you know, people that you work with right now, people that live down the street, you never know who you can connect with and how this can help and benefit your prospect.
If you can make some of those introductions, I think you'll always be networking. Sales is not always be closing. It's always be
[00:13:38] Stephen Beach: networking. Of yourself. I hadn't talked to you for a year, whatever it was two years. So notice the whole thing is a blur because of COVID children. Recently,
[00:13:49] Tyler Lindley: you have a good excuse there.
[00:13:51] Stephen Beach: Yeah. Who knows if we to reconnect, but now, well guess what, Tyler has a podcast. So Tyler invites me on his podcast and I'm like, wait, what does Tyler do again? I just asked you before the podcast who you work with, what do you do for them now? You're in. Rolodex. I can go to people and say, yeah, you need someone that can help coach your reps.
Especially tech sales. I got a guy like he's. I used to work with them. I talked to him all the time and trust him. And it's all because of your podcasts. And that's another thing. Podcast invites. You have anything that you could invite. Prospect to it's like showcase them, bring them on. We just started doing this with whim or written form for women advisors for women's history month.
What we started doing was inviting different women advisors in the financial services industry for an interview, basically, just to say, can we talk to you for 20 minutes? Let us tell your story. You might inspire other women in an industry. Unbelievably underrepresented with women spend like this for 70 years, it's in a really poor state.
So can we help share your story and maybe inspire other women to follow the same path? We reach out like that to a prospect, somebody that I'm already talking to, Hey, do you want to be on our series? And that way it's a blend of marketing and sales, but who's going to say no to that. And all of a sudden I'm in front of them.
Again, they're talking to me or somebody on my team, we're developing the relationship. And then it's very natural for them to be like, oh yeah, by the way, you should talk to this other person, interview them or tell them a little bit about what you do and there's my next
[00:15:14] Tyler Lindley: leap. Yep. I totally agree. And I think like you said, all that takes is starting.
We're going to do this series. We're going to reach out to these folks because we're going to create these series, blog, articles, videos, whatever it's going to be. All you got to do is start that podcast and say, Hey, I'm going to talk to people in the space. And then we're going to try to add value and help educate people on how to do X, Y, and Z better.
We talked about this a little bit before. It's all about getting some momentum and you creating some of those projects and series and podcasts and webinars, give you a great excuse to reach out to your network and continue to develop those relationships. And then also I feel like that's also helping a lot of people out there too, especially if it's educational style content, for instance, this podcast, whether the people that listen to this show.
Ever worked with me, or you were building Goodwill in the space because we're hopefully helping somebody nurture a deal better over a period of time. If somebody is interested in this topic, maybe they find this episode. Maybe this helps them in their own sales process. They get an idea or two, and now they can go close the deal.
And to me, it doesn't matter at you end up working with all these folks you're helping and you're building that network and you don't have to always build. In a one-to-one relationship with the advantage of social media and podcasts and all this tools we have available, you can build these one to many style relationships.
I've seen that a lot where people feel like they know me because of this podcast, which can be advantageous. As you begin to start relationships with folks, they feel like they already know you.
[00:16:33] Stephen Beach: I can hear you deep calming voice. I might see you in the press on this guy. I think that's
[00:16:40] Tyler Lindley: part of it. Yeah, for sure.
So we brought up some great ones here. The ones I've written down, just to recap for those listening belief starts with belief sharing, industry news articles, with your prospects, sharing third-party tools that you're using and how you might be using them asking or giving referrals. That was the fourth one in those fifth bucket that we just talked about is content like inviting.
To create some content with you, inviting them on the podcast, figuring out how you can. Co-produce some content together to keep those relationships going as you nurture these prospects over time. Anything that we've left off the list. Steven, in addition to those five, a couple of simple
[00:17:14] Stephen Beach: ones and initial dad is honestly, I've been asking the question at the end of the call or towards the end of the introduction.
How can I help promote you or your. I just say that, I just say, what can I do to promote you your business? And this is without knowing if I'm going to get a deal or not, or if I do, it might be a long time from now or whatever. And I see people they're stunned for a second. I'm like, what do you want me to do?
Can I share something that you created or give you a referral or one person who is a third party ad agency? I'm going to leave you a Google review. What would be helpful? They've never heard that before.
[00:17:47] Tyler Lindley: That's so funny that you say they never heard it makes sense though, because people always think that everything is a quid pro quo, that everything there has to be some equal exchange of value when it's like you said, Gary V calls it jab, jab.
Right hook. You're just jabbing a lot. You're helping your dad and by helping, you're just helping and putting Goodwill out there. All that comes back, though, it all comes back eventually. But if you view everything is I did this for Steven. Now he immediately needs to do something for me or else this relationship is worthless to.
That's the wrong way to view it. Like I
[00:18:18] Stephen Beach: said, it's going to fizzle out if you do that, when you can't do that in bulk first off, and it'll just fizzle out, then the relationship will fizzle out and then your energy will fizzle out when you see your numbers, aren't coming in the way that you want them to.
So I think that's a big one just saying with nothing in return, what can I do to help promote you or your. You'll get some interesting replies most of the time, they'll say, I don't even know. And so you've got to think of a couple ideas ahead of time.
[00:18:41] Tyler Lindley: Yeah. Well, that's a good idea to give them some, Hey, these are some things that I could do.
Like you said, they may not know, say, Hey,
[00:18:46] Stephen Beach: for example, here's three ideas, the Google reviews. Do you want me to promote something on LinkedIn that you shared? Do you want me to give you a referral? What do you want? Ask him that and then listen, just listen to what they said and the last quick one that I'll throw out.
To give a pitch for a tool called sales reach.io. And I really liked this tool to help nurture, especially over a longer sales process. So what it is is essentially the mini webpage that I can create without any coding knowledge or experience for myself. And it's basically, I can compile a bunch of different assets that I want my prospect to have.
I can put a little video on there that says pay. Pages for you. I dropped a few things in here that you might like. There's a link to my proposal at the bottom of the page link to schedule meeting with me, take a look, something like that, and then send them that URL of the page. Very unique. It's also, if you think about it from their perspective, it's, it's really efficient and helpful because it compiles everything in one place and I'll have to chase down six different email threads and look at their notes somewhere else for again, by.
I think that's really nice because then you could say three months from now, and you're like, I don't know what to send this person. Just, you were on a podcast. I'm so recently add a link to the podcast, to that person's page and send them the page again. Same URL. Just say, yo, checking in. You might not say yo, depending on how your relationship is with the person checking in.
I added this podcast that I was recently featured on. I thought you might enjoy it. Skipped a minute 10, so you don't have to listen to me. Be monotone for the first five, 10. And I think you might get something out of it. I hadn't been to your page just so you can reference it at any time. That's really nice.
So I've been really liking that tool. That's awesome. I would throw a vote in for that
[00:20:23] Tyler Lindley: one. Yeah. We'll link to that in the show notes. So if anybody wants to check that out further, but again, that just sounds like you're continuing to build that relationship. You're making it easy for the prospect, especially if you're compiling everything in one place, you're just making it easy for them.
All right, Steven, I know we could go on for hours of my listeners. Want to find out more about you online and connect with you? How can they. And my company
[00:20:41] Stephen Beach: is vantage impact van T G E. impact.com, sister company crafts, impact.com. So you can find me there, LinkedIn Steven Beach with a pH and it'll beaches, just like going to the beach, very
[00:20:52] Tyler Lindley: fitting for you down there in Florida.
We'll link to all those links in the show notes. So be sure to check those out@thesaleslift.com. Stephen, thanks for coming on. We'll have to go for the trifecta at some point in the future.
[00:21:03] Stephen Beach: Oh, that would be a lifetime goal.
[00:21:06] Tyler Lindley: Awesome, man. Great chatting with you talk
[00:21:08] Stephen Beach: soon. All right. Thanks Tyler.
[00:21:12] Tyler Lindley: Thank you so much for listening to today's show. You can find all the links discussed and the. At the sales lift.com. That's the T H E sales, S a L E S. Lift L I F t.com. Have questions for me, email me@tyleratthesaleslift.com. We look forward to seeing you back here next week, and we hope today's show brings you the sales lift.
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