Brent and Jason Pasquale of Activator Dealer Solutions discuss taking a very personalized approach to prospecting outreach and shifting your focus from your product to your buyer’s business objectives.
Authentic prospecting anchors on buyer goals and sharing social proof with peer examples.
Jason explains three ways he has put this mindset shift into practice:
- Understanding the buyers’ goals. Rather than focusing on pushing Activator’s product, he uses email and phone outreach to ask buyers: “what are you working on?” He helps buyers understand that he is looking to help solve their problems.
- Focusing on personalization. “I call on a variety of personas in a dealership, like the general manager, sales manager, service manager, or ecommerce director. I use different discovery themes or discovery questions for each. I want to make sure they feel I am speaking to their individual needs and challenges.”
- Using peer references. By using names of other peer dealers who are already current clients or new prospects during prospecting, it builds a sense of familiarity and trust.
For Jason’s team, this approach has resulted in consistently getting more high quality meetings. Within a 6-month period, team members increased meetings from around 12 a month to 17+ a month. In addition, they find prospects are coming to meetings with a better understanding of the company’s value prop.