Section Insights
Introduction to Prospecting Process
What will Charlie Johnson cover in her prospecting process?
Charlie Johnson will discuss her prospecting process, including account segmentation, outreach strategies, and re-engagement tactics for closed deals.
- Charlie is a successful prospector sharing her methods.
- The session will cover segmentation, deep dives into segments, and actionable strategies.
- Charlie has recently adapted her process due to a new role, providing fresh insights.
Outreach Strategies and Call Scripts
How does Charlie approach her outreach calls?
Charlie uses a structured approach for outreach calls, often referencing past conversations and current challenges faced by prospects to engage them effectively.
- Personalization is key; referencing past interactions helps build rapport.
- Understanding the prospect's current challenges allows for a more relevant pitch.
- Collaboration with SDRs enhances outreach efforts.
Partner-Focused Prospecting
How does Charlie leverage partnerships in her prospecting?
Charlie focuses on gathering intel from partners to understand client needs and challenges, which helps her tailor her outreach effectively.
- Partner relationships are crucial for gaining insights into client needs.
- Detective work is necessary to uncover valuable information from partners.
- Understanding the partner's role can enhance prospecting efforts.
Value-Added Workshops
What is a recovery workshop and how does it fit into Charlie's strategy?
A recovery workshop is a value-added service offered to clients to help them understand their cyber resilience and recovery strategies, particularly after a cyber incident.
- Workshops provide valuable insights without directly selling a product.
- They help establish trust and credibility with clients.
- Targeting tier one accounts for workshops maximizes impact.
Time Management in Prospecting
How does Charlie manage her time for prospecting amidst other responsibilities?
Charlie uses a timer to track how she spends her time on various tasks, allowing her to prioritize prospecting effectively within her busy schedule.
- Time tracking is essential for effective time management.
- Understanding time allocation helps in prioritizing prospecting activities.
- Balancing multiple responsibilities requires deliberate scheduling.
Transcript
0:00 Today we are sitting down with multiple time President's Club winner Charlie Johnson and she is going to be showing us her exact prospecting process. Everything from how she segments her accounts to the emails and the LinkedIn messages she is sending to her referral strategy to her channel partner strategy even how she re-engages closed loss deals and what she is saying to those people. Charlie is one of the best prospectors that I have ever met and she's literally screen sharing everything that she is doing to build pipeline in this video. And so let's dive in. Charlie, welcome to the show.
0:31 What are we covering today? >> How to work my territory and build pipeline. We all know how tough this market is right now, especially compared to a couple years ago. And booking meetings is harder than ever, but not impossible. So, we need to be way more deliberate with our time. And so, there's three topics I'm going to be covering today. The first one is how I actually segment my territory, the exact framework. The second one is a deep dive into each segment. And then the final one is how to actually action it. And I'll share my screen and go through calendars to show you how I organize my time to make sure you actually do PG.
1:05 One of the benefits of me recently joining Rubric is that I have had to kind of rebuild my PG process from scratch. Selling a new product, new industry, new persona. It's a really complex product. And so I'm literally just gonna walk through everything I've learned, the mistakes I've made in the past eight months. >> Amazing. Well, let's dive in. Let's get started. >> So there's kind of three ways I break out my segments. So the first one is signals. Second one is our tier ones and the final one is our volume. And so these are the three segments I use. And just to explain a little bit what they are first before we kind of deep dive into anyone. A signal is essentially someone who's more likely to engage because they already know us in some kind of way. so I'm going to put two eyeballs because they already know us and they're familiar with us. Maybe they've used us at a previous company, follow us on LinkedIn, they're a closed lost opportunity. Essentially in today's market, it's really, really difficult to not only book a cold new prospect, but also convert them into a closed one. And so people who are familiar with us are just way more likely to firstly take that meeting but secondly also close to revenue. I'm spending around 50% of my time on signals and I'm spending research time of like 5 minutes to 15.
2:33 And the reason why there's kind of a disparity in this part here is that obviously within your signals you're going to have different tiers. So, if I think about my tier ones, I'm probably going to be spending that 15 minutes on them. If I think about that tier two, I might be spending 10. And then my tier three within my signals, I'm probably spending about 5 minutes. So, depending on what tier is within those signals is kind of depending on the time I'm spending as well.
2:58 >> So, these are your three different buckets that you put your entire territory into. You've got your signals, you've got your tier ones, and you've got your more volumebased approach accounts. approximately how many accounts are in your territory and then could you just give a brief description of like these aren't like SMBs where it's like 10 people these are like much larger enterprises is my understanding >> I have about 100 accounts in my pack probably maybe like 20 are tier ones then I have a good chunk of tier twos and then the rest of tier threes I don't really work tier threes unless they're part of like a I don't know a volume campaign pain and they fit within that industry. I'm not actively targeting them to be honest. Most of my time is on those signals and tier ones.
3:47 >> I really want to see like what you're actually sending to these accounts. >> Yeah, let's do it. And so for the tier ones, like I mentioned, like these are ones that are like large volume of data for us, which means a large amount of revenue that we get from them. These are accounts that I'm going to be hitting my quarter with, maybe even my number with these accounts. They're really, really large ones. and so I'm going to use dollars, dollar, but they're way way harder to get into. And if I spent all of my time on a tier one, I probably wouldn't hit my number to be honest because usually with a tier one, you lose it a few times before you win it. So, they're more longerterm strategic accounts that I'm thinking about. I spend 35% of my time on my tier ones, and my research is 30 minutes plus. And the reason why I say plus is this research is always ongoing.
4:38 again, these are ones that can hit my annual number. So these are very strategic accounts. I know them well. I have one in my head as an example that I know is about to be doing PC's with vendors. And so they're probably not going to engage with us for the next six months. And so they're just longer term ones that in the next two years, three years are going to start paying back dividends for my role where I can really start to exceed my target. And then volume, they're the rest of my patch.
5:06 I break them into a lot of industry. For me specifically, our space is very industrydriven. and if you know an industry, well, you can really start to sound like an expert. so maybe a law firm gets hacked or maybe I've spoken to a lot of housing associations. I'm noticing a really common trend across them. That's who I'm going to be having in my volumes and then my tier twos and some tier threes as well. but yeah, they're just big cooling call outs and things like that. PG time. I'm spending 15% of my time on here. 15% is probably a little bit generous as well, but I work with an SDR who is targeted on number of meetings as well as ops. So, we do need to get that volume in together as well. So, this is going to help with kind of the smaller lands that will help me kind of get to my number, but also helping him as well. And I am spending two to five minutes on these big industry plays. I might redock about a specific attack and then that's going to be my talk track for these. I just have an Excel list and I'm just shooting through them.
6:12 >> So these are the three different buckets of your territory. You want to start with signals and go deep on how you work those. >> They're going to be things like previous conversations. It will be like a closed off opportunity. Maybe they've used us at a previous company. Maybe they follow us on LinkedIn or they've met us at an event. Again, there's that huge familiarity with us. How I structure my outreach with signals is it's a lot more coolheavy. But I literally have a spreadsheet where I have all of my closed lost opportunities and then I just have my notes on them and then I just pick up the phone. That's a phone, not a macaroni. and I just call through them and I have all my research done and that's that with them. So I literally just have an account list of all my closed lost ops. I have the company, their name, their title, any old op notes that I need and then LinkedIn URL in case I want to research them and the number there. The number I copy and I paste it into outreach and then I just call them or I'll get my phone and literally just call them like that. I will email them as well and I'll show you what that looks like for me from a volume perspective. But a lot of my outreach is calling and I'll get the SDR that I work with Sam, I'll get him also.
7:27 He has access to this. So if he has a spare 30 minutes, he'll just call through them as well. >> Can you give me an example of what you might say when you're calling through this list, Charlie? So I don't know if you want to use one of the the first examples where it looks like multiworkload op. There were five op cycles total. You got the name of the person who it looks like chose a competitor. Like you call them. What what do you say? I'll be like, "Hey, Tim. we spoke to you last year around your cloud environment and your M365 environment. I know you guys were moving to the cloud. Do you have a second?" And they'll say, "Yes." And I'll be like, "Look, I know when you previously spoke to us, we were speaking to Phil and you guys had Duver at the time and the challenges you had with Duver was as you migrate to the cloud, you didn't feel like it had as much security and protection for if you were hit by a cyber attack. What we're seeing at the moment is as people shift to the cloud environments, they're authenticating a lot of their critical applications through Entra and if they're to be hit by a cyber attack, rebuilding their entry environment is what is taking them one to two weeks.
8:31 I'm guessing this is a topic you're thinking about as identity recovery is massive in the space right now. does it make sense for me to speak another or call back another time when I've not called you out the BL? >> Something like that. And how much does that pitch adjust? Like I guess are you doing a lot of prep before these dials or are you just like kind of glancing and being like here's two bullets of what we talked about before and using a similar type of pitch again and again?
8:57 >> Literally just just winging it. I'm just calling and I'm being natural. I'm not over prepping them to be honest. I was definitely that person previously who over prepped like crazy. I remember at my first company, I used to spend so long creating a pitch, like ages and ages, and I'd read it and if that sounded really scripted and it was so perfect and and it just wasn't me. And I just think the easiest way to do it is just have phone them up and just have a chat. If someone's open to talking to you, they're going to talk to you. And if they're not, they're not. So, I just think sometimes just pick up the phone.
9:31 Just you don't need to overengineer it. And for me, I spot trends when I'm speaking to people. I know that identity recovery is just a massive topic in the UK since like the M&S attack. Jaguar Land Rover that is what made them like literally offline for weeks and weeks. Cost them hundreds of millions of pounds. So they're all familiar with this story and they all need this this solution which is why I focus on that as a starting point to get them interested.
10:01 >> Can you recap the signals you were looking for? I know close lost is one but there were some others you mentioned earlier. My main one I'm doing at the moment is closed loss. That one's huge for us as well. but if I find other ones, I'll just add them to the bottom of this list. So, once I've exhausted this list, which I just haven't yet, I will then probably go on to LinkedIn and use team link intro as a filter. So, if we gone to a lead search, you can add your account list into sales nav.
10:29 and so you have all of the prospects within those accounts. You can add in the relevant function as well. also from AIT. And then you're just looking for connections of exec team link intro and team link intro. These ones are really powerful because they're connected with people and so I can call them up and be like, "Hey, you're connected with quite a few people at Rubrics. I'm guessing you're familiar." And that's literally it. Do you have a second?
10:57 >> You have 374 people that are connected with people currently at your company. And you don't even need to be connected with people at your company. Sales Nav is smart enough to just pick up that rubric. These are the people there. >> Wow. So these aren't even because there's rubrics a big company. There are people at your or who you probably have never spoken to. But this is literally showing you your prospects, your best prospects who you can get a direct introduction to as opposed to you having to like blitz them with total cold outreach that they're just going to send to spam.
11:26 >> And I will just message people in our team and just be like, "Hey, nice to meet you. I'm Twi. I'm in the UK midm market team really random but I saw you're connected to this person and I send them a a link and I'm like do you know them well and if they're like yeah I know them really well I'll then say do you mind messaging them I'll give you the draft and then I'll send them a draft and if they're like no I don't know them we connected I'll be like I haven't had a chance to connect with them do you mind me sending a draft and I'll make it way more cold orientated versus if they've had conversations before it might be a situation of oh Hey, I was catching up with a colleague and they mentioned that they've been reaching out to GB Group. I know you spoke to us previously or spoke to me last year about your cloud environment. Is this something you're thinking about again? Really easy chill.
12:13 >> Let's move on to tier ones and we'll see what else we learned >> for my tier ones. And we must continue with my lovely drawings. We got a dollar note. >> That's better than the phone. That's better than the phone. >> These are again those longerterm investments. They're not quick wins. I've had meetings with some of my tier ones, but they are just nowhere near the end stage that I would need to be to convert them into a closed one. So, they are just long-term strategic ones. And you'll probably lose them a few times before you win them essentially. And I spoke about over here the fact that they were 30 minutes plus. And I just want to go over what I mean from that because I'm not just doing that one time researching. Obviously, I'm going to be looking into things like annual report like you usually would. And remember, you can use AI for this as well. You can pull out documentations, put it into chatbt or claude. I want to understand how they make money.
13:14 This one's really important as well because especially for me selling to companies when we're talking about downtime of their organization if they make money and a critical system they are using is for us in sales it's things like salesforce right so if you have an organization that has a massive sales team and their sales force is down that's massive like criticality for that business so I need to understand how they make money and what that downtime time implication of those critical systems with me for that organization.
13:46 And so you're going to do your usual things, news, hiring. you will know this stuff as well, but on top of this, I'm doing additional stuff. And so I've already spoken about team link intro and I'll show you an example of how I've done this as well. But I'm going to be doing some detective work here to understand previous conversations they've had. And I'll give an example. I was reaching out to this company and I had a few meetings with them. but I needed to get to like the main decision maker because it wasn't really going anywhere. And I found out through a colleague who was connected to him on LinkedIn that he'd spoken to us at a previous company. He'd gone through a cyber attack, the same attacker as the one who did M&S. Then I knew the messaging to go after and that he was very familiar with Rubric. And so I got all of that intel, that detective intel from this colleague and then was able to reach out to that person directly to then book a meeting. So it's just getting that intel. Another one is I'm very partner focused at Rubric and we only transact through partners and so we have like four different partners that we work with and so I'm going to reach out to all of them and I'm going to do some detective work to see what are they purchasing through that partner, how much intel can they give me and they might be able to tell me what that company is focused on, maybe the challenges that they're speaking to them about, maybe the key stakeholders, who's raised a PO previously and stuff like that. So there's ongoing work there as well >> for the partner prospecting. Are these people that are helping you all like implement Rubric? Are they like tech consultants that work with these large companies? What are these partners like?
15:20 And then how do you like find who you should be talking to? Because this was something that I ran into when I sold ERP to law firms where it was like, yeah, we had partners, but I didn't know like they didn't none of the partners knew who I was and I didn't know how to actually like make contact with those people. And it's so true because if you think about it like these are all the kind of big IT kind of partners we work with and what they'll do is an IT organization will go to Softcat or they'll go to Phoenix maybe they'll go to a few of them you know and they'll purchase all of their tech through these partners so they don't have to go direct to the vendor and it'll be everything I spoke to someone who sold them a fridge so it'll be everything from a fridge to a like literally everything to like their M365 entire environment which might be millions. And so it's really interesting because me as a rep, I have to do a bit of detective work because they're obviously going to say that they have a great relationship with them, but I have to try and understand how much are they spending with them to try and understand which is the best partner to get the most credible insight out of >> which is you want to go to. Just to recap here, you might find a company that works with Soft Cap, Phoenix, Bytes. They work with multiple of these folks, but you want to understand which of the partners has the strongest relationship. If they're spending $10 with Bites, but $10 million with Phoenix, you probably want to go in via Phoenix.
16:49 >> Exactly. And internally at Rubric, we have channel managers. And so I can reach out to my channel managers and be like, "Hey, who owns this account?" and I'll give my SDR to do the same thing. We'll be like, "Let's go after these 10 accounts. He can then do the work with me and then we'll find that rep. We'll call them up or something and just be like, "Hey, I've been reaching out to this company. We've got some previous conversations that have been going on and I'm going to be meeting them at an event. just want have some intel for me." And then I'm taking that and I'm putting it on a spreadsheet where I then have all my intel about it. all of my like high level company intel partner intel and things like that. So I'll be able to understand okay they have a relationship what is that relationship about and stuff like that >> give me a sense of what's in this perhaps >> overview here understanding like what solution they're using just like every other company when they have a certain vendor in place there are certain challenges that I know are highlighted with them active partner again I'm saying that this partner claims to know more senior stakeholders within it so they've told me their point of contacts and I've been able to understand okay these guys are speaking to more senior people, annual report and key findings, strategic priorities, any news, trigger events, and then current tech and incumbents.
18:09 >> Oh, you've got stakeholder map. What's this? >> So then I'm mapping out my key contacts I need to go after. These guys I've had a call with. I've already spoken to them. but they're just not the right people. And then I know the more senior people that I need to be going into. This is like my crown jewel of a of a prospect. And I can show you some of the outreach. I have it in my tier one part that I've been doing to her. And then underneath here, partner intel as well.
18:35 so I've got these two that I know have been working with them. And yeah, >> can we go to messaging next just because I'm very eager to see you have so much info on that page and I know I've seen a lot of AES have extremely complex details about their accounts and mapping and they've read their annual report for ages and then they like struggle to actually turn that into messaging that the buyer would actually like respond to.
19:00 >> At the end of the day, you probably have maybe five common challenges you solve at your organization. You just need to find maybe three pieces or maximum five pieces of like trigger points that you can reference to then gain enough credibility to then convert them. And that is it. So even that sheet, it's ongoing as I speak to partners and I'll update it. But it's not paragraphs and paragraphs. It's a one line. So if I get onto the phone with Hannah, I know exactly what I'm going to say. and so for this one, I know she's done a podcast that I've say listened to. I've skipped through it and I've listened to the main highlight part. But then I know from speaking to their team that this is an important project and so I've referenced that in my first sentence and then I've referenced the fact that I've spoken to their team and they're moving these critical systems to the cloud as part of this program and then the reliance on entra is then growing and then I go into a common challenge that everyone in the cyerspace knows around and then happy to like share what we're learning and then PS really liked your podcast. She went from sales to forensic and security. So, it's pretty interesting story, but just makes me stand out and I know she's read it and I know she'll be familiar with me.
20:18 Eventually, I get the meeting. I actually got this advice from one of my college professors. He said, "If someone asks you if you've read a book and you haven't read the whole thing, say yes, I've read in it." Meaning, you've you've read pieces of it, but not the whole thing. And so I kind of take the same approach with this where it's like listen to the podcast and skip around and all you need to do is find one nugget that you can cite. And if you end up getting a meeting with this VIP prospect Charlie, my guess is you'll go back and you'll listen to the whole thing when you're when you're going for a walk or when you're at the gym, but it is a horrible waste of your time to spend an hour and a half listening to an interview to be able to send one quasi personalized message. Find a nugget and then once you get the meeting, then you can listen to the whole thing. The next part I was going to go on to was the fact that part of my research is that I'm also looking at events and I'm trying to see my tier one prospects. Are they going to any industry events that either we're exhibiting at or I can just walk the floor and then hope to bump into them. So for this prospect as an example, we were going to infosc we were exhibiting there and then I found out she was there. So I was like great. So I said hey hopefully see you there. we spoke to your team about this.
21:32 here's the challenge. Maybe we can grab five minutes and then message while she was at the event. And bear in mind, I went to the event as well. So, I'm still making sure that after the event that I'm following up and we actually managed to get a meeting with her, but she had a clash and and so she didn't show up. And then again, just some kind of almost deposit information like here's a really useful article that's being shared across your space right now. This is the attack path. Does it make sense to do a recovery workshop that we were planning with your team before?
22:03 >> What is a recovery workshop? Because I I'm one thing that I'm noticing about this CTA is it is not just, hey, do you want to meet? Could you give a sense of what your offer or give of value is that you have here? Because I think it's a it's a pro tip not a lot of folks are aware of. So within Rubric, we offer something to some people in our sales cycle called a cyber resilience workshop. And what that means is usually we go and we were planning to do this with their team because they're moving a lot of their data into the cloud and they don't have a clear insight into the risk there. Like if they were in a cyber attack, they don't know if all of their data is protected, what is sensitive there, what's not. And so after an attack, they'd be pretty screwed. And so we were going to go to their office, map out all of their critical systems and help them understand in a cyber incident which are our tier zero or our tier one apps which are like the holy grail systems that you must have online after a cyber attack first and what's the order that you would be recovering those systems and how would you do it today? The gap potential cost of downtime and we're going to help them understand the risks and everything completely vendor agnostic. don't mention rubric once but after that we have a very good insight into their environment the challenges and to be honest we don't offer that to everyone that's for my tier one accounts because I need two sees we need to travel to their office it's a lot of resources but I know these guys I've spoken to them some of the lower levels so I know it's something that we should be offering and they're going to get value out of it they do this from a consultant they're spending thousands and thousands and we'll just go and do it for free anything else on tier ones before we move to your volume approach.
23:48 >> Find someone who's connected to someone at my tier one account. This is one that I did internally. so I mentioned the fact that look, this is the situation. Can I do a draft email for you? they're busy so I have to nudge them a little bit. and then they're saying yes, I had brief interaction with them. Can you send an email? Yes, sure. Here is the email. They send it add their flare to it and this is what got us a meeting with him.
24:17 >> So to recap your tier one accounts you've got your three ways that you are trying to break into them. You've got the team link piece which we talked about in your signals approach. Also, you've got your partners where you're working with your channel manager to try to identify which IT consultant basically whether it is Softcat, Phoenix, CDW, Bites or another one has the strongest relationship and you're trying to leverage that as a way to get an introduction there. And then you've also got >> them to message instead of me just gaining insight and prospecting like I can even be like can like they'll I'll be like do you have them on teams because they use Microsoft and then it will be like can you just send them a team's message I'll draft it for you. So you can get them to also get everyone else to do your work basically.
25:05 >> So you get your channel manager to message the consultant to then try to eventually message the CISO. So, I find out who the rep is and I'll message them directly on Teams or I'll call them. I'll find their number and I'll just call them. and then I'll set up if I'm on the phone with them like >> I'll just be like, "Hey, like I'm working on an account. I've been booking quite a lot of meetings in with similar accounts and we've just literally closed one with another rep, >> Billy in your team.
25:38 >> >> do you want to work on this account together?" It sounds like Soft, Phoenix, etc. They're incentivized to get their customers to spend obviously in a way that solves their problem. So, you call the rep who oversees the account and you you're almost like co-working an opportunity together. It's in their best interest to work with you and you you almost like sell them on it by saying, "We literally just made somebody else on your team some money want to work this with me."
26:02 >> Exactly. And you have to be smart about it because if you think about it, how many IT solutions are there that Mr. or miss prospect is going to be transacting through them. Like there's so many solutions and they're getting absolutely hounded by reps like me trying to do the same thing. And so you have to be smart. Either reference like you've had a conversation with someone in that company before or the fact that we just closed a similar company and I know this industry is mega focused on X and then it just builds you enough credibility that they're like all right I'll give you some intel. Maybe they're not comfortable sending a message but a lot of the time they are. because they know rubric and they know we're a great product and it doesn't hurt, you know, sending a team's message and what's the worst that can happen? They don't get a reply.
26:47 >> Let's talk about the volume. >> What can we do as volume? Lots of people. Yeah. Got to stay up with the trend of drawing, right? So, it's like a mass email based on a topic and that topic might be about an attack that's just happened or it might be on a common attack path we're seeing. And so, in the industry, as an example, there's a guy called Ollie White House who does a weekly newsletter around cyber security and I just take his newsletter and I put it into Claude and I ask it to give me the trends. If there are trends for a certain industry or maybe even a certain persona, maybe there's some like regulatory changes coming out, I can then get Claude to be like, pull all of the whatever law firms in my patch who and I've fed Claude already all of my Zoom info contact numbers as well. give me the name the the number and the email and clause can even draft put the email into your drafts as well so it saves me time but I'm basically finding topics about something and I am focusing on that topic maybe for the next week or maybe next two weeks and I'll do it with my SDR as well so we'll do it together.
28:13 So, as an example, I've been speaking to a lot of housing associations at the moment, and I know there's a really common trend where they're moving a lot of their critical systems into the cloud like everyone else is. but it's really difficult for them to move some of their legacy housing platforms into the cloud as well. So, I can reference that on the phone and then they're thinking, "Oh, she really knows what's happening that's happening with us as well." and then I'll talk about the challenges. And it's the exact same conversation, same story, same conversation, just called through that list of people. Jones Day is a company that had a large firm.
28:50 >> Yeah, exactly. And so it's really well known and I'm going to then contact every law firm in my pack and pretty much say the same messaging. So this has no real like personalization, right? Apart from you've probably read this attack, right? And this is the attack group that is been flagged by the FBI. They were going after a lot of law firms and now they've gone after their first UK law firm. So it's like this is a really big group that they'll know of and now they're shifting towards the UK.
29:21 So it's like crap. This is the attack path they're using and most have backups in place. I'm already addressing the objection. You have a backup for these critical systems. I know they're critical systems that I manage, but even if you have the best backup in the world, you can't get these systems back online until your identity layer is rebuilt, which is what is taking companies weeks. And I just blasted that out to every single law firm.
29:46 >> So now we understand how you segment your patch, your territory. We've understood the approach that you are using for each segment and looked at specific channels, messages. We've even talked about some call scripts. The last piece I think we were going to talk about is how you actually fit all this in because you are not a full-time SDR. You're negotiating contracts. You're showing demos. You're prepping solution engineers. You've got a life. You're married. My guess is there's there's not a lot of time for prospecting. So, how do you actually fit this into your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly sales schedule so that you build enough pipeline to be able to hit your number?
30:23 >> Yeah, exactly. And I'll show you an example, but what you have to start understanding is how long you spend on certain tasks. And this will take a little while if you don't do it. I literally have a timer. I time myself for everything in the saddest way possible. but I'm quite a distracted human. So, if I have a timer here and I'm like start doing something else, I see it and I'm thinking, I need to get back to my need to get back to what I was doing before. And so, you can start to understand how long the things take you. And so for me, I know that researching a tier one, I probably need about 30 minutes. When I'm executing those emails and LinkedIn steps, I probably need an hour for that account.
31:02 For my close lost calling, I probably want about an hour and a half to call through them. And for my volume, I might want 30 minute blocks after calls. And so what I'll then do is I'll go to my week. So this is my next week. I have a pretty free week next week, which is absolutely lovely. but I need to then fit in when those blocks are. And this isn't just for my planning for prospecting. I'll do this for everything. So on a Friday, I'll look at my next week and I'll start to understand, all right, what prospecting do I need to do? What prep do I need to do for demos? I try and do like learning each week as well for enablements. I need to try and find an hour somewhere in my calendar or 30 minutes worst case where I can make sure that I'm staying on top because it's such a complex product. I need to stay on top of it. And so what I'll do is I'll be like, "All right, so I have my Monday morning meeting. I have a 30 minute slot there. Why don't I grab Sam and do some calling with him on volume?"
32:07 I will then add in as well the link to the sheet. And so Sam knows which sheets to be calling from and so do I. I color code different things I do whether it's like partner calls, c meetings, things like that. And then I'll save it. And then I will do this for all of my calls. So maybe I'm like, okay, I have quite a big slot here. I'm going to do some of my close lost calling. And again, I'm being very prescriptive. I'm going to add the link into my calendar invite so I know exactly what to execute off and again I'm color blocking. I am not booking over these like these are treat them like meetings unless you have a massive deal that is critical. Do not book over these and you need to be really strict with your time. I'm also not booking myself back to back to back to back because I know you have other stuff happening and then you just won't do it. And again I'm going to do that for my next day. Okay, I'm a bit of an early riser. So maybe at 8 I want to do my research or and then I'll pick company A, company B, and I'll pick them in advance where I need to my research for and again I'm color coding them.
33:15 This is my PG prep. This is two companies. I'm giving myself 30 minutes each. I'm timing myself with my 30 minutes as well. And then I'm doing that there. I probably want to prep for this call here. So maybe I'll put in a prep block. probably will need to follow up and I might have a a chance here later. Probably takes me about an hour per tier one to do all of the emails. I don't just do the first email. I do all the emails for the sequence. Email one, email two, email three. So, I do them all. It probably would take me about two two hours to do both of them. And I probably wouldn't block two hours back to back. I would do an hour, give myself 5 minutes to get a coffee, and then do another hour like that. Otherwise, you're just not staying focused. So, you can start to see how much time it's taking in your calendar to do PG. And I might want to leave a few slots open because I'll probably have other stuff I need to do. but yeah, then I'll do it maybe here and do company B emails.
34:13 And again, I'm being prescripted. This is the exact company. Never just put prospecting or PG. You just won't do it or you'll faff around and you just don't won't do stuff. I don't mind doing emails. I quite like crafting emails. What I'm not a big fan of is calling. So what I try and do is either I'll try and do it with someone or I'll do it first thing. Like I just have never I just don't think I'll ever love calling. I don't think anyone does. But you get on with it, you know. And here I'm calling my clothes loss maybe.
34:42 And so you can start to see and starting to build up my calendar with those greens. I have pretty free week next week. So I'm going to get two companies done that week. Usually for my tier ones, I probably only do one a week because I just do not have the capacity to do more and I'm off Friday for a wedding. So, I need to try and just get as much as I can done before the end of the quarter and then I have my next quarter to hit. So, I just need to be building as much pipeline as I can.
35:07 but you can see you can start to see how it just really makes you prescriptive. and the last thing I do is I have my planner and each day I map out everything I need to do as well. So, I have my top priorities for the day, my top three accounts that I'm targeting, whether that be an existing opportunity or PG, my quick tasks, my mid tasks, which are a bit longer, and then my deep focus, and then my reflection at the end of the day as well. And so, I'm making sure that I'm mapping out my week, but each day I'm also keeping myself accountable with my planner.
35:41 >> Well, Charlie, thank you for joining us. Folks, if you liked this episode one, we got a link to the sales impact planner in the description of this episode. Please go support Charlie. I also would love to hear in the comments of this episode what questions you have for Charlie because we will go through those comments as the video and episode gets released and we will try to answer as many as possible and then we'll look at some of those themes and Charlie hopefully I can steal some of your PG time away and we can do another part two of this episode. So, thank you for watching. Leave us a comment, let us know your questions, subscribe to the channel and we'll see you next time on 30 MPC.
Summary
- **Account Segmentation**: Charlie segments her accounts into signals (familiar prospects), tier ones (high-value, long-term accounts), and volume (broader outreach).
- **Time Allocation**: She dedicates 50% of her time to signals, 35% to tier ones, and 15% to volume accounts, adjusting her research time based on account tier.
- **Outreach Strategy**: For signals, she focuses on calling previous contacts and leveraging familiarity, while tier ones require extensive research and ongoing relationship building.
- **Partner Collaboration**: Charlie emphasizes working with channel partners to gain insights and introductions to key decision-makers.
- **Volume Outreach**: She utilizes industry trends and mass email campaigns to engage a larger audience, often referencing common challenges faced by prospects.
- **Time Management**: Charlie uses a structured calendar and timers to allocate specific blocks for prospecting tasks, ensuring she remains focused and organized.
- **Continuous Learning**: She incorporates learning and preparation into her weekly schedule to stay updated on industry developments and product knowledge.
- **Personalization in Messaging**: While her volume outreach is less personalized, she emphasizes the importance of referencing relevant trends and challenges to establish credibility with prospects.
Questions Answered
What will Charlie Johnson cover in her prospecting process?
Charlie Johnson will discuss her prospecting process, including account segmentation, outreach strategies, and re-engagement tactics for closed deals.
How does Charlie approach her outreach calls?
Charlie uses a structured approach for outreach calls, often referencing past conversations and current challenges faced by prospects to engage them effectively.
How does Charlie leverage partnerships in her prospecting?
Charlie focuses on gathering intel from partners to understand client needs and challenges, which helps her tailor her outreach effectively.
What is a recovery workshop and how does it fit into Charlie's strategy?
A recovery workshop is a value-added service offered to clients to help them understand their cyber resilience and recovery strategies, particularly after a cyber incident.
How does Charlie manage her time for prospecting amidst other responsibilities?
Charlie uses a timer to track how she spends her time on various tasks, allowing her to prioritize prospecting effectively within her busy schedule.