If you're like most of us, you have a favorite prospecting channel, like email, phone calls, LinkedIn, or something else. But did you know that adding at least 1 more channel to your outreach can increase your success by as much as 2.5x? Join Jeff & Tom as they outline the types of channels available to you in your outreach and some tips on how to leverage the more "creative" ones in your sequences & cadences.
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JEFF:
Hi, everyone and welcome to another episode of Fill the Funnel Podcast.
I'm your host, Jeff Swan, with my co-host, Tom Slocum.
So, today we're gonna be talking about a really exciting topic is how to multi-channel hustle.
Okay, so how to actually fill your funnel by leveraging multiple different channels and some, you know, some you don't?
There are some stats that I've learned from the great Jason Bay that if you're looking at outbound prospecting, you might have at most a 9.5% success rate with just one channel.
Let's say you're just calling or you're just emailing, right?
But as soon as you add a second channel, as soon as you add one more channel, that success rate goes up to 22.5%.
So more than double.
Then when you add a third channel, your success rate goes out up to 25.1%.
So I'm throwing a lot of stats here.
I don't want to be sound like a data nerd or anything like that.
But the concept here is that when you do more than one channel, you're going to significantly increase your response rate on your outbound prospecting.
And it's really I've heard this awesome phrase in the past.
It was all about, you know, annoying them into talking to you.
Well, you have to get noticed these days.
There's so much noise out there that for you to be able to get in touch with somebody, make sure that you see that they see you everywhere. They look.
So with that said, Tom, do you want to tell the audience a little bit about why we chose this specific topic?
(Especially after last week's Heart of a Champion!)
TOM:
Yeah, welcome, everyone. Ideally, you know, as we saw in last week's episode with The Heart of a Champion, Joe put up 37 meetings in 16 days, and we didn't really dive into the how.
What it all came down to with a multi-channel hustle.
And that's what wrestling is all about.
Constantly we have, you know, people have come in being purely email.
Now they're implementing cold calling, you know, now they're getting in a social.
We have some people that purely social cell, that are getting in the email.
They're learning how to get creative.
Because, as you mentioned at the beginning of this, Jeff, is going from one channel at a 9.5% success all the way to a three-channel process at 25.1%
That's a 17% increase!
So, looking at your numbers and your data and working backward, what would 17% do for you right now, especially at the beginning of the quarter?
How important is it to really "multi-channel hustle"?
And it's not about hitting all the channels to annoy your prospect, what it is about working smarter and not harder.
And knowing that using the three channels, you're able to hit your goals because you've got six meetings coming from cold calling, four coming from email,
two coming from social.
Every day you're creating a well-oiled machine that's generating you those 1 to 2 meetings a day because you're hitting them all multi-thread vs one basket.
So, what if I'm just a cold caller?
That's a great channel.
But it's only going to lead to a certain number.
No matter what you're doing, you're always going to have to add more numbers, do more activity versus maybe throwing some emails out there.
Now you're getting an extra three meetings.
So that's what we want to dive into today is really looking at how to be a "multi-channel hustler".
Work smarter, not harder.
...and I have your pipeline just really flowing daily through these channels.
JEFF:
Awesome!
Thank you. Yeah, I know it's true.
It's not really about annoying, but about getting people's attention, right?
It's just doing it in a way that's valuable for them.
And that really helps you understand the complete story and help your prospects understand who you are and why you're reaching out.
So operationally better, right, because you've got to live where your audience lives.
TOM:
Everybody is different, right?
Not everybody likes to talk on the phone. I don't. Maybe you do.
Do you like email?
Maybe I don't like the email process.
I don't live there, right?
I'm not on my email box all the time.
So, the whole point of using the multi-channel is again finding where your audience lives best and then putting, you know, more effort there.
Maybe you only email 20% and 80% is cold calling because that's what works for you.
However, there's 20% of your network that will never pick up the phone.
What have you done with email if you've got those extra meetings that you would have never seen because you only purely lived on one channel.
So it's really understanding through the multi-channel where your audience lives, getting better data, getting better at the channels and putting in the right effort to the right channels
Capturing their attention wherever they are, right?
I hit you up on the phone, I hit you up on email, and I hit you up on LinkedIn in the same day.
I don't know where you're going to fall.
Maybe you get all three. Cool! Great! Better for me, right?
I'm annoying you.
You pick up the phone.
I got a voicemail.
I go to my inbox. There's Tom again.
I look on my LinkedIn. There's Tom's Video.
Okay, Tom, what the hell do you want?
Like maybe I'll reach out or they only check LinkedIn for the day. Great!
I got their attention there, right? I got it perfect.
Or they were on the phone that time I got them.
So that's how you want to use that. That's awesome.
JEFF:
You know, when you're talking about that, I'm just picturing the scene from the office. I don't know if you remember.
There's WUPHF.com where resident tech geek or MBA student (Ryan, the Temp).
He creates this startup where when you message somebody, it goes through their phone, their email, their texts, and their fax and everything.
And you got WUPHF'd.
So, yeah, that's an obnoxious and totally exaggerated version of what we're talking about. But the concept remains.
It's Just making sure that you're where your prospects are.
Something I heard early on in my sales & marketing career was to "be where your customers are."
This really served me so well for the last 16 years.
As long as you really focus your attention on the right channels for your audience, then the results you get are just amazing.
TOM:
So right. What are those standard channels?
JEFF:
Yeah, let's go into the Standard Prospecting Channels.
So, we both mentioned, the kind of three tenants of outbound sales are:
1. Cold calls (Phone).
2. Email
3. Social Media
Now, with social media, it's funny to call that, like a stalwart or like a standard channel.
But it has quickly become something that's absolutely standard for any SDR or outbound rep to use as one of their standard tools.
So the way that you use these tools differs from person to person.
But I'll just give a quick story from a mutual colleague that we know.
Tom and I both know how she's an amazing email seller.
She gets over 10% booked meetings from emails just by themselves.
So obviously she has the data to back this.
This girl's amazing at using email to put points on the board, so we think:
"Why would you ever need to do anything else?"
"Why would you ever need to add any other channel at all?"
Right?
Wrong!
What happens is as soon as she starts leveraging social media in her sequences, she starts getting more responses.
Couple of booked meetings from social, couple booked meetings from email.
She gets more from email, but she still gets some from social.
So let's imagine that she got 16 meetings last month, four of which are from social.
If she just used email, which is by far the best channel for her, she'd only get 12 meetings for the month.
How about her direct report?
Her SDR does the same thing.
Same framework.
Same emails, customer, company, and offer. Everything!
And she has found success with cold calling thanks to Tom's help and the help of other people in the group to get her on the phones and just use the tools that are at her disposal.
How many meetings did she book from cold calling?
TOM:
I don't even have that at the top of the top of my head. I don't know.
JEFF:
It's at least again it's at least a couple per month.
TOM:
It's at least like one or two of yeah, she's getting, you know, 3 to 5 a month from picking up the phone.
JEFF:
Mhm. So just as as an example of these is that we have one person who is an absolute email expert.
We have another person in our network that is a superstar cold caller.
In last month's March Madness competition, he did nine meetings in three days, mostly through cold calls.
And guess what?
Two of those nine meetings were booked because he started learning and growing and really incorporating email into his process.
He was trying to think of how to do it properly and booked two of those meetings from email.
Okay, so what?
What we're looking at here are people who are masters of their domain and crushing it in one of those channels.
And as soon as they start adding one more channel, they start to top up, crush their targets, and whatever else quite quickly.
---
First is Email.
You can get tons of meetings from email.
It works or you when you're not working.
It does so much telling your complete story.
And you can tell your story in multiple emails and really strong gives.
---
Second is cold calling.
It's fast, it's awesome.
I mean, Tom's a freaking killer at this.
He booked four meetings in a day one time just from hitting the phones hard.
---
Then we have Social.
We have one person in our community who booked 45 meetings last month just from Social by itself.
So, needless to say, they're pretty kick-ass channels.
Now, Tom, you mentioned earlier that there are actually some non-standard channels that you were going to talk about.
TOM:
Yeah, you know, there are different ways to do this.
Once you maximize the three and you get your process lockdown - you don't want to be doing more than a three until you can master those three effectively -whether you have a sales engagement tool that's doing it.
But if you're going to introduce these elements, you want to master them, or at least have them in a process flow that it's not driving your day crazy, right?
Video takes time. Block it.
Figure it out right there to implement email.
There are three things that I used periodically through my cadence are:
1. Gift giving.
So using the channel of direct mail, like through Sendoso (a great partner of RevGenius), it's a great channel for giving people meaningful gifts.
You can use it to send them something, especially now that they're all working from home.
You can really find some ways to deliver something to give that extra visibility to yourself and implement that in your sequence.
You know, after 12 to 15 touches, execute something through the window.
So to go out, whether it's a gift card or it's a book, it's something that is relevant to them.
2. Text messaging.
Huge.
I think there's a lot of opinions on this one.
Yes, I know we can dive into that episode another day.
You all need to keep tuned.
Jeff and I will dive into that one day.
But I do think there is something there.
I think text messaging is really well done, or it CAN be done Well.
It is another lever to pull, to add to your outreach.
3. The Crumpled Paper
Then one you know I gotta plug in and give some kudos to is Dale Dupree and the "Crumpled letter".
I think what Dale Dupree does within The Sales Rebellion and doing the crumpled up letter being different, right?
You're being creative and it's amazing.
It comes up like delivered like a crumpled up letter that, like it's just pulled out of the trash.
But it's awesome, and it gets people's attention, and it's different.
Especially in this virtual world, you know, you can send that directly to them, at their homes or to their offices.
You know and use those.
So there's a couple other levers you can pull with doing, you know, some direct mail, some text messaging, and creative stuff outside of just those
three core channels.
I also think getting outside of LinkedIn is good.
I don't think enough people are getting on Facebook and Instagram.
I think it's well within the norm.
It's very normal now, and people don't play with it if done very well seriously.
They're not the typical channels to blast and blitz and do all the crazy stuff you'd do on LinkedIn or email.
It's a very, very clear and concise channel to use.
But if done correctly, can be a great resource for you as well.
JEFF:
That's awesome, Tom.
Those are some really good channels.
We've both seen some amazing success with those.
And yeah, we will definitely have to do individual episodes on each of those channels because they are worth an entire episode.
So, with that said, though, let's talk about how we can use standard channels and these more creative channels in your sequences.
So, um, I'm not going to go into email and phone because those are standard sequence channels.
But, depending on your tool, some sales engagement tools work really well at incorporating social touches within the tools.
So, as an example in Outreach.io, I can add a whole bunch of LinkedIn tasks.
It will literally have a sidebar on my Web browser so that I can quickly batch all of my social touches to save time.
It will also allow me to save a templated message in my task and allow me to put all of my tasks in an easy-to-manage row.
So all I have to do is copy and paste that over to LinkedIn, and it will be already be personalized for the person.
Works just like an email
It's really cool and really efficient.
That's not all though.
One of my clients uses Close.com
And to Tom's point, it has incorporated a tool like Sendoso to actually send out as a first touch, a brochure about what they're going to be talking about.
Pretty awesome, right?
So obviously, the sequence has to be first to send the direct mail.
You then set your wait steps to as long as is required for the direct mail to actually get to the customer.
Then, start your outreach.
Maybe start with your triple-touch of your cold call, email, and social touches.
So, there are ways to kind of incorporate these different channels.
And, as I said, we're going to go into detail on the text messaging in another episode and really show you how we use that.
But the concept here is that just think about your buyer journey.
Think about how you're reaching out to the person.
Think about the time it takes to really digest different kinds of channels and messages.
Like in direct mail, adjust your sequence accordingly so that the wait steps and the time between each step is enough that the prospect can actually process it all before your next step.
So those are just some practical tips.
If you want more details, feel free to ping Tom through LinkedIn and we'll talk about this for days.
TOM:
Absolutely.
And it's all about warming up, leveraging the channels right again.
If we leave you with anything on this episode, it's not to be afraid of the other channels.
Level up within communities if you need to lean into the channels.
We're not saying you have to go all-in on one.
I would never tell Evan Patterson to stop social selling and jump on a phone call.
Okay, like at the end of the day, do what you do best, but just make sure you're at least putting in the effort on these other multi-channels so you don't have to work as hard it could be.
One of those channels can either make or break your month for you.
That's all we're saying.
Is that the end of the day?
You can get 12 meetings in the whole month for cold calling, but you can get 20 if you implemented email a little bit and get eight more.
Bigger money. Bigger paychecks. Bigger roles for you at your company.
Leverage those channels in a way that works for you.
JEFF:
Awesome. Thanks, Tom.
Yeah. So just as a final thought for today, a really quick wrap up:
Your success rate on a single channel for outbound is 9.5%.
Adding just one other channel, you get up to 22.5%.
You add a third channel, and you're at 25.1%.
So you go from, like Tom said earlier, a 17% increase by adding two more channels.
Now, just as a recap of what we covered...
There are the standard channels - email, phone, & social media.
...and I'm gonna say if you're in B2B sales, you're likely to be leaning heavily into LinkedIn, right?
There are the creative channels -
You're going to be looking at things like texting.
Direct mail.
Gift giving.
You're gonna be looking at other social channels, like Instagram.
More personal ones that you haven't really thought seriously of for a business perspective before.
Then there are several others. So many others!
TikTok, Clubhouse, and many more.
There are all these different things.
But the concept here is to look at and be creative about how you're reaching out to your prospect and then to use them in a sequence.
Well, some tools just incorporate things like direct mail, texting, and social media within the tool.
Others, you have to kind of find ways to do it.
So really, all we're saying today is that enjoy what you're doing.
Do well at what you do well and find a way to use multiple channels in your outreach.
Thanks and Happy Hunting! Bye.
OUTRO:
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