Saying No To Potential Business

When is a good time to say no to a prospect who wants to pay you money?

If you have spent time identifying the type of business or decision maker that you can best help with and creating a solution that is best tailored to their needs, then clients who do not fit this avatar will not see the need for your whole solution.

It’s easy for them to say - well can I pay you one-third of your full fee? or pay you for one or two hours?

However, if we were to begin to work together for an hour, the work would frustrate both them and me because

(a) it’s likely that more details will emerge that need solving and

(b) the methods I offer may not end up helping that much

Back when I started my business and was working with dating coaches, family coaches, personal finance coaches, and more.

The methods I have just frustrated them and we end up having to work together longer to find a solution that does.

I now focus exclusively on B2B consultants who are looking to get high-ticket clients organically on LinkedIn and email,

Because of this, I am able to say NO to a bunch of interested prospects and not waste my or their time.

I am able to help the ones who qualify, much faster and more efficiently because of the bespoke system I have devised which helps them:

• Nail their offer and value proposition so it resonates with business decision-makers

• Identify who the key decision makers are in their ideal company and create lists and lists of them

• Set up outbound organic campaigns across LinkedIn and email to these lists

• Convert replies of interest into conversations that can turn into sales calls

• Follow up with leads and nurture a full pipeline of oftentimes multiple 6 figure conversations

• Automate this process for scale and conversion

Most significantly I can charge higher prices because we can win higher contracts and with these margins, I’m able to invest money back into my own business, systems, and learning so that I can improve all of the above.

If I were to take on every person who is interested in an hour of my time here or there I would not be able to see the results for my clients

Saying no is powerful and I encourage you to say no more often too.

Saying No To Potential Business | Jen Bishop consulting and lead generation agency london

Why LinkedIn and email are a deadly combination

You might be like many B2B consultants or business owners and use LinkedIn to generate leads but not cold email outreach.

Or you use cold email but not LinkedIn.

Or you get your work by referral and word of mouth, or via SEO and inbound inquiries but have no cold outbound system in place.

I constantly meet people who are making good business with some or one of the above methods but are leaving money on the table by not combining LinkedIn and cold email as an outbound strategy to reach decision-makers.

Why?

Simply because not every decision maker, particularly the busy ones, are on LinkedIn that much.

Cold outreach or organic methods require people to be active and responsive to InMail, messages or content you share and reply to your outreach efforts.

You can have the most amazing service in the world, the best hook and the best offer but if people are not there to even view your message, you will get crickets.

SEO and inbound inquiries are great for businesses who are actively googling for solutions to their problems.

But what happens if people do not even know what they need?

Like how to help an underperforming sales team?

Or how to navigate the change and transformation process required to handle VC funding and scale ?

Or to how to improve their safety and security standards and documentation to prevent accidents?

Leaders rarely google for solutions to these problems and MIGHT find out via friends advice.

But if you rely entirely on word of mouth and referral you know your pipeline is too unpredictable to plan for real long term growth.

You need a consistent strategy of generating conversations with decision makers in the right size of company, in the right industry and geography, facing the right challenge right now.

You need to get in front of them with your short offer of value and open the door to a conversation.

The deadly combination of pathways to these decision makers is LinkedIn and email cold outreach.

The ones who you cannot reach on LinkedIn can be reached on email.

The ones who are not responsive on email can be reached on LinkedIn.

Many times you can reach them on both and double your chances of them responding to your message amidst the flurry of business which fights for their attention every day.

A multi channel outbound campaign can instantly increase your message to call booking ratio.

Let me put this in context for you.

If you are currently sending about 100 LinkedIn messages per week because this is the current limit LinkedIn has placed on outreach.

This is 400 messages per month.

If you get roughly 4% call booking [low] that is 16 calls with potential leads per month.

If of these 50% are qualified leads, that 8 qualified leads and depending on your sales cycle you can close 50% of qualified leads that is 4 clients per month.

Simply add email to the same list and you can double these numbers.

If your consulting offer is a mere $5k you are looking at growing your monthly revenue from $20k - $40k without much extra effort.

If your contract size is closer to $15k or higher then the numbers quickly climb into the six figures.

The beauty of this strategy is that you are targeting the same list with the same message and invitation.

You are just doubling your chances of even getting the first conversation and opening the door to the sales process.

Building a multi channel outbound campaign across LinkedIn and email is just one of the elements of my 3 month consulting offer.

The others include:

• Nailing your B2B offer and message so it resonates with key decision makers

• Profiling and building lists of your ideal clients across LinkedIn and email

• Optimising your LinkedIn profile for maximum conversion

• Setting up and launching multi channel outbound campaigns across email and LinkedIn

• Automating and systemising these processes with software and tools that give you hands free to handle inquiries and calls

• Installing a fully trained VA to handle this process for you so you can be CEO of your company and not prospecting and messaging every day

Over the three months we work closely 1to1 to build a strategy that works for you and your offer. It’s not a group programme and the investment is currently $5k.

This system works best for consultants who have a proven offer that they already sell and have testimonials and evidence that it works and solves the problem for a business client.

Ideally you would already be selling $5k minimum per month of your B2B services and want to add another $10k - $100k of revenue per quarter to your business and fill up your pipeline in a predictable manner.

If you would like to talk about how you can set up your B2B lead generation system across LinkedIn and email just message me and we can set up a chat

Why LinkedIn and email are a deadly combination

Does Cold Email Work?

Crafting a good email script for cold outreach is one of the things many consultants struggle to do.

Yet a good first outreach message to a cold prospect is foundational to success.

So, what is the secret to getting high open rates and calls booked?

First I can tell you what NOT to do:

• Don’t sell in your outreach message. Nobody likes to receive a cold message with a direct pitch for services. This is a sure way to get reported as spam or just deleted.

• Don’t spray and pray. Do not message everyone and anyone with a generic message in the hope that it will get some replies.

• For deliverability do not use images, logos or links.

• Don’t use special fonts - keep the email clean with lots of white space. Bold words or phrases to draw attention but that’s it.

Next create a hyper targeted list of leads with their validated email addresses.

There are several ways to do this:

• Buy lists online

• Create your own lists by exporting data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator

• Create your own custom list from industry databases such as CrunchBase, D7 Lead Finder, Apollo and more

The most important thing to keep in mind is that 40% of your email campaign success lies in your list.

This means that nearly half of your attention should go into making sure you have the right people to target before you even start writing an email.

Third, isolate the most pressing challenge or pain that this group of people are facing that you can with 100% confidence solve.

Another 40% of your email success rate is that you connect with your cold prospect on an issue that is affecting them.

We are now at 80% of your email success entirely relying on you messaging the right people about the right problem.

This is before even starting to compose a catchy message or headline.

By showing that you know their pressing challenge or need you show relevance to the prospect and at least win their time to read what you have to say.

If you start with information about what you do or your services you lose people’s attention immediately.

Fourth, offer value.

This point aligns with the point above which warns you not to sell in your cold email.

By offering value, often a short strategy call or free consultation is enough, you engage your cold lead into a conversation which opens the relationship up.

It is this warm relationship that is now the foundation for a sales conversation and not before.

Other forms of value can be invitations to free events, offers of free or low priced training, an eBook or other.

The key is that this offer has to be VALUABLE to your target.

At this point they are not yet trading their money for the value but they are trading their time, so it has to appeal to their desire to solve a very specific problem.

Fifth, give a clear call to action.

This means you close your email with very clear steps for them to take next if they are interested.

This can simply be instructions to reply for more information.

Do not leave the prospect confused about what to do next.

Step out very clearly what they can do if your email hits a nerve.

Sixth, be conversational and clear.

It’s easy to get carried away in an outreach message with exposition about why you are getting in touch or who you are.

Write your email like you’re having a simple conversation with someone, polite and clear.

Make sure you show relevance to them and their pain or challenge and offer your free value.

Be simple and to the point.

I like to add a ‘no worries’ clause which means I give them a clear out if they are not interested.

Something like, ‘if this is not of interest to you, no worries, the offer is open.’

Seventh, follow GDPR guidelines.

Definitely research the data protection laws about cold emailing for business in your region.

A universal etiquette is to allow people to opt out from hearing from you again, whether that is by reply email or an opt out button in the footer of your email.

When you have a good list, a relevant and painful challenge to solve, a great offer of value, a clear conversational outreach message with a call to action, you can enjoy higher than normal open rates, reply rates and call booking rates.

To put this into context, a normal email campaign can reach up to several hundred people per day [big ones go to thousands].

With an average open rate of 20% [low] and a call booking rate of 1% [low] this means that you can be booking 4 calls per day from cold outreach alone.

Add this up to be 20 calls per week and 80 calls per month, you only need 5% of these cold sales calls to convert into paying clients to have one new client per week.

If your consulting offer is a conservative $5k offer that’s an easy $20k per month and of course if your contract sizes are $10k - $100k then having several of these in the pipeline at any given time and you have a 6-figure addition to your annual revenue.

Writing cold email scripts and setting up email campaigns is just one step of several steps in my B2B High Ticket Clients Programme.

We also cover:

• Nailing your offer message so it resonates with your ideal client avatar

• Creating bespoke lists of key decision makers across LinkedIn and email

• Crafting outreach message cadences across a multi channel outbound campaign using LinkedIn and email

• Automating processes as necessary to both personalise and scale at the same time

• Track and monitor your campaigns to achieve better than average KPIs and return rates

Our goal is to land $10k - $100k clients within a three month period and set you up with an outbound organic process that will fill your pipeline with similar business clients throughout the year.

If you would like to add cold email to your outbound strategies do reach out for a chat !

Does Cold Email Work? | Jen Bishop consulting best lead generation agency