Pain, budget, decision
Happy Sunday!
This week at Bullpen, we …
Iterated on the front end of our sales pipeline
Nearly finalized a big media agreement starting in January
Pushed forward a few finalists for our open account manager role
After we ink the media agreement, I’m going to do a newsletter on our history with media placements - what has and hasn’t worked, etc. However, in this edition, I’m diving into our sales pipeline and why we’re making changes.
☝️ But first … if you’re new here and find this interesting, subscribe below! I send one email weekly - no junk.
Current sales process
Our current sales process is outlined below:
Step 1: Intro Call
Step 2: Engagement Agreement (“EA”) Signed
Step 3: Candidate Received
Step 4: Client/Candidate Interview
Step 5: Contracts Signed (closed won)
While this works, we’re currently weak on the front end of the sales pipeline … we lose a lot of folks between the intro call and a signed engagement agreement.
The problem? We’re currently not effectively establishing 3 key parts of a discovery call:
Pain
Budget
Decision
When you speak with a prospect, you need to find out a few things:
Why are they reaching out? (✅ - we do this well)
Why does that matter? ✅
How are they currently solving their problem? (❌ - we don’t do this well)
What is wrong with how they are currently solving it? ❌
What is their budget for solving the problem? ✅
Is it us vs. some other solution? ❌
Is it us vs. doing nothing? ❌
What happens if they do nothing? ❌
As you can see, we’re currently weak in gathering all the information that we need to be able to determine if we can help.
If we can’t confidently say if we can help a prospect, then they probably don’t have confidence that we can help solve their problem.
New sales process … in progress
We’re modifying the front of our sales process as follows …
Step 1A: Discovery Call
Step 1B: Job Scoping / How It Works Zoom
… the remaining steps are the same as the above.
The new “Discovery Call” will include all of the above that was missing (detailed below) …
Why are they reaching out? ✅
Why does that matter? ✅
How are they currently solving their problem? ✅
What is wrong with how they are currently solving it? ✅
What is their budget for solving the problem? ✅
Is it us vs. some other solution? ✅
Is it us vs. doing nothing? ✅
What happens if they do nothing? ✅
On the “Job Scoping / How It Works Zoom.” we’ll do a deep dive into the client’s needs, scope the job, and share more about how we curate the talent that we recommend. This zoom call will likely include a visual aid.
Why will this fix our EA drop-off problem? Our hypothesis is that by adding an additional call, we’ll be able to more effectively qualify on the discovery call (weed out folks that shouldn’t be opportunities in the first place) and build trust/handle objections better on the second call (increasing the EA rate).
Note - I reference the above as a hypothesis. I’m not married to any of our ideas. Once we launch, it will become clear if our “new” sales process is indeed better than the “current” process.
That’s all for this week! If you found the above interesting, you’ll love a conversation with our sales advisor, Dan.
✌️📤
Tyler
Founder @ Bullpen