TheEnglishMajor

Account Executive

Opinionated

Valued Contributor

Executive

AEs, how are you prospecting? Like, realistically.

Are you actually doing cold outreach? What determines where you spend your time?

Or are you mostly trying to grow and utilize your existing network for warm introductions

I'm trying to better understand what my strategy should actually be that's realistic. My company gets virtually no inbound requests (though we do get marketing intent things like ebook downloads, just not actual demo requests). We also have BDRs, I'm assigned to one directly who is middle of the pack but hustling.

📖 Prospecting Stories

⏱ Time Management

🐾 Outbound

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Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

All of the above, anything and everything. If you haven't tried it you don't have data to back up stopping or dumping more resources into it. Give up the rest of your life for a hard week and just talk/touch anyone even remotely dressed like a decision maker. And if they don't talk to you, dump them into your BDRs cadences and mix it in with w/e marketing is feeding you guys. After that week you can relax and look at where you got responses and what felt like a waste or you'll be busy following up to a some sprinkled responses and/or points in the right directions.

Don't forget to ask your AMs if they can ask for references a few times this week as well.

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

Filth, you’re supposed to be in a daze at this moment. Most impressed with your presence of mind.

Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

I can't turn this part off no matter how hard I try. But you made me with laugh hard with this comment so I think the slap happy is real lol.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

All of the above plus work the partner network - meet with my partner colleagues, make sure we know about upcoming RFPs, projects, anything we can get involved in, and do some quid pro quo to help them out as well.

Space_Ghost20

Valued Contributor

Account Executive

My company does not allow AEs to prospect. I mean I suppose if I had a friend or something who wanted to purchase, they wouldn't stop me, but otherwise I'm only supposed to reach out to the free trial accounts that are assigned to me and try to get them to purchase a subscription. SDRs do prospect, and I get maybe one opp a week from the SDR team.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

War Room Community Manager

Does not allow it? Is it because they suspect you'd cannibalize SDRs' opportunities?

Space_Ghost20

Valued Contributor

Account Executive

I don't know what the SDRs are using for prospecting, but considering the average deal size is $50 MRR, and the ICP is microbusinesses with fewer than 5 employees, I highly doubt it would make sense to pay for licenses for any kind of prospecting solution for the 50 or so AEs in North America.

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

Enterprise AE

google maps and yelp is where i would start if you were allowed..

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

Account Executive

All of the above. Referrals, sponsored content discounts, warm intros, prospecting etc.

I prefer to do in phases of social selling, email and then calls. I have some old leads, but are garbage that I can't rely on.

Here's a scenario of how I got a warm intro. Had an intro call with a prospect who essentially wanted the platform for free(Yes, $Free99) so I went to my founder and asked him if we do a heavy discount if they can give us warm referrals or some kind of attendee list. It's a shot in the dark, but he said sure. I'll take someone in my ICP over a lukewarm lead that has no business being in my pipeline.

TheEnglishMajor

Opinionated

Account Executive

Appreciate the example!

Attendee lists seem semi-warm in a way... are you ever just super cold going after your ICP with no kind of intent at all and just seeing if they'll have a conversation?

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

AEs where I am are 20% prospecting via cold calling and 80% following up on leads coming from SDRs!

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Well hello there stranger danger 🦊

TheEnglishMajor

Opinionated

Account Executive

uhoh what did i do

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

So, depending on your TAM along with how large the companies you go after I always like to get creative with outreach. What do I mean by that? Glad you asked. If I’m going after SMB accounts or mom and pop shops, Facebook messenger Instagram DMs your boy will slide into like they’re a female that just broke up with their 4 year boyfriend. If it’s mid market I look for companies similar to them that are hopefully a client of ours, mid-market rarely answers the phone but cold emails that are creative and have a catchy title will usually at least get their attention and response. For Enterprise, may God have mercy on anyone trying to cold outbound to enterprise right now.

TheEnglishMajor

Opinionated

Account Executive

Haha, thanks for the share! I'm MidMarket and yeah right now just going after my target personas in accounts, trying to be catchy and relevant but there's not a ton of intent or trigger events that I'm able to latch onto it seems, so it feels like just constantly taking stabs in the dark

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

If you want, DM me, I'll ask some things around where you work, who your target market is and how to approach them, seems like this is a great way to help out. Of course only if you are comfortable doing this with a random stranger from the internet

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

I prospect through LinkedIn and run campaigns through an email process tool (we have 2). Generally, visibility and being at conferences works really well.

0PercentCloseRate

Politicker

Oh boy

I've got a small TAM, and a full-time SDR. I try to leave the bulk of prospecting to him so he can get his sweet commish. I try to insulate him from a lot of company politics so he can focus on selling.

As for me, I have more freedom, authority, and product knowledge so I use that to work with AM's, weird accounts that don't quite fit, and other odds and ends.

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

All of my accounts are current customers. So, most of my prospecting is talking to them about new products / features / use-cases and trying to expand footprint.

I suppose I do have to do 'cold' outreach - But it's usually something like ' hey, we haven't met, but we help Company X with Y today, and I thought you'd like to learn about this thing that could help you out, too - Want to have a quick call to get introduced?'

CRAG112

Valued Contributor

Account Executive

I want to be clear here. Are you asking how to actually start prospecting because you do not know where to start or how to start?

Or is your question something different?

TheEnglishMajor

Opinionated

Account Executive

something different! I know how to prospect. My question is more are people kidding themselves when they expect AEs to totally cold prospect versus leveraging network and such

Like I've been selling in the space for a while, I'm currently working to leverage my network on easy ins and enabling my BDR on approaches to accounts where we have zero ins

hawkeyeguy

National Account Director

I recommend Syftai.

It’s ZoomInfo+crunchbase+chatgpt that basically prioritizes my account list with AI and then matches my product / services with prospects pains in real time. Pretty slick.

Then writes a prospective email using chatgpt to the contact.

happy to share more

FoodForSales

Politicker

I know my market and I just pick up the phone.

Head of Sales

Never eliminate cold outreach (unless that’s not your job).
Start with high quality research before you start making dials. Know exactly who you’re calling and how your offering would benefit them.
Don't make assumptions, but go in prepared to have the business conversation they’d be interested in.

SellLikeYouMeanIt

Personal Narrative

Account Executive

I work on existing accounts to prospect. I try to be as human and personable on my demos, and in turn I received intro’s without asking. This happened recently, and it’s allowed me to try to work within accounts to outbound, and perhaps ask for referrals. I understand - this isn’t cold. But working on connections can help and is what has differentiated me now vs. As a biz dev rep

SellLikeYouMeanIt

Personal Narrative

Account Executive

Also, use your CRM like crazy. It’s a gold mine in there. Create reports and reports, make a sample email and personalise it based on any info you can gather. They came to an event a year ago? Mention jt. They signed up to something your company put on social? Mention it!

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TheEnglishMajor

AEs, how are you prospecting? Like, realistically.

26 comments

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