Outreach strategy to existing clients

Hey Warroom!


Just a little context before I ask my question or two. Ive been in sales for around 17 years. 16 years of that was an Inbound Support/Sales role in Martech SaaS. My typical call was having to turn a customer who had a support issue or was an irate caller into a sale. It helped me develop alot of skills in terms of having to simultaneously diffuse a bomb while figuring out what I to ask during discovery and need to position mid call.


What it did not teach me was prospecting. I heavily utilized the War room for learning about full cycle AE sales and have been implementing a lot of what I have learned in my current role as a full cycle AE. I am currently around 8-9 months into my role (also martech), and thus far I have been exceeding quota and KPI's set for me thanks to the group here for all of the amazing resources regarding full cycle sales.


My struggle, is that there is no one really great to shadow within the company. Our software is so good it basically sells itself, and when I view our cadences/templates/calls they all seem to be regurgitated forms of the same type of email "Hey reaching out to see if you need any help with your account?"


My most effective approach thus far to booking demos with existing clients for expansion opportunities has been to provide a personalized review of their account and how they are using our services. I often politely comment on things that I feel are not setup right in an effort to catch their attention and get them to think. This is typically done via email, or sometimes when they answer the phone.


That approach has been working well for my ~200ish clients, but now that I am almost a year in and I have already done that for each, I want to try something new. A lot of what I have been scouring is more geared towards new biz prospecting which is something we aren't really allowed to do.


What are war-room reps doing with regards to reaching out to existing paid clients for expansion/upsell/cross-sell opportunities?


I was thinking of trying job-title-specific email/call out reach to try to target common pain points of other users by job title to try to engage and learn more about their specific use cases.


TLDR Version:


With regards to existing paid client outreach, what are some effective techniques for outreach via email or phone you have used that you have seen success with to open future conversations for expansion?

๐Ÿ”Ž Prospecting
๐Ÿ‘‘ Sales Strategy
๐Ÿ’Œ Cold Emailing
5
Pachacuti
Politicker
7
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
QBRs are your best friend.

Easy way to engage. Talk their roadmap and yours. And if there is no immediate opportunity, you'll know it in a friendly way and you'll get their timeline on when there might actually be a real sales opportunity.

And you can calendar them consistently for every few months.

Also gives you a chance to ask for referrals and references.
AE4x
Opinionated
2
Account Executive
That's a really great suggestion, I think as we start to segment our sales the conversation about intra-company expansion is going to be forefront. I like the quarterly cadence as well -- Do you typically book those one at a time or do you book out for the entire year?
Pachacuti
Politicker
1
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
Scheduling depends on the client. Mostly its a couple weeks out but you could suggest setting a regular cadence/QBR for like the first week of every Quarter, for example.
Diablo
Politicker
1
Sr. AE
How big is your target clients, are your products being used by just one dept or multiple, how itโ€™s being used at the moment?

Most of AMs have started running a cadence with company Roadmap that has some interesting releases. Itโ€™s a good opportunity to ask them a meeting to build that initial relationship

Additionally, they do target existing base but other location, dept etc (of course by creating a list of the similar persona).
AE4x
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Right now we are not segmented (but thats coming soon), so each rep kind of gets a mixed bag. I'll admit I am typically better at engaging the SMB users as I have alot of experience within the industry I can enlighten them with.

The questions regarding usage within depts is typically something I do cover within discovery to better learn, but I suppose I could leverage to arm myself with that intel prior to outreach. We really need better tools to outreach and get info, we dont have linkedin nav, zoominfo,hunter, or anything.. just our own database of info.

With regards to your company roadmap cadence, is that just essentially an email/call framework with a goal of booking a call/demoto learn more about structure and usage? I also like this idea rather than the typical approach most reps have.. Perhaps a specific email / call just to better learn structure and/or solicit referrals deeper into org would land better.
Diablo
Politicker
2
Sr. AE
Itโ€™s multiple outreach. You will be more successful when you use all channels - emails, phone, linkedin etc etc. Right tech stack is very important, your company will thank you for proposing and implementing. In order to get some, we need to spend some :)
AE4x
Opinionated
2
Account Executive
Agreed and I have asked since I try to do basic digging / connecting via LinkedIn so hopefully itโ€™s coming soon!
Maximas
Tycoon
2
Senior Sales Executive
Totally agree:)
Revenue_Rambo
Politicker
1
Director, Revenue Enablement
I used to put heavy focus on setting up calls around a customer's annual renewal. My email template would read something like:

"You're coming up on your 3rd renewal with us on DATE. Thank you for your continued business. A lot has changed here at COMPANY X in that time, and I sure the same could be said for your organization.

Would love to connect and review your account to help ensure your current subscription is still aligned with your business needs...."

When I held that meeting it was basically a QBR.
-- Review their account, usage, etc.
-- Talk about their goals/objectives for the coming year.
-- Bring them up to speed with new products (not to sell but to inform).

I found that running these meetings provided me easy upgrades for usage, occasional downgrades for right sizing, but most importantly it helped create awareness and interest around new products. I used that to extensively build pipeline, and then just worked my opps.
AE4x
Opinionated
1
Account Executive
Love it! Also thank you for the template!
AE4x
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Also, if it helps.. typically existing clients are small accounts with base plans, a few examples of upsell opportunities can include: social media tools , Ad Tools, Competitive Intel, User licenses, etc.
Revenue_Rambo
Politicker
0
Director, Revenue Enablement
Leverage your white space reporting as well, but donโ€™t just use it to seek products that clients donโ€™t have.

Use it instead to find your customers who have added products over time. Connect with them and learn about their businesses. Understand why they bought certain products at certain times.

Once you learn and know those trigger events you can start looking for them in the group of customers that donโ€™t have an associated product, and can leverage the customer stories from other and their results to close out those new deals.
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