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The Sales Evangelist

Three Unconventional Prospecting Methods That Are Making A Come Back | Donald Kelly - 1931

13 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

13 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Relationships, Marketing

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Industry Events Strategy: Attend trade shows and association events where ideal customers gather, then use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify attendees beforehand and schedule 10 pre-event appointments with prospects.
  • Referral Conversion Gap: Nine out of 10 prospects willingly provide referrals, yet only 11 percent of sellers actually ask. Review customer LinkedIn connections to identify five to seven specific people for warm introductions.
  • Channel Partner Incentives: Offer 30 percent commission instead of standard 10 to 20 percent rates to channel partners. Higher payouts eliminate marketing costs while motivating partners to generate more qualified referrals consistently.

What It Covers

Donald Kelly explains three prospecting methods gaining effectiveness as AI automation creates noise: industry events, referral requests, and strategic channel partnerships with higher commission structures.

Key Questions Answered

  • Industry Events Strategy: Attend trade shows and association events where ideal customers gather, then use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify attendees beforehand and schedule 10 pre-event appointments with prospects.
  • Referral Conversion Gap: Nine out of 10 prospects willingly provide referrals, yet only 11 percent of sellers actually ask. Review customer LinkedIn connections to identify five to seven specific people for warm introductions.
  • Channel Partner Incentives: Offer 30 percent commission instead of standard 10 to 20 percent rates to channel partners. Higher payouts eliminate marketing costs while motivating partners to generate more qualified referrals consistently.

Notable Moment

Kelly reveals he deletes more emails than he reads, highlighting how prospects experience the same overwhelming inbox fatigue that makes traditional outreach methods increasingly ineffective for sellers.

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Episode Transcript

This episode is brought to you in part by the following TSC sponsors. Cutting your sales cycle in half sounds pretty much impossible. Right? But that is exactly what Sandler training did with HubSpot. They used Breeze, HubSpot's AI tool, to tailor every customer interaction without losing their personal touch. And the result, they're pretty incredible. Click through rates jumped 25%. Qualified leads quadrupled. You heard me. Quadrupled. And people spend three times longer on their landing pages. Go to hubspot.com to see how Breeze can help your business grow. This episode is brought to you in part by Blue Mango Studios. Imagine using a podcast as a lead generation source, not only attracting your ideal customer, but entertaining them and getting qualified leads. To find out more, go to bluemangostudios.com. If you're struggling to close deals, you need to try LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Get a sixty day free trial all on the house. Go to linkedin.com/tse. Again, linkedin.com for a sixty day free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Unconventional prospecting, old school ways are coming back, and and I'm gonna tell you three of them that I'm seeing working right now that you could take advantage of. Check it out. Hey. Hey. Hey. Everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist podcast. I'm your host Donald c. Kelley, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. On this episode, we're gonna talk about three unconventional prospecting methods that are coming back that you could take advantage of. If this is your first time listening to our podcast, please subscribe. We'll notify you every time we drop a new piece of episode because they're good stuff, man. So let's talk about them. Today, what these three methods are, I'm gonna share with you what they are right away, and then we'll just dive into each of them and why I feel that they're coming back. Number one, this is industry events. Industry events are in trade shows, associations. They're making a real big comeback, and I'll tell you why. Number two, referrals. I've spoken about this before, but they work. And then number three, partners. And I'll explain that a little bit more, and channel partners tie with that as well. So the first one, let's dive into it, and let's talk about the issue in the first place. The reason why these are making such a big comeback is because there's so much noise that are out there. Now I wanna clarify this before we dive in. I don't want you to tell you to this so you can feel that, you know, the other methods of prospecting are not working, so scratch that. I still do cold outreach. You hear that? I still use my phone. You hear that? I still use email and definitely use LinkedIn. You should check out our LinkedIn prospecting course, by the way. But the point that I'm trying …

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  • by LinkedIn

    use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify attendees beforehand and schedule 10 pre-event appointments with prospects
  • by HubSpot

    SPONSORS: HubSpot Breeze

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