Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 122: Pipeline generation tips #4 with Kevin Hopp, CEO of the Hopp Consulting Group

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122: Pipeline generation tips #4 with Kevin Hopp, CEO of the Hopp Consulting Group · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into today's topic, I have one favor to ask of you.
• 0:37
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• 0:51
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• 0:54
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• 1:06
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• 1:17
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• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So please just go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts inside the apps and leave a review.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It will be no surprise to listeners that the number one challenge right now for sellers in cybersecurity is generating pipeline.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in these episodes will be sales leaders, individual contributors, demand generation practitioners, and experts whose business is all about generating pipelines.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to have fresh ideas, approaches, and tips that you can use to transform your pipeline either as a sales leader or as an individual contributor.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Today's guest for the pipeline generation episode is Kevin Hopp, who is the CEO and the founder of the Hopp Consulting Group, where what he does is help companies like yours build efficient outbound sales processes.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So his whole business is about helping companies and teams with pipeline generation.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's also the host of the Sales Career Podcast, where he gives lots of tips and has guests on as well to help with this whole area.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Kevin's content on LinkedIn is really good as well.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I asked people to join and contribute for these episodes, I gave them quite a wide remit, and I was interested to see which way people would go with their tips and ideas.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I love what Kevin has done, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: What he's done is thought about you've got to the effort of actually booking the meeting.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: How do you make it stick?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And anyone that's been in the SDR world and also AE World understands that there's going to be a fall-off rate for whatever reason.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Kevin's got three great tips right now for how to make that meeting stick.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Three very tactical, straightforward yet golden tips for you here.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is about the step in the process that a lot of people tend to wing when it comes to outbound sales.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about how to get a meeting that you set to stick.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get someone to show up?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, arguably, the hardest part of this whole equation is getting someone to commit to a meeting.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: The sad fact about human psychology is that people will commit to meetings and they will say they'll, yeah, yeah, next Tuesday, oh, one o'clock, yeah, that works for me.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's my email address.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, go ahead.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: They will do that even when they're busy, even when they don't have time.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And some folks, particular ICPs that might be more technical, that might be more tend to be more introverted, they will say all those things just to get off the phone without being forceful, without being upfront, without being truthful, really.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a self-defense mechanism.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Why they take meetings that they can't really show up to or have no intention of showing up to.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about three things that sellers can do today in their process to help really impact their meeting show rate.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the show rate is directly correlated heavily to pipeline generation and revenue, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do the hard work of having the conversations.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now get people to agree to take the meeting.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So the first uh tactical tip I got for you here is you have to hype up the person you're setting the meeting for or the reason that you're setting the meeting, you have to hype that up before the end of the call.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: So the last thing that this prospect hears before hanging up the phone after agreeing to the meeting is a excited tone about what the meeting is going to be about.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, for most people out there, you're setting meetings, you're a BDR, you're setting meetings for other people, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a big fan of this of this process of having BDRs or STRs or inside sales reps set meetings for other people.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's because it allows for the separation of church and state so the BDRs can focus on something and the AEs can focus on something else, which is really important.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: So what that sounds like is yeah, oh, by the way, Steve, thanks for agreeing.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna send you that calendar invite.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I got you set up with Nick on my team.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Nick's been in this industry for four or five years here.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: He's helped literally dozens of companies just like yours through incredible transformations around what we do in our space.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's really excited to connect him with you, and I'm gonna put you two together on an email.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: But Nick is Nick is the guy.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like he is he is incredible, and we have to list things that Nick is great at, and in this scenario, Nick's the account executive.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so that's tip number one.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I tease tip number two at the end of tip number one.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Tip number one, you hype up who you're setting the meeting for.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: There has to be some excitement there.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Tip number two tell them that you are connecting them to this person, not just on the calendar invite.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is a little step that I've seen have a huge impact.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: The little step is it's not just the calendar invite.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, you're gonna send the calendar invite.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's connecting, you know, prospect A with Nick, the account executive in this case.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be on the calendar invite together.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times, in a lot of companies, that's the only way that the prospect and the uh the salesperson are now connected.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's just on this calendar invite.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now keep in mind, prospect minus said yes just to get you off the phone, just so you'd stop emailing them, whatever it is, and they're not really intending on showing up to the meeting.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: When you say to them, I'm gonna connect you to Nick on my team via email, add in one little line and say, Would you please respond back to that email to let us know if you need a new time, new day, we're flexible, but you are now connected to Nick directly, and I know he's really excited about having this conversation.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'll let you go.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Have a good day.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Hang up the phone.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's an important little follow-up piece.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: So now we're gonna go send the calendar invite.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: First things first, send that calendar invite.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Second thing second, send an email to the prospect CCing Nick.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: The subject line, introduction to Nick, blah blah blah blah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna look at that email later and say, the first thing in their head is gonna go, introduction to who did I don't know Nick to the.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: And they're gonna have this moment where they're like, oh, okay, okay, okay.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: I I remember I agreed to this meeting, and probably 30% of the time, at this juncture, they're gonna dig back into what your company does.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna go look at Nick, either on LinkedIn or somewhere else, which leads really nicely into step number three, tip number three here for everybody when it comes to getting the meeting to stick.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Your account executive or whoever you're setting the meeting for needs to engage.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: There needs to be this like handoff of excitement and energy that reignites something unknown for the prospect.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what that in this, let's stick with the example, right?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I call prospect A, I get them with Nick, I hyped up Nick, I told him that Nick's got all his years of experience, he's the right guy to talk to, he's worked with companies like them.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: I put them together in an email.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the next piece of this puzzle is Nick has to take over.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Nick, like account executives, all too commonly in the SaaS cybersecurity space, have their hands up and say, Well, you know, Kevin, you're the kid, you're the SDR who set the meeting.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: You're the one who's supposed to make sure they show up.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: You, you, you, you.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because they don't want to dip their toes into the world of, oh, you weren't expecting my call.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, like uh BDRs, SDRs live in the world of no one is expecting to hear from us.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is where the account executive needs to step in and they need to echo the excitement.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: So they reply to the email introduction saying, hey, blah, blah, blah, blah, do two seconds of research.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nick has to go do two seconds of research on the company and say, Hey, prospect, really excited to talk to you about what you're doing at this company.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe find a news article, maybe find something interesting about the company, and comment on that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: What you're doing is you're building uh relationship equity.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Relationship equity is I'm not gonna no-show a meeting with Nick if I'm already excited about Nick because Kevin told me about Nick, and Nick knows about me.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Nick and I have some relational equity in that we have a general respect for each other now.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: This is what causes meetings to actually stick.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: And if the meeting doesn't stick, this person will respond back and not ghost you when they know show.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: No shows will always happen.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: The sad truth of outbound sales and sales in general.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: No shows will always happen because the world continues to turn, dogs will always get sick, car accidents continue to happen, you know, kids are gonna need the emergency parent-teacher conference for lighting things on fire at school, whatever it is.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's always gonna happen.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: But what we want to do is build relational equity right out the gate by doing the meeting setting the right way and closing for the meeting the right way.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hope those three tips are helpful for you.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with at least one other person and also hit subscribe in your podcast player.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you know someone that you want to hear from on this series of episodes on pipeline generation, let me know, please.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Email me at andrew at unstoppable.do.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's D O at the end.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew at unstoppable.do.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can text me directly on three oh three nine five six zero zero two four four four four four four.