Here is a contact management strategy that can generate more high value leads than almost every other lead generation method combined. When a prospect changes jobs (you may notice a bouncing email to alert you…), a host of unseen opportunities for new leads suddenly present themselves:
- Follow your prospect to their new position – don’t wait for them to contact you.
- Find out where the person they replaced went and call them, too.
- Contact the person who replaced your prospect at their previous position.
- Find out where the person who took your prospect’s job came from because that company now has a vacancy and whoever fills that position will be new in their role and is now up to 10X more likely to become your customer.
Here’s an infographic from DiscoverOrg.com that illustrates the plethora of opportunites!
When someone gets a new job there are a few things you need to understand:
- They now have more money, more authority to spend that money, and more influence during their “honeymoon phase” at their new company.
- They want to make a great first impression so they are up to 10 times more likely to change vendors.
- They have little patience for the status quo, which means they will make change happen fast.
A recent survey of IT executives by DiscoverOrg.com showed that:
- 75% started 3 or more initiatives within a year– only 3% did not start any initiatives
- 42% spent more than $500,000 on new initiatives within their first 3 months
- 80% of the newly hired or promoted IT Leaders who would spend $1,000,000 or more on new initiatives did so within 3 months of starting their new job
Some people will say, “This is a great idea but it does not scale.” To which I reply, “BUT IT DOES!”
Let me show you how.
- Let’s assume that the US census data about 3% of people changing jobs every month is relevant to your market/territory.
- Let’s assume that is takes 30 days for a company to find a replacement for a decision maker who just left their job.
- Let’s assume that you have 1,000 prospects you are watching.
- Let’s assume you start tracking and following up in January of 2014.
In January you’ll have 30 people who change jobs plus the people they replaced – that’s 60 prospects.
In February you’ll have 30 more people who just changed, the people they replaced, PLUS the 30 who filled the vacancy created when your prospect left their position last month — that’s now 90 people.
In March you’ll have 30 more people who just changed jobs, the 30 people they replaced, the 30 more who filled last month’s vacancy, PLUS the 30 more who filled the vacancy left by the person who filled the vacancy in month two — that’s now 150 prospects. So by March you’ll have 150 people who have changed jobs and now are up to 10X more likely to become your customer.
If you continue this for 6 months you’ll have 210 new opportunities in the month of June alone.
If you continue this for 12 months you‘ll have 390 new opportunities in the month of December.
If you total all those numbers for the entire year you would have 2,700 people who changed jobs and are up to 10X more likely to become your customer.
The math comes out to this:
For every contact you manage, you get 2.7 high-value leads for every prospect you track.
Do this for 2 years and for every 1,000 contacts you track you would have 9,720 high value leads. Now what would happen if you also added the list of contacts at your existing customers and you followed the same sequence when they changed jobs? What would happen if your marketing team also added a prospect nurturing list of 10,000 people and they told sales every time a prospect being nurtured changed jobs?
Now that you have a more leads than you know what to do with you need to figure out which ones are most likely to become your customer. That’s where Trigger Event Qualifying™ comes in.
Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling and the co-author of Turn Prospects into Customers: SHIFT! For 20 years, he was a top sales performer at every company who hired him. He has had coverage by NBC News, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, and many more. His company has been named one of “Silicon Valley’s 40 Hottest” and one of Dow Jones 50 Most Promising Companies in North America.
Photo credit: Calsidy Rose
