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About This Episode
What do you consider to be worn out sales tactics?
Direct mailers? Cold calling?
How about automated sequences?
In the wrong hands, all of these methods can be counterintuitive and damaging to your brand. Yes, even automation.
In this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we check in with Brent Pearson, the founder of Enboarder. He gives us the lowdown on his unorthodox go-to-market process, the right way to use sales automation, and visual prospecting.
This post is based on a podcast interview with Brent Pearson from Enboarder. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can listen to every episode here.
Skip crawling and walking – just run
Brent knew that he had an exceptional product on his hands with Enboarder.
What he didn’t have?
A marketing team.
He didn’t let that stop him from going to market with an eager team of account execs behind him. He did find, however, that there are pros and cons to going to market without an actual marketing team or process.
Pro: AEs acquire a guerilla sales mentality.
Once Enboarder eventually implemented a marketing team and process, the sales team still had a DIY attitude.
Of course, it takes some time to get a new strategy up and running. Luckily, the Enboarder sales team was already used to going out and generating leads of their own.
It’s for this reason that Brent sees his unconventional approach as a positive. His sales team’s pipeline is nearly always full, whether that be from marketing or sales efforts.
Con: Playing catch-up.
The negative of going to market without a dedicated marketing team is the catching up your marketing pros will need to do while your product is already live.
This con can be greatly mitigated by placing value in who you hire and keeping them satisfied.
The unusual methodology Brent used for going to market hints at his contempt for the misuse of automation.
Overwhelming automation
Brent views endless email sequences as a traditional sales tactic that should be reconfigured.
There are two audiences the era of automated brawn is overwhelming:
- The recipient
As B2B professionals, we’re constantly receiving emails for the latest and greatest software, services, and upgrades. We can see how recipients of automated emails tune out the clutter in their inboxes.
Why, then, do we insist on permeating each lead’s inbox to the point of insanity?
Do those recipients really appreciate all of the unwanted messages you’re sending them just because you use their name in the subject?
- The sender
Sales and marketing automation has evolved past the point of helpful to downright harmful.
With numerous automation tools and insurmountable features, it’s difficult for sales and marketing teams to really get a handle on their processes. There will always be more, better, bigger. So, the methods become overcomplicated and more daunting than sending out emails and social media messages manually.
What’s the solution?
Simplification.
We tend to put too much trust in automation tools because we could never keep all of our sales sequences moving along ourselves.
Yet, we don’t give enough credit to our brains nor our industry knowledge. If we have insight into the type of message or platform a certain prospect prefers, why not use it?
Brent emphasizes the power of the omnichannel approach with a sniper mindset. Instead of sending dozens of messages that may or may not be helpful via every single channel, create a succinct and highly impactful experience for your prospect through their preferred channels.
Visual prospecting
Brent has found that the sniper approach works best when combined with visual prospecting.
With the help of Dogpatch Advisors, the Enboarder team is able to personalize every outbound image to scale. Plus, the customized graphics spice up what would be plain text emails, resulting in increased response times.
Visual prospecting allows Brent and his team to make a bigger impact with one message than with a dozen plain text emails.
Key takeaways
First and foremost, just because the industry has traditionally done something one way, doesn’t mean that your business’ natural progression is wrong for doing it differently.
Furthermore, if you find a smarter way to achieve your business objectives, give it a shot. Your instincts warrant as much of a chance as traditional strategies do.
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, Brent advises startups to focus on who you hire. Technology will come and go, but your talent deserves to be taken care of. After all, it’s not about the tools, it’s about the people.
About The Podcast
The Sales Engagement podcast is the #1 podcast focused on engaging your customers and prospects in the modern sales era. This show features real-life stories and best practices from revenue leaders doing the job day in and day out, in a casual, radio-like talk show.
Each episode features modern tactics, strategies, hacks, and tips to get the most out of your sales engagement strategy and help you navigate the next generation of sales. You’ll find energetic talks that will provide you with real actionable value around building meaningful connections and creating a better selling experience through authentic conversations that you can measure.
The Sales Engagement podcast is here to help B2B sales leaders, customer success leaders, and marketing leaders innovate and usher in the next era of modern sales by building pipeline, up-selling customers, and ultimately generating more revenue with more efficiency.
Hosted by Joe Vignolo, Senior Content Managing Editor at Outreach, and Mark Kosoglow, Vice President of Sales at Outreach.
