We’re back! (Episode 12)

After a brief hiatus… We’re back! And Harris has a lot to share. We’re shipping a new software product and two new service offerings.

⚠️ Please note: This is an old episode of the Pipeline Meeting podcast. In August 2022, the show relaunched in a new format. For the most recent episodes, please visit the podcast page. 

Show Notes

Show Description

Pipeline Meeting is a sales podcast for founders and sales leaders. If you are looking for actionable steps to close high-ticket deals, you’re in the right place. Tune in for help with things like cold outreach and qualifying inbound leads. We regularly feature guests and experts to take our business to the next level. Pipeline Meeting is hosted by Harris Kenny, the founder of Intro, a company that provides sales as a service.

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Overview

Harris Kenny: [00:00:20] We are officially back. It’s been a pause over the last few months because I’ve been very head down working on the product. And we’ve really been dialing in what we’re doing for customers, but I’m excited to share that we’ve got some new product announcements coming up. And some other products that are in development that are going to be more available in the near future. So I’m going to give you an overview of that. And then in the next few episodes, I’m going to get into more detail about how all this works.

Lead Rater and Outbound Sales

[00:00:48] First let’s start with Lead Rater. Now Lead Rater is an app that we built using no code and. It is informed by several months of work that we’ve been doing really since February.

[00:01:02] Supporting outbound sales for our customers now. I just want to take a minute here to talk about our philosophy behind outbound sales, because there’s a lot of people doing it. And there’s a lot of different ways to do it. A lot of different tools, a lot of different ideas about outbound sales.

[00:01:18] We’re really focusing on earlier stage companies that are using outbound as a way to make their own luck. You know, when your business is more mature and you have steady inbound lead flow. Your problems become different. And I’m going to talk about how we’re solving that later in this episode. But in the very beginning, you have to make some things happen. You can’t necessarily rely on SEO.

[00:01:39] Or existing relationships with product reviewers or journalists. To get your revenue going. And, you know, paid ads can be expensive. So outbound is one way to get conversations started. And by this, I mean, sending people messages on LinkedIn. Sending people emails. Now. Because there are so many tools doing this, you know, how are we different?

[00:02:02] Our focus has been on very high quality. Low volume outreach. Where we’re really focusing on who specifically you’re pitching. We think about this in four dimensions. So we have the firmographic data. So that’s about the company, the industry. The demographic data, that’s going to be about the person and you know, their job role and title, uh, experience.

[00:02:29] Technographic data. So that’s going to be the types of tools that the person and or company use to do their job, to do their work. Uh, you know, think if they’re, you know, using certain analytics tools or web frameworks and things like that. And then finally psychographic, which is that, what does it feel like to be that person.

[00:02:46] Is it a company that’s using? Older technologies and they are trying to. Be more efficient. Is it a newer company that is really focused on speed and, you know, integrating with the latest and greatest tools. There’s just different mindsets for different types of buyers in different industries for different products.

[00:03:07] So when you combine those things, You know, we’re going to go out and we build lead lists and Lead Rater helps us do this. We build the lists. We provide batches for our customers and they review them. They looked through the leads and they rate both the companies and the contacts. And then we take that feedback and then each week we get them a fresh batch of new leads.

[00:03:26] So, you know, the first point of input. Is helping us understand that ideal customer profile or the ICP.

[00:03:36] The second point of input is then reviewing the leads that we’ve built.

[00:03:42] We take those leads. And we provide them either as a CSV or if you’re using Close, we support importing them into Close for you. And then the third point of input is developing those templates and email sequences for outreach.

[00:03:57] In the beginning, the first couple of weeks, very focused on the ratings, very focused on dialing in and making sure we’re finding the right companies. We’re using on a severe expensive, but high quality data sources to make sure that we take care of deliverability. And we have current data.

[00:04:15] As we move forward in the engagement, our focus then tends to shift towards the response rates and the engagement rates. What are we seeing there? And how’s it doing? We maybe will iterate on the templates, iterate on the email sequences.

[00:04:30] We had customers who then pivot and say, look, I want to try a different. Customer profile here. This doesn’t seem to be working particularly well. And they’ll, they’ll try a whole new market segment. Others have tried to integrate within the. Set of parameters that we created with them in the first place.

[00:04:47] So there’s a few different ways to take advantage of this service. Um, but Lead Rater is the app that we’re going to be sharing more about sharing screen recordings of it and demos and walkthroughs. And so if you’re curious about that, if you find intro CRM on YouTube, we’ll be posting videos, they’re on YouTube, but we’ll also be talking about in the podcast, linking in the show notes and sharing in our newsletter and Twitter and LinkedIn.

Inbound Sales

[00:05:10] The next two things I want to talk about are for more mature companies. And these are our inbound services.

[00:05:19] The first is, and this is really where we’re. Putting most of our new energy right now. And for me, a lot of my energy is now focused on this. Is this inbound service where we are helping take lead qualification and meeting scheduling off of your plate. So if you have a form on your website,

[00:05:40] And there’s some discovery conversation that has to happen with prospective buyers before they become buyers of your product or service. Then this might be for you.

[00:05:49] We take those leads and we do the qualification for you. We make sure that it’s the type of customer that you want to be having a meeting with that they’re the right company size, that they have, the problems that you help solve. Then we help schedule that meeting on your calendar.

[00:06:04] Now, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here because. A it’s pretty technical. And B we’re pretty early in terms of how we’re delivering on this. And there’s still some things we want to iron out to make more smooth. But the long story short is that we are essentially operating a parallel. Inbound sales service for you.

[00:06:25] And it syncs with both close and HubSpot, depending on whether you’re using either or even both of those CRM tools. You can see what’s going on with the conversations and then ultimately for good qualified leads. Those are going to land on your calendar and you’re going to have that meeting. So you don’t have to waste your time with unqualified leads again.

[00:06:47] We’re trying some really interesting things, I think in terms of the. Pricing for that. Specifically looking at performance-based pricing. Or you only pay for booked meetings, but again, this is something I’m going to share more about in the future.

[00:07:02] I think this is an incredibly valuable service and the number of meetings that I have booked. In the next week from companies, including some really big companies. That, uh, are interested in it is. Has been a really strong signal to me that we’re onto something.

[00:07:18] Finally pipeline management. And this is part of the inbound service. If you consider this to be managing the existing leads and deal flow that you have. We’re doing this again, selectively. This is really invite only. But helping conduct win-loss analysis on deals. Helping. Keep active deals, active, helping reactivate inactive deals.

[00:07:38] Going through and getting back in touch with lost deals and we’re supporting again, HubSpot and Close with this service, and we’re creating those tasks for founder led sales organizations to help take some of this administrative work off of their plate.

Upcoming Episodes

[00:07:53] As you can tell, there is a lot to talk about here. And there is a lot that we’re doing. This is just going to be, you know, less than 10 minutes to kind of give you a sense of what’s to come. But Lead Rater. Is the thing that we’re going to be sharing a lot more details about next, and then the inbound service that lead qualification and meeting scheduling will follow.

[00:08:14] If you’re interested and want to learn more, feel free to find me on Twitter, I’m @HarrisKenny. Or of course visit our site introcrm.com. There’s a contact button, you can fill that out and a happy to get in touch and share more information.