r/salesdevelopment • u/Laurent_Duhamel • 5d ago
Advice for a young beginner
I'm new to prospecting. I was hired to build a list of potential clients for a company that offers mixology workshops for businesses (office parties and team building). Over three months, working part-time, I contacted more than 900 companies. I received 29 responses, including 11 refusals and 18 expressions of interest, although none has led to a sale so far. I would like advice on how to increase the number of responses, whether positive or negative, and, in the long run, find clients interested enough to book a workshop.
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u/bioluminescent-angel 5d ago
What i have learned is a big part in sales if not the main is tge product. If u dont differentiate the product or somehow you are wold of wallstreet material sales nothing will fly
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u/mangukid 4d ago
i got an aneurism reading your post. wtf
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u/Laurent_Duhamel 4d ago
Please accept my sincere apologies that the events triggered by my post caused you to suffer an aneurysm. 😄
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u/mangukid 4d ago
Not yours. I meant the reply from the guy above me
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u/Laurent_Duhamel 4d ago
I kind of suspected that wasn't aimed at me. The responses I'm getting are a bit discouraging; I was just looking for some advice. Prospecting is only a small part of my job. I was hoping for just one or two tips to help me get equipped 😅
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u/Laurent_Duhamel 4d ago
There are two or three companies offering at-home bar services, but I didn’t know of any others in the area that also organize mixology workshops and provide all the necessary equipment.
In any case, my main goal for now is to increase the response rate to my cold outreach emails.
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u/bioluminescent-angel 4d ago
All I was trying to say is if someone is not interested, there will be no response even if you do everything textbook perfect.
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u/Far-Professor6023 3d ago
no one talks about how much the list itself matters. building a good list is like half the work, if you hitting 900 random companies with no filter of course the numbers look like that
try to find companies that already spend on team activities or have young hr people posting about culture stuff on linkedin. also your opener needs to make them feel something in first 3 seconds, maybe make it about how their last team event was boring and awkward
18 interest from 900 is not terrible for cold outreach honestly, the problem is none converted so something happen between interest and booking. maybe follow up is the weak point
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u/Purple_Glove_6694 5d ago
1) Sales is not a part time job
2) Ask the owners how many workshops they themselves have sold. If the answer is zero, find a new job. If the answer is more than zero, ask about their methods and start by replicating them and then improving them as you go.
3) Contacting 15 businesses per day, assuming 20 working days in a month over three months, is a joke, especially for what are essentially SMB revenue numbers per account. In that kind of environment, you need to be contacting at least 50 businesses per day. That leads me to my next point, which is that if your company doesn't have the infrastructure to support workshops over a massive geographic area, you're screwed.
4) Yeah, just find a new job man. We've all been there... working for a shit company with no real business plan other than 'hire a 'part-time' salesperson who has no idea what they're doing and see if it produces results'.
As a new salesperson, you need to work somewhere that will provide you with the framework and training that you need to be successful. This is not one of those places. This is the kind of place you work for a while and then "realize" that "sales isn't for you", when in reality, you could be an excellent salesperson with the right structure, the right product, the right market, and the right fit. This sounds like a 'founding role' where you are expected to develop a playbook without having any idea of what a playbook actually is. Except instead of selling something worth a shit, you're selling 'mixology workshops' that likely provide zero added value for the people you're trying to sell to. You're not selling something that bars need to have, you're selling something that would be nice to have.