Ryan Dohrn outlines his prospecting cadence: voicemail plus email, repeated five times over three-week cycles, then pause 60-90 days. He uses voicemails to stand out and drive email opens, keeps subject lines to three words and email bodies to three sentences.
What's going on, friends and fans? Hope you're having a great week out there in sales and marketing land. We're answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Keep those questions coming. I love to get them. You can never send me too many questions. I just, I act— I love answering your listener questions. All right, next question comes from Tanya out in Colorado. Love me some Colorado. Hey Ryan, when do you give up on a prospect? That's a pretty simple question. But it actually is a question I get quite a bit. So let me explain to you, Tanya, and everybody about my prospecting process. Typically what I do, and there's always other circumstances, but typically what I do is I'm going to reach out with first a voicemail because most people don't pick up the phone anymore. First, a voicemail that encourages them to answer the email that I'm going to immediately send after the voicemail. Then I'm going to wait 3 business days and I'm going to do that again. Voicemail, email, wait 3 days. Voicemail, email, wait 3 days. And I'm gonna do that a total of 5 times. So a voicemail, email, 1, wait 3 days, business days. Voicemail, email, wait 3 business days, so on until I get to 5 double attempts. So it's actually a total of 10 because like voicemail, email, wait 3 days. So if you do that 5 times, it's actually a total of 10 touchpoints. Now, Tanya, a lot of people ask me, Ryan, why do you even leave a voicemail? Nobody leaves voicemails anymore. Aha, exactly. I want to do things that other salespeople aren't doing. Now, I don't ask them to call me back. People aren't going to call you back if they don't know you, typically. So instead, I ask them in the voicemail to respond to the email that I just sent them. And what it does is it allows them to hear my charisma and my passion. But at a certain point in time, you do kind of need to move on to other prospects. But I don't just give up. I just give them a little bit of a break. So I'm always working a top 10 list at a minimum. Some of you need a big 50 list as I've coached you on. So I'm typically going to work each prospect voicemail, email, wait 3 days, 5 total times for a total of 10 touchpoints. And then say I give them a break for 60 or 90 days and then I come back to them again. Eventually you will be able to crack that nut. You want to be just, Tanya, just persistent enough To be just, just enough of an annoyance that they realize you're not going to go away. But you don't— definitely don't want to be a pest in sales. I have people all the time, they say, well, I call them every day. Okay, I mean, you do you, that's fine. But as a general rule, my pattern of reaching out every 3 business days with a voicemail, then an email, following the rule of 3 and 3— 3 words in the subject line, 3 sentences in the email— it has always worked out for me. And as a lot of you know, I'm responsible for a million bucks a year myself in sales besides just all the training that I do as well. So Tanya out in Colorado, I hope that helps you in your sales game. Friends, I'd love to come to your office or come to your conference and motivate your sales team. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. Never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. And they're not. We're not crazy, friends. We're the chosen few. It's a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right. We'll see you next week.
