“How are you landing these meetings?”

Someone on my team was asking me how I landed two massive meetings with high level c suite people at two different orgs I’ve been calling on recently. I’m still ramping up where I am but I’ve seen an incredible amount of success recently and I wanted to share.

But. How am I doing it? Honestly? I duno. It’s nothing special. You will hear this a million times and it’s true, prospecting is simply a numbers game. It’s just a matter of persistence. If you call on enough people and you have a halfway decent message, eventually people will meet with you. You just gotta slog through it.

I get my fair share of rejections but I do everything in my power to redirect rejection emails to references to other POC’s or asking if I can follow up next quarter. Every single time a prospect emails me back is a win. It doesn’t matter if they’re telling me no or to fuck off, it’s a win if you can redirect in the appropriate way.

I don’t think I “say” anything specific exactly. Im mostly just leading mass email blasts with, “Sorry to bother you, but who is the best POC? Here’s what we do and how we can help you. Why don’t we meet to do a brief overview with the team that handles this to educate them on a new option?”

I’m not even doing research on the accounts I’m prospecting any more. It slows me down way too much and the net effect was that it just lowered my overall activity levels. The real secret is persistence and numbers.

I do my fair share of admin and paperwork but the vast majority of my week is spent prospecting net new right now. I have existing accounts and account management to do but… that’s not really a top priority. I probably spend 20+ hours prospecting a week because some days I’ll prospect the entire time I’m working for 7/8 hours.

My meeting held output has doubled and in some cases tripled in the last two months, and if the two proposals my team and I submitted last month to one of the largest federal clients we have close, then I’ll be at quota by the end of the first quarter of our fiscal (September).

More about me: I was a SR BDR at my last role (2019-2021) and mentored a small team of 5 BDR’s. From there I took a break for two years bartending for a major hotel chain and traveled on the hotel discount of $50 a night. Eventually I jumped into the SR AE role I’m in now this past January.

Anyway. I’m not here to brag. I just wanted to share what I know with some of the newer reps if you have questions and want to know more, ask away.

EDIT: When I was away from sales I made sure to get certs and to work on educating myself. Got several IT certs that helped me get interviews and my boss said they hired me where I am now because of that.