The Methodology Behind Finding Quality Leads for Piper Creative (Part 1)

This month my goal was to learn everything I could about how to succeed in sales. I read books, listened to podcasts, did a ton of research, and then put what I learned into practice. Check out my entire project here.

This month, I am embarking on a journey to learn as much as I can about sales; I want to become top-notch at tracking down quality leads in this pursuit. I wanted to put my learnings into practice, so I chose a company to find leads for. I chose a marketing agency called Piper Creative that is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I will go through my entire strategy for finding quality leads and how I would reach out to those leads.

Understand what you are selling.

Completely understanding what you are selling is one of the most important parts of sales. This might sound obvious, but knowing the subtle details about how your product can resolve specific pain points for your customers is very important.

All marketing agencies are unique, so before doing any sort of prospecting, I dove deep into what Piper Create does for its clients.

Here is a breakdown of what Piper Creative does:

Brand videos — Specialize in telling a company’s story that resonates with the audience.

Educational videos — Go into companies offices and film educational videos/ podcasts. They do this for companies that want to have a creative and intriguing video series to train employees. They also create historical podcasts so employees can fully understand the business’s history in its entirety.

Personality videos — In today’s era, personal brands can be just as crucial as a company’s brand. Piper Creative’s team are experts at creating amazing personalized videos to tell the stories of the people that keep the businesses going. This helps individuals build up their credibility and establish trust with their audience.

Launch podcasts — They do the strategy, artwork, editing, and distributing of the podcast. They also help clients find guests for the podcast. Piper’s CEO has interviewed many highly successful guests on his podcast, so he has an extensive and high-quality network. All the client has to do is talk about what they are good at, and Piper Creative does the rest.

Create Youtube videos — They make Youtube videos intriguing and capture the audience, so they don’t click off the video.

Plan ahead before doing anything else.

It would be easy to jump in and start searching for leads on LinkedIn Sales Navigator or even Google, but I would waste a lot of time without a plan and focus. So, before going to LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Google, I came up with the types of companies and the types of personas I would be on the look out for.

Pinpoint a specific city or are to reach out to.

The first thing that I knew I wanted to do was strategize to make my message more relevant to the person I will be reaching out to. Piper Creative brands itself as Pittsburgh’s top media brand and is known for working with many Pittsburgh-based businesses. Knowing a company is from Pittsburgh is an easy way to personalize an outreach attempt.

Instead of “Hey, this is Caysen with Piper Creative.”

I can instead say, “Hey, James. We work with a lot of Pittsburgh companies. Have you heard our name thrown around?”

This makes them feel like they either should know or ought to know about Piper because if everyone else in Pittsburgh is working with Piper, they should too.

Knowing this is the approach I want to lead with gives me a better understanding of the types of leads I want to go and find. So, I will be heavily focused on Pittsburgh.

Pinpoint specific industries that I will reach out to.

Marketing agencies can be valuable to a wide range of different companies, but Piper creative is unique, and I need to be intentional about the kinds of accounts I look for. Narrowing my search will help me get the most out of my time prospecting.

Target Industry #1 — Financial Services

I found that Piper works heavily with financial advisors, so one of the main targets was the Finance industry, specifically financial services. I know that one of Piper Creatives’ strengths is their strong ability to story tell. Piper’s work would be a compelling way for the financial services company’s they work with to build a rapport with potential clients.

As pictured to the left, I used LinkedIn Sales Navigator to pinpoint potential leads. After that, I spent time looking into these accounts’ websites. Once I noticed a pain point on their website or social media accounts, I saved them as a lead.

Many of the accounts I found in the financial services industry needed a historical podcast and brand videos. They are living in the past and haven’t progressed with the new technological advancements.

I would take that knowledge from my research and use it in my outreach attempts. The more specific I can get about the problem I can solve for them, the better.

Bates Group is one of the leads that I found using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. I dove into their website to see how Piper Creative could provide value to them.

Pain points of Bates Group & how Piper Creative can provide value:

• The Bates Group could use a branding video to illustrate better how they could provide value to their potential customers.
• I also went to their about page and realized they have a long history and could benefit from a company history podcast.
• The Bates group is made up of consultants, so I think, with Piper’s experience in personality videos, they would be adept at showcasing what each consultant does well.

Sports Health Institute (Higher Education Industry)

Here is an example of a lead that I found using the filter “Higher Education” in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Pain Points of Bates Group & How Piper Creative Can Provide Value:

• The Bates Group can use a branding video to illustrate how they could provide value to their potential customers (branding video).
• They also sell courses but have no video to introduce these courses. If they had a video showcasing what would be taught in those courses, it would increase their sales instantly.

This is what their current course outline looks like. Piper can spruce it up, tell a story, and get more people to buy it.

Find the right contact information.

Now that I have three distinct pain points and a strategy for reaching out to these leads, I will now go over how I would find these leads’ contact information to reach out to them.

Fortunately it didn’t take much work from me. There is incredible software called seamless.ia that does this for you. I simply went to their website, and the seamless.ia google extension found out all the information for me.

Seamless.ia finds out a bunch of information for you. It finds phone numbers, emails, social media accounts, their title, and much more. I took an educated guess on who the decision-makers were and then started to formulate an outreach plan.

That’s all for part 1

Thanks for making it to the end. This is only part one of a two-part series. In part two, I will demonstrate how I would use the information that I have gathered to reach out to the leads. Check that out here!