The hidden work that gets great sales meetings

Great sales meetings are not the result of luck. They come from focused preparation and the discipline of consistent effort. The cause-and-effect relationship between what you do and the sales meetings that result can take months to surface. 

Think about the mountain of invisible work that is behind every single high-quality conversation your sales team has:

• Identifying the right accounts
• Verifying the decision-makers (or teams)
• Crafting messages
• Nurturing interest
• Consistent outreach across multiple channels
• Tracking engagement
• Scoring intent
• Timing your outreach across long buying cycles

It’s a lot. And it’s not glamorous, but it is essential. The reality is that most B2B teams simply don’t have the time or resources to do it properly and consistently. 

Why it feels hard to book great sales conversations

Many business leaders assume the challenge is outbound volume. Playing the numbers game is tempting, resulting in money and effort being thrown at lead farms that do more to burn your reputation than drive demand. 

Outbound isn’t the starting point. You cannot build relationships on a shaky foundation of:

• Incomplete prospect lists
• Inconsistent nurture
• Outdated CRM data
• Random content schedules
• Lack of insight into buyer intent

You need to focus on the work that must be done before outbound activity begins. Great meetings come from thoughtful and thorough preparation and a handful of critical elements that form a robust process.

The work no one sees (but everyone feels)

Here are the key ingredients that help drive high-quality conversations:

1. Prospect identification: Clear ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), accurate data and no guesswork.
2. Message development: Generic outreach won’t cut it – you need to understand the problem prospects want solved and communicate how you do that for them.
3. Consistent nurture: To keep prospects engaged through long B2B buying cycles.
4. Intent monitoring: Who is engaging? Who is revisiting? Who is warming?
5. Hand-off: Ensuring sales reps get only buy-ready opportunities, not cold leads.

All these ingredients work together, and if any of them are missing, the entire process breaks down. 

Why B2B teams struggle to do this work

Often one or more of these problems surfaces for B2B teams trying to build consistent pipeline and demand generation activity:

• It’s time-consuming and often teams simply don’t have the hours per week needed to do all this work properly.
• It requires discipline and consistent execution, which can be difficult with day-to-day distractions and the inevitable emergence of competing priorities.
• It spans marketing and sales, and bridging that gap requires bandwidth, alignment and commitment. 

Why it’s worth the effort

If you can overcome the hurdles that stand in your way, there can be amazing results for the teams that get this right. Imagine a world where:

• Sales conversations become warmer (and more enjoyable)
• Outbound is less chasing and more continuing the conversation
• Salespeople stop wasting time chasing ghosts
• CRM becomes cleaner
• Close rates increase

Best of all, leaders gain confidence in the pipeline and the process that is feeding it. This ensures that the demand gen program remains a priority and is less likely to be shelved or cancelled, so it builds on itself and becomes a reliable driver of business growth. 

It’s not unattainable, it just requires a lot of effort and commitment. Knowing that some B2B teams lack the time and resources to do all the work consistently, we built The Demand Stream to do it for you. 

We’ll identify, engage, nurture and qualify prospects for you, so you can focus on having great conversations with the right people at the right time. And the sooner we get started on the hidden but necessary work that is needed, the sooner those conversations can start.