Sovereign #14: The Secret To Getting Prospects to “Respond”

Welcome to Issue #14 of The Sovereign Seller. A weekly email with practical tips on how to use inbound + outbound marketing to generate leads, and get the attention of, and appointments with … your most in-demand prospects.

Sunday

December 7th, 2025

7:11 AM

Indianapolis, IN

In 2014 I was working for a large ad agency.

My job was to take care of the clients … keep the clients … grow the clients.

Basically it was a sales job.

Our biggest client was the Albertson’s grocery chain, then the third largest with 2,000 + stores.

They were considering a TV campaign, and were far from sold on the idea, but gave us a budget of $10M and asked for a plan.

At the same time our agency’s respected VP of Media fell ill.

And because I was the only other person at the agency with any broadcast experience, I was tapped to develop the strategy and present to their board of directors.

I was terrified.

But grateful I had learned how to generate response with advertising.

Especially TV advertising.

I learned this from a marketing consultant named Roland.

TV stations kept consultants like Roland on retainer to work with their sales teams and generate new business.

Roland would show advertisers how to tweak their strategy to produce results. And it worked.

I spent as much time as possible soaking up his expertise whenever he was in town.

Here’s what I learned.

The same principles can be applied to prospecting … More on that later.

Frequency: Most advertisers spread their budget (and commercials) over too many programs, media and stations. This delivers big - but ineffective reach. Greater results occur by condensing your budget (and ads) into fewer shows and a shorter time periods. Less reach, but greater effect. You want to own the the programs your potential customers are watching. A smaller yet sufficient number of viewers need to see your ads multiple times per day.

An Offer: Most advertisers see ads from Nike and Coca-Cola and copy their “branding” style rather than offering something compelling to their target audience. But … If there is no offer, there will be no response. If you’re a car dealer, offer a low payment on a popular car lease. If you’re a grocery store, offer a deal on staples like milk, bread, fruit. The trick is to offer something that gets them in the door, then figure out a way to make money on it.

And that’s exactly what I presented to the Albertson’s board of directors. I flew to their headquarters in Boise, Idaho. And presented this strategy to 7 grimacing, disbelieving senior executives. And my boss, and the owner of our agency.

Zero pressure!

But they bought it. And it worked.

For two weeks we ran more commercials than any other advertiser. 90% of those commercials aired in two programs … the morning local news …. and the evening local news. Our reach was effective, our frequency was off the charts. So many commercials aired … in fact … some viewers complained. I considered that a sign we did something right.

Our commercials featured attention-grabbing discounts on chicken breasts, milk, and bread. Wide appeal, traffic driving offers.

As a result, Albertson’s saw double digit sales gains in the markets we ran TV.

Here’s how this applies to your prospecting:

The SECRET to Getting Response to Your Prospecting

FREQUENCY:

Most salespeople have no plan or strategy.

The only road map offered is to make “more calls”.

What happens is most sellers squeeze in their new biz dev whenever it’s convenient for them.

And they haven’t properly defined or identified the people they should call on.

That results in a lack of consistency, and persistency.

As I described in my Cold To Warm prospecting system (see Sovereign #4), you need (at least) FOUR creative, thoughtful, multi-media, personalized touches every month in order to break through the noise.

And it should never stop.

Here’s what that actually looks like in practice:

Week 1: Direct mail letter (personalized, relevant, with a specific insight about their business)

Week 2: LinkedIn engagement - comment on their content, then send connection request

Week 3: Email with valuable content they can actually use (not a sales pitch)

Week 4: Phone call that references everything you’ve sent them

The people you’ve decided to call on and make this effort will notice, because the repetition keeps piling up. The effort gets recognized.

They go from thinking - “who is this company who keeps sending me letters” to -

“maybe I should meet this company who keeps sending me letters, and following up with emails, voicemails, and shares great content on LinkedIn.”

Over time you will get more response than if you haphazardly cold called and cold emailed whenever you had time to do it.

That’s the “frequency” you need.

Because we are selling high-ticket solutions instead of bananas, it just takes more time and effort.

THE OFFER:

In retail you want to get people in the door.

In B2B sales, we want an appointment - an opportunity to sell.

Most sellers offer some form of this:

“Meet with me, so I can sell you something”.

“Meet with me, so I can learn about your business”.

The problem with these offers is they only appeal to the very few who are ready and willing to buy - today. In any given industry, you make 100 cold calls, you’ll find 1-3 needles in that haystack.

The secret sauce is to offer to educate. Relevant, insightful, cutting-edge industry intel appeals to any buyer. Ready or not.

The better the information, the more appealing the offer.

Here’s why educational offers work: They flip the power dynamic. When you’re selling, you need them. When you’re educating, they need you. That psychological shift is everything.

It should be every company’s first priority to arm their sales team with this type of educational weapon. But if they don’t support you in this way, figure it out on your own.

Your educational offer should answer the #1 question your prospects lose sleep over. Not “how to buy X” but “how to solve Y without buying anything yet.” That’s the difference between bait that works and bait that sits there.

When I first applied this concept to my selling, I created a powerpoint presentation called “The 10 Ways Your Business Can Measurably Profit from Sports Sponsorship”.

I created 10 slides illustrating how clients were measurably profiting from their sponsorship.

I hired a free-lance designer to make it look like a book, cost me a few hundred bucks. I then promoted the book in all of my outbound and inbound efforts and it quadrupled my response rate.

This is nothing but bait. Business bait.

And the additional (and important) benefit is it gives you something to “advertise”.

Advertise “it” in all of your own free media - social channels, your website, anything else you control that reaches eyeballs.

THAT is how you drive more response.

Most sellers are out there begging for meetings. You should be out there with something so valuable, prospects feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal just by talking to you. That’s when everything changes.

Thank you for reading Sovereign #14.

To your success,

Shane

P.S. You can view my first educational bait by visiting this link, this was the 7th version of my glorified powerpoint: ballstatesports.com/profit