Home / Archive by category "Cold calling"

90% BS – Sales eXchange 1950

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

There was a good post this week at Funnelholic blog, looking at “Best practices for getting in the door”. In the piece there was a statistic attributed to the Harvard Business Review that stated:

“Harvard Business Review: 90% of C-level executives say that they never respond to cold calls or email blasts”

Now I can’t speak for the e-mail blast part, but as for the responding to cold calls part – “Horse manure! That’s for sure!”

I can tell you from personal experience, mine that of my clients, and other sellers, that the percentage of executives who respond is much greater than 10%, and even if they wanted to reframe the statistics and limit it to those who have made a purchase from a cold call, the number is still much higher than 10%.

There could be a number of explanations for this misrepresentation of the facts. One can be the way the question was asked, because it is true that in the wrong hands, cold calls can be painful for both parties; maybe they specifically asked executives predisposed to not taking cold calls or want to be politically correct in a social age; or they relied on data from the “never cold call” crowd, whose bias would taint the survey, after all it is hard to sell DVD’s, books, and ab machines if cold calling was shown to be working.

I suspect that this is the sales world version of the Bradley Effect, where voters told pollsters one thing about how they will vote, while doing opposite when they actually went to cast their vote.

As I have stated here before, there are no absolutes in selling, if your job is to engage with potential buyers, you will need to try all resources available to you, including cold calling. The post on Funnelholic highlights this in a clear way. While in certain markets you can get away with little cold calling, in other segments, you will never hit quota without picking up the phone and making some well-placed cold calls.

Another cause is the fact that many organizations spend a lot of money training their people on “selling” or managing accounts or relationships, but very little on proper prospecting. While lately there have been some programs focus on the use of social media or LinkedIn, again they ignore cold calling, after all, if you don’t do it, you can’t teach it.

Some of the referral based programs overlook the fact that while someone may give you a great referral, but unless the person making the referral calls in advance or introduces you, not always the case, and your call to the target is unscheduled, guess what, it’s a cold call, doesn’t matter what you want to call it to make you feel better. Unless you have mapped out the call, how you manage the likely objection, and turn it into engagement, you’re beat, and will become a statistic. Maybe the statistic was that 90% of cold calls are so bad that they would not buy from those callers. Which is reasonable given the fact that they have only been trained on the latter half the process.

What is interesting is that I have met executives leading sales force espousing alternate means to cold calling at conferences or webinars, who in a different setting lament their teams’ overdependence on their existing base, and the inability of their teams to prospect, including cold calling.

In the end, either both I and my clients are the luckiest sellers on the planet, or the 90% statistic is 90% politically correct BS.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Dude, You’re Gonna Need More Than 15 Minutes3

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Sales people are constantly working at communicating value to their buyers, especially in the early stages of the cycle, lead gen to prospecting and engaging the buyer to where they could complete an effective Discovery process. After sellers have done all the work involved in getting to the point where they can engage with a buyer, I am always surprised at how easily they are willing to undermine it, and risk their opportunity by saying something completely unnecessary, and serves only to sooth their nerves.

The expression that does this most is “I just need 15 minutes of your time” or “A quick 15 minutes”. Both are stupid and useless, the second is one I never did get, how is a “quick 15 minutes” different than 15 minutes, don’t all minutes have 60 seconds, it is just the quality of the content that seems to make some minutes last a lifetime.

I know why it is used, generally comes down to two things, both can be dealt with more intelligently and effectively. First is the popular notion that if you can get 15 minutes, and do well, they’ll give you an encore and you can stretch it out; I guess we all think we can do a good job. On the other hand I used to work for a VP of Sales who managed his calendar down to the minute, busy guy. He would ask you how long you needed, and would book you in for that time, if you said 15 minutes, he would end the meeting right at 15 minutes. He wasn’t rude, he had to get to his next scheduled meeting, if you couldn’t live up to the expectation I set, it was your issue, not his, you had to deal with it, not him.

Which brings us to the first contradiction, most decision makers have more than what to do in a day, how realistic is that they don’t have other meetings behind your, or other things that require their time and attention. Yes, no doubt we have all had instances where we were able to extend 15 minutes in to 45 or even 60 minutes, but an occasional anomaly does not make for a sound strategy.

The other issue with this approach is that you are in fact misleading the prospect before you have even met them. Think about it, do you really want to start things off by lying to the prospective buyer? Any way you rationalize it, that is exactly what you are doing, not a good foundation for a trust based relationship.

The second reason sales people do this is linked to the first, and just as weak. Specifically they are trying to minimize the apparent impact on the buyer, trying to make it “easy” on them, “Your time will not be wasted”, is the implication. But unless you are selling a coffee service or window cleaning, how much real or tangible value can you effectively communicate. More so, when you are selling what you would call a “solution”, where information has to be exchanged, 15 minutes is not going to get you there, you can pretend all you want, you are going to pitch, worse, you are going to ‘speed pitch’.

Some will tell me, “I can at least get things started”, sure then comeback and continue, with a bit of recapping, you are costing you and the buyer more time. By asking for 15 minutes you are undermining your so called “value proposition”. What the prospect hears is that this is so basic and unimportant, what they are asking themselves is as follows: “we’re going to make real progress in 15, can’t be that important or unique, maybe it can wait, or I can delegate it to someone who deals with unimportant things.”

Think about it, assuming things get started, small talk, while you assume they checked out your web site, you have to validate; if they did, you still need to create context, if they didn’t you have to do a bit more than that. From here, you need to at least go through the motions of gather information or executing a Discovery of facts and objective. Ah, look at that time is up! I remember someone trying to sell me an ad in local board of trade directory, they said they just need 15 minutes, I pointed out to him that he will need to ask me some questions, I will certainly have some for him, so let’s get real, how much time will we really need, he was honest enough to come across with a real time frame.

What’s worse, it is usually the seller who brings time in to the equation, not the prospect, again communicating a lack of confidence in their offering, or their ability to sell, or both. Just stop this juvenile practice, and sell.

Now I know that there times when you will be asked by a prospect how much time you need; in my case I gear my first meetings to about an hour, I am the one that gets antsy after 50 minutes. But rather than saying “one hour”, I pause, and ask, “how long can you give me?” They usually come back and say “is an hour enough?” Touch down!

But assuming they ask again, I just say “I usually need about 30 minutes for Discovery, I assume you’ll have some questions, so 40 minutes is safe.” If I feel they have a sense of humor, I add “any longer than that I take as interest on your part.”

I do have people who say “I can give you 30 minutes.” Great I can work with that; if they offer 15 minutes, I say no, I know what is going to happen, it is not a good use of my time, my most important resource. Either we can find a mutually better time, or on to the next one. If you have lots of prospects, this is not an issue, if you only have one or two, you may have to settle for the scraps that a quick 15 minutes represent.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Click here to complete the Voice Mail Survey!

Voice Mail Survey0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

As you may know voice mail has been a hot topic in some circles lately, and an ongoing challenge for sales professionals. I recently got tangled in a flare up about e-mail, as a result of a piece I wrote for Radius, titled: Get More Call Backs: How To Increase Returned Voicemails By 50%. It got the usual support from those who have used it and engaged with prospects they have been seeking for a while; and the usual disbelief by sellers and pundits, I forgot to mention that you have to pick up the phone and try it for the technique to work.

This got me thinking, how many people actually leave voice mail, so I created the quick survey below, please take a minute to answer four easy voice mail related questions.

http://www.instant.ly/s/OrKVt

Thank you in advance!
Tibor Shanto

Mar 10th, 2013 Attitude, Change Management, Cold calling, execution, Hunter, Survey, Voice mail

Attitude, cold calling, execution, how to sell better, Hunter, Prospecting, Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., Survey, Tibor Shanto, Voice mail

Did You Get My Voice Mail?7

By Tibor Shanto –tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Yesterday I got a call about a piece I wrote for Radius titled: Get More Call Backs: How To Increase Returned Voicemails By 50%. Seems it has stirred up a discussion in one the LinkedIn groups, one I did not belong to, (since joined).

Whenever I do a piece on effective voice mail techniques, three things happen:

It get a lot more hits than most other posts – telling me that this continues to be a challenge and hot button for sales people.
In the first 24 hours a slew of feedback telling why the technique won’t work, it is gimmicky, unchristian and a range of other labels. These comments come predominantly from people who do not like to cold call, don’t know how to cold call, never leave voice mail when given the opportunity, and are pissed that they are not getting return calls, when I, and those using my techniques do. These are folks who have not studied the dynamics at play in effective voice mail, generally have a less than sufficient prospects in their pipeline, and BTW, have not tried the technique they are commenting on.
Within about 48 hours, I get a bunch of e-mails from people who tried the technique, got a calls back, got an appointment with someone they have been trying to connect with for sometime without success, and they now have one or more new prospects in their pipeline.

The real difference between the two is the latter is committed to continues improvement, willing to invest time, effort and practice to integrating new techniques to their selling tool kit. They understand it takes work to fill the pipeline, and if the state of their pipeline is going to change, it requires change in their approach and habits.

The first group, the doubters, fail to take into account and understand the dynamics involved in leaving effective voice mails. Let’s look at one specific factor.

Most people these days are jammed, need to pack 16 hours into a ten hour day, they don’t have time to listen to your rambling voice mail, telling them about how great your something is when they already have that something. Since at any given time, about 5% – 10% of your market is actively looking for your something, that’s the total potential of people who may have an interest in calling you back. By leaving a conventional voice mail, chances are less than 5% – 10% may call you back, unless they already have a vendor in mind, in which case no call back.

Let’s face it, the reason most people want you to “leave a detailed message”, is so they can know exactly why not to call you back, and they don’t. So no matter how polished your message is, the more content it has the less your chances of getting a call back. So despite what one of my most recent critics suggested in the LinkedIn discussion, saying I “should spend some time doing research on the buyer so they can leave a message that’s in line with their expectations.” There is an idea, waste time researching to not talk to anyone, hmm? The most effective voice mails are those that are counter intuitive.

The mistake many make is trying to sell or get an appointment via voice mail, WRONG! Good luck if you have never spoken to them in the past.

The only purpose to leaving a voice mail is to get a call back – again to get a call back. When that call comes, you can then proceed to getting the appointment or engagement if you are in inside sales. GET THE CALL BACK! THAT’S IT!

I would argue that the only way to do that is to create a bit of curiosity, one that would create an environment where with little effort, the person you are calling can make a call to resolve their curiosity, THE CALL BACK, once you have them on the line, then you bring your sales or appointment setting skills to play.

The technique in question results in me getting 50% of voice mails returned. That may piss off some people not willing to try, but really what’s the issue, the method is there, you don’t want to use it, don’t knock those who do, just because they have a healthy pipeline, and fat babies.

Read the article
Watch the video

Try it, and then talk!

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Managing Prospecting Objections (#video)0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

This is the second in a series of video prepared for BizTV dealing with objections, the first was an overview of sales objections; this one specifically those you encounter while prospecting.

http://bit.ly/BizTV-OHH

In the video it references a link to download the Objection Handling Handbook, just in case you missed it above, it is: http://bit.ly/BizTV-OHH

If you have questions about objection handling in the course of prospecting, or just telephone prospecting, give me a call or schedule time by clicking here.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

When I work with new companies I ask people at all levels of the sales team a few basic questions, all dealing with ‘who’.

Who do you call on?
Who uses your product?
Who decides?
Who pays?
Who benefits?

In most instances three or four of these people are not the same. It is also true that more often than not only one or two of these people are actually called by reps when they are prospecting.

I start out by asking who they call on first when prospecting a company. Most will only call on one person, when as you can see from the list above there at least three, if not more, that can be called on, one right after the other; if for no other reason than there is safety in numbers.

While reps tell you that they call on the “decision maker”, in reality most will usually call on the user. After all, “you can’t go around them, they may get upset”. Personally I think sales people should be upset that they are calling on someone who at best can have an opinion in the decision, but can’t take one.

At times all five are one person but you need to address the requirement of each of the five elements to keep competitors at bay, and to sell the deal at full value.

In many cases the most overlook and potentially the most influential party is the last on the list, the person/people who directly benefit from the offering. There are many examples of this, but let’s look at IT and/or integrators. Most often they will call on their natural counterparts, the folks in the middle levels of IT. After all they are the users, they speak the same language, get each other’s gestures, and geek out over the same geeky things. But most often the beneficiaries are in other functional groups or departments.

When the IT folks need something, great, there is discussions, decisions, and revenue; but without that need what do you have. Seems to me there is more opportunity in speaking with the group who creates the need for the IT project to begin with. This of course requires a different approach, different language, and different measures of success. But there is a clear opportunity to “create demand” by this group for functionality, process enhancement, what have you; which in turn ends up creating the need for your IT based product. Creating demand in a group that indirectly benefits, drives demand and opportunity in your target group. You can now tie your product to other projects and initiative in the company.

This allows you to have more relationships in the company, deliver more value perceived value, and greater security from competitors still riding a one relationship pony. When you learn to do this well, it also allows you to deal with the budget issue, as now you have brought on another group that can contribute to a project they “all” seem to want. Another way to leverage the safety in number, remember sometime it is not that someone does not want to make a decision, they just don’t feel ready until their colleagues also get behind it.

So who you gonna call?

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

On Thursday October 18, The Proactive Prospecting Workshop is coming to Houston, specifically to Four Points by Sheraton Houston Southwest, at 2828 Southwest Freeway, Houston.

If you are in B2B sales, and need to engage with more new prospects, mark this date on your calendar, then sign up for this full day interactive prospecting program.

Whether you are with a small company or large, veteran or just launching your career, this workshop will give you the fundamentals needed to connect and engage with more qualified buyers.

We leave dogma at the door, this is not about old school vs. new school, this is about executing a proven methodology for prospecting more effectively and filling your pipeline with the quality prospects in the right quantities. This is the same program that has helps thousands of sale professionals improve their skills and increase prospects and sales. Sales professional in dozens of companies are using the methods and process delivered in the Proactive Prospecting Workshop to deliver consistent results.

What you’ll learn…

Overcome the fear of cold calling
Develop techniques for making successful cold calls
Take a proactive role in filling your sales pipeline
Write effective e-mails – Leave voice mail messages that get returned
Handle Objections – win more appointments

To learn more about the results sellers have realised just click here to read success studies, or watch what they said after attending the Proactive Prospecting Workshop.

Every New Customer begins as a Prospect!

Start filling your pipeline with Real Prospects!

Learn more at www.proactiveprospecting.com
Sign up today, seating is limited to 100 people!

Early Bird Specials Available – Multi-Attendee offers
ADDED BONUS – 500 FREE leads from LeadFerret.com
The Proactive Prospector’s Guide to Objection Handling Booklet

www.proactiveprospecting.com
Call – (855) 25-SALES

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Sep 8th, 2012 Appointments, Attitude, Business Acumen, Buying Process, Change Management, Cold calling, Communication, Disqualify, EDGE Selling, execution, Impact Questions, Leadership, Metrics, Next Steps, Objection Handling, Persistence, Proactive Prospecting, Prospecting, qualifying, Referrlas, Sales Cycle, Sales Leadership, Sales Mistakes, Sales Process, Sales Strategy, Sales Success, Sales Training, Success, Time Management, Voice mail, Workshops

Accountability, Appointment Setting, Appointments, Attitude, cold calling, e-mail prospecting, execution, Houston, how to sell better, Objection Handling, Pipeline Management, Proactive, Proactive Prospecting, Prospecting, qualifying, Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., Sales Technique, Sales Training, sell better, Selling to Executives, Texas, Tibor Shanto, Time Allocation, Voice mail, Workshop

Are You Too Smart for Prospecting?113

Prospecting is a unique skill set, this is why hunters are always in greater demand and earn more than people who can sell but can’t prospect. One quality is knowing when and what to bring to bear to move the sale forward, what resources you really need and which are superfluous or a distraction.

A common killer is research. Stay with me a few more lines before you completely frank out, I am talking about the degree/level of research and when you do it.

Doing research on a prospect is a must, you need to know the facts, their potential objectives, opportunities, etc. But that’s for a prospect, implication being that they have agreed to engage and initiate the sales cycle with, no promises, no guarantees, but a solid start. And yes, you need to know your stuff inside out going into that scenario, which means spending time in advance of the meeting/call. The key being that you have a willing participant.

It important to remember that time is a precious non-renewable resource, you need to seriously consider where you are spending it, or as is often the case, wasting it. I n light of that, what I find odd, and a great waste of time, is how much time and effort people put into research before they even pick up the phone to get a potential buyer to commit to engaging.

Since the prospecting call is an exercise solely meant to get that first meeting/sales call, it does not call for the level of research many inexperienced prospectors put into it. You need to have prior knowledge and understanding, issues facing your target and how you can contribute, but you don’t the type of encyclopedic knowledge some sellers seem to want before you pick up the phone.

For example my prospecting numbers are 12 dials > 6 right prospect conversations > 1 solid engagement. Now many sellers argue that they need to spend 20 – 30 minutes researching each company/individual before dialing the phone. Even at the low end, 20 x 12 would mean an investment of 240 minutes FOUR HOURS for one appointment. I don’t know what your time is worth, but you can buy an appointment for a lot less. At $500 per hour, that’s $2,000!

You can do it differently, first start by complying your lists based on verticals, and roles within verticals. This allows you to do research you can stretch and recycle across a list of targets, even if you research issues for an hour, and use it while pursuing 40 target, that less than 90 seconds per, add to that a few minutes for company specific data, and you have a manageable time-frame. Again remember you are trying to engage, get an appointment or a commitment for a call, not sell them. When you set out for the appointment, do the deep dive.

One other reason you don’t want to do the deep dive before the prospecting call. It makes sellers want to show all the great knowledge they accumulated during their research, showing off all they know, after all look at the time and energy you out in. But in the process you turn off the buyer, leading many to believe they need to do even more research rather than less.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

In the first five installments of this series we looked at the nature of objections by potential prospects and how to best use them to transition an interruption to a conversation. But there is another aspect to objections that is common and can also be dealt with, what I call the Non-Objection. In case you are wondering this is no way related to the famous and perhaps mythical experimental Non-Rabbit.

The Non-Objection are those that can be avoided before they are ever presented; these will differ across industries, and will therefore require you to draw on your own experience to manage. Success with these objections rely on a basic tenant of sales success, specifically the Three Rule.

The Three Rule suggests that the first time you encounter something, it is new and a surprise; the second time it is confirmation, and no longer a surprise. The third time it is our jobs as sales professionals to be ready and deal with it.

Based on The Three Rule, it is up to me to anticipate and move to remove a potential objection from the equation. For example at the start of 2009, a number of people I was trying to engage with put up the recession as their reason for not wanting to engage with me, or trainers in general. Rather than changing professions, I changed my approach. In my introduction I included a variation of the following:

“I work with companies who have decided to take a proactive approach to selling in the recession.”

This did not mean instant engagement, it certainly left the other common objections in play, but it took the “recession excuse” or Conditioned Response out of the mix, leveling the playing field.

Here is another example, I was working with a large international manufacturer, the team covering the SMB sector kept running into the objection, especially with SOHO’s, that “oh we’re too small”. As a result we had them change their script and include “I am the small business specialist”. What was the prospect to say, “oh no, we are minuscule”.

So if you are running into a specific objection other than the five we have prepped you for, step back and see how you can take it away before it is used against you. See how you can use it to your advantage by presenting it as a benefit, rather than have it used to weaken your position.

One other way to use The Non-Objection is in dealing with the Send objection. 90% of the time you call to follow up on a Send, you’ll hear that they haven’t had a chance to read it, or they have yet to get it. So when you follow up, start by saying “Harry, it’s Tibor here, I am following up on our call last week and the information I sent as a result, YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T HAD A CHANCE TO READ, HAVE YOU?”. Just the nervous laughter at the other end is worth the call alone. If they say no they hadn’t, just say “that’s exactly why I suggested we meet, how is Thursday at 10:00?”

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Continuing our journey through the joys of Prospecting Rejection we arrive at two common objections, one my least favourite, the other which is probably not really so bad, but some sellers just take it the wrong way, and end up on the short end of the conversation.

My least favourite is the “send me some information” objection, not so much because it is hard to handle, but because I find them to be wimps, like Nancy said, just say no, don’t pretend to be interested just to get rid of someone, because if nothing else you are inviting another interruption when they call back to follow up on what ever they sent based on your request.

You could to the extreme one company I know, where they make it a policy not to send, based on observation, this has not cost them opportunity. But let’s take them at their word and their statement at face value, specifically a level of interest. Rather than risking that interest, work to specify it. Highlight the fact that you have delivered many solutions to clients based on their situation, rather than send a lot of generic information, it has proven to be a better use of time to meet, specify, and leave behind the information that makes sense, and again end with a call to action.

With a bit of practice you can take this up a notch. Confirm that they are asking in order to better evaluate the need to meet, when they do, direct them to you web site, should be as practical as any brochure. If they are unwilling, you have saved time and effort. If they do, you can highlight the many aspects of your offering, continue to qualify, and move towards your goal with your call(s) to action.

One other thing you have to determine before you start, and that is what you will send. I stopped sending hard copies years ago, strictly e-mail, much more practical given the tools at hand these days. For me in the end I do send, as a VP once told me:

“Tibor it’s like this, you send, you have a shot, you don’t, we’ll you don’t”

Bad Experience

Not the send objection, but the objection that we all encounter. In many ways this is really not a rejection but an opportunity, but some sellers interpret it as one, and at times miss the opportunity.

In most instances people feel they had a bad a experience not because of what happened, but how it was resolved; more accurately not resolved in their view. We have all been to restaurants where the service or food was bad, but management took proactive steps to resolve things to the customer’s satisfaction.

Face the issue head on, ask them to tell you exactly what happened, take interest, clearly no one did at the time things happened. Help them have a catharsis, until they rid themselves of the luggage they are carrying around, they will remained closed, so help them unload. Once they do, you’ll have two opportunities, first they will see you as someone who was willing to listen to them; second, having relived them of their burden, you are in a position to offer a new alternative.

Word of caution, do not take ownership of whatever perceived issues they may have had. It is one thing to say you are sorry they felt that way, another to say “I am sorry that happened”. The latter can be fatal as you are inadvertently acknowledging that it did happen the way they see it, and that you (your company) was responsible.

Friday, the last in this series, the “None Objection”.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

1 2 3 … 12 Next »

What's In Your Pipeline?

90% BS – Sales eXchange 1950

Dude, You’re Gonna Need More Than 15 Minutes3

Voice Mail Survey0

Did You Get My Voice Mail?7

Managing Prospecting Objections (#video)0

http://bit.ly/BizTV-OHH

Who You Gonna Call? – Sales eXchange 17765

Houston, We Have The Solution!74

Are You Too Smart for Prospecting?113

Prospectors’ Guide To Objection Handling Part VI – The Non-Objection37

Prospectors’ Guide To Objection Handling Part V – Send Me Your Experience41