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How to leverage the concept of ‘Dialogue Bonds’ that will both increase your dials to conversation and conversations to appointment ratios.

April 30th, 2008 by Barry Caponi

Last week I talked about refining your territory by asking those that are not ‘in the market’ when you call for an appointment, if you can call back again in the future to see if anything has changed. This week we’ll explore how that works to your advantage.

Rest assured that when you first call someone their initial reaction is guarded at best. You are a stranger, you are interrupting them and you’re trying to sell them something they don’t think they need at the moment. However, an interesting thing happens over time if you ask for permission to call back and then do.

If you call this person again as promised, you will begin to develop what a friend of mine, Bill Wallace, calls the ‘dialogue bond’. It may not be on the second call, and maybe not even on the third, but sooner or later, they’ll remember you and the tone in their voice will be much more warm and welcoming. That will provide you the opportunity to get into a conversation where you can share how you’ve helped others in their position. And more importantly, they’ll listen because they ‘know’ you.

The moral of the story? Prospecting and cold calling has a cumulative effect. Ask for permission to call back and then do it. You’ll find that your cold calls are more enjoyable to you as well.

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Is your territory more defined and refined today than it was a year ago?

April 23rd, 2008 by Barry Caponi

Many of us are so focused on hitting our sales target today that we forget that we’re in this (or should be) for the long haul. Each year those sales targets increase, but God has not, and doesn’t seem inclined to provide additional hours to accomplish those bigger targets. So what are we doing this year to make our task easier next year, and the year after?

When we take a look at our territory at the beginning of each year, whether it is a list of specific targeted accounts, a geographic territory or just a few major accounts, we should ask ourselves two questions about the territory itself:

1. Is my territory more refined than it was a year ago?
2. What can I do this year to make sure that the answer to question number one a year from now is yes?

So what do I mean by refined? If I have a brand new list of 1,000 names, we know that some of these names can not or will not buy from us. Our job is to not only to make sales this year, but also to continually refine that list of 1,000 names, culling out the chaff and retaining the wheat for future attempts.

Many sales people I have trained work through lists of names provided them, sold to those where the timing was right and just threw the rest of the list away and asked for another list. In past Blogs, I’ve talked about the concept of very few of our targets being ‘in the market’ for what we’re selling when we call them. Since we’ve just invested time with them on an appointment making call only to determine they’re not ‘in the market’ right now, why not take just a few more seconds to ask an additional question or two to determine whether this is a permanent condition or just temporary?

If we do, and then ask the appropriate ones if it would be okay to call back in the future to determine if anything has changed, we’re beginning to build a list of targets that have at least passed the first level of qualification. Our appointment making task will therefore take less time next year.

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Selling ‘right now’ versus asking for an appointment when cold calling

April 16th, 2008 by Barry Caponi

This topic comes up a lot in our appointment making workshops – Once we get a suspect on the phone, should we be trying to sell them right then and there, or be asking for an appointment? Here’s our philosophy.

My answer to this and almost all questions I’m asked begins with this basic premise: Nothing works all of the time. However, I’m all about increasing my odds of success and reducing risk. So, when we cold call someone, remember that we are interrupting them from doing something, so in most cases, they don’t want to talk to us. Secondly, remember that less than 5% of our suspects are ‘in the market’ for what we’re selling when we call them, so they don’t think they need to talk to us at all.

What those two things mean on a cold call is that we’ve got a very short period of time to get what we want, so keep it’s best to keep it simple and basic. An appointment doesn’t commit them to anything beyond a few minutes of their time. Even if we are selling entirely over the phone, I recommend that we ask for an appointment to do that.

Here are some more quick reasons to do it that way:

• If we get into too many ‘selling’ conversations when making cold calls (elongating the average length of our calls), most of us sales people run out of time to make the number of calls we need to make in order to hit our goals – increasing the risk of not hitting those goals
• People will open up less to us on the phone than they will in person – meaning we’ll miss some percentage of opportunities because people won’t be forthright with us – reducing our closing ratio
• We will tend to feel rushed and therefore more apt to ‘product dump’ on the suspect hoping we can hit a ‘hot button’ before they decide this isn’t for them, when what we really want (and need) to do is to ask questions to understand how to properly present our solution in their terms – reducing our effectiveness (ratios) in the selling process
• When someone grants us an appointment (via the phone or face-to-face), they generally will stay committed to the time they committed for the meeting – increasing our odds of success

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Handling the, “How much does your solution cost?” question on a cold call.

April 9th, 2008 by Barry Caponi

Last week we talked about the fact that we must be prepared to handle the questions we receive on a cold call in order to be efficient. Here’s an example of how to handle the toughest of them all – price.

First of all, let’s frame the issue. We don’t really want to answer this question do we? We’re taught not to bring up price until we’ve created enough value to support it. If we do, we know we’ll more than likely be in a battle of ‘price only’ when asking for the order. So our first impulse is not to answer it.

When someone asks me how much our sales training workshops cost, I really can’t give them a definitive price because I don’t know enough about their situation. Saying that doesn’t work though, so I try to put it in a ballpark that is fairly large. Doing this accomplishes four things.

1. It answers the question as best as I can with the information I have (basically none)
2. It does weed out those that can’t afford our service immediately
3. According to Dr. Cialdini’s Principle of Reciprocity, I’ve now earned the right to ask this person a question – they almost have to answer it
4. If I frame the follow-on conversation correctly, (using our Bridging technique) it gets me into a short conversation that will provide me with a reason why we should get together

So here’s how I do it using a technique we call the Bridge question:

“Well, it’s difficult to answer without knowing what type of sales training you might be interested in, how many people you’d want trained, and a few other variables, but let me see if I can at least give you a ballpark idea since you asked.

We price on a, per student, per day basis for our on-site training. To give you an idea of what some of our clients have paid in the past for our training though, it has run between $850 per day per student on the high end to $350 on the low end.

I’m just curious, what are some of the challenges your sales teams are having today?” (Bridge question.)

What did I just do? I answered their question fairly based on the information I had (none) and immediately asked them a question that gets us in a conversation about what their challenges are (and off the topic of price, I might add).

If you’re interested in our techniques on setting appointments, check out the complete methodology, The Appointment Making Formula™.

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Questions received on a cold call are a VERY GOOD THING!

April 2nd, 2008 by Barry Caponi

Questions received on a cold call are a VERY GOOD THING! However, we must adequately answer those questions if we expect to have a shot at gaining an appointment.

When making cold calls (or any kind of appointment making call) one of the predictable responses we consistently receive comes in the form of questions. Depending on who we are calling and what we are selling, the questions will vary, but almost everyone receives some consistent set of questions on a regular basis.

There are three reasons to be prepared to answer them and do it effectively:

1. Each of us only has so many hours a day to invest in our business (and set appointments with). If we fail at handling a particular question we’ve heard before because we’ve not thought through our answer, it is not very effective use of our time, is it? As a matter of fact is was a flat waste of time to make the call in the first place.

2. We must answer questions we receive in the sales process in order to earn the right to ask our own. Dr. Robert Cialdini, in his CD Influence, (www.influenceatwork.com) calls this the Principle of Reciprocity. Why would a stranger be willing to answer our questions if we refuse to answer their very first question inadequately?

3. Using the techniques we teach in The Appointment Making Formula™, we will immediately get into a short conversation which will provide us with the ability to build a little value in the reason they should meet with us

Take a moment right now (before you forget it) and write down the top three most common questions you receive when placing appointment making calls. Then make the time to figure out how you will answer each of those in a complete and concise fashion. The test of adequacy is to ask yourself if you were the one being called, was your answer on the mark, or did it leave you feeling the person calling was skirting the question?

Next week, I’ll tackle an example of how to handle the granddaddy of them all. How much does your solution cost?

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