Lead Generation, Prospecting, Appointment Setting, Cold Calling Training – Cold Calling 101

The 4 elements of the appointment setting process we can improve. (Part three of four.)

March 31st, 2010 by Barry Caponi

What are they and how do we improve them? Part three of four – Best Practices (process and messaging).

Are you like a lot of us ‘Hooked on Hopium’ when it comes to the success of your new prospect acquisition strategy? Do you concentrate most of your energy and focus on pursuing prospects that are already in the pipeline? After all, that’s how we get paid, right? We don’t get commissions for finding prospects; we get paid to close them. Our teams are good at closing, but suck at consistently filling the pipeline with quality prospects.

This series of four blogs focuses on the four main elements of a prospect acquisition process and how to improve move the needle in a positive direction on each.

The four parts are:

Target Acquisition (who do we call?)
Art Skills (what do we say and how do we say it)
Best Practices (process and messaging)
Science Skills (efficiency and improvement)

Part 3 – Best Practices

The concept of Best Practices contains a lot of different disciplines, but let me address at least a few key ones:

Are you managing your particular area of responsibility with the concept of territory management in mind? In other words, regardless of who is in a specific territory (virtual or geographic), are you employing a process that will leave the territory better defined and warmer a year from now regardless of whether your current sales professional is even still here or not?
Do you have a Best Practice that defines the number of times a Target will be called, how frequently, and if no contact is made, how long will you wait to begin the cycle again?
Do you have your team professionally disengage, asking for permission to check back again in the future if the Target is not ‘in the market’ right now, or do they take the no they hear as a never?
Do you have your team leave voicemails? Are they different for each attempt in the cycle? It is a great way to leave a commercial message if it is crafted well. And who knows, if the messages are different, sometimes we actually do hit on a hot button by varying our value proposition between several of our strongest.
Does the Target know that the last attempt is the last attempt for a while? In other words, are you giving the Target a last chance to respond if they want to but are busy?
How do you on-board new sales professionals? How do you provide them with the Best Practices that are working for your current team?
Can you tell within the first 30 to 45 days whether your new team member has the aptitude and attitude to succeed or do you wait for the revenue attainment (or lack there of) to tell you that several months down the road?

There are actually a lot more questions I could ask here that we step our customers through to determine how best to tackle this key part of the selling process, but any more at this time I’d either bore you or depress you!

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called The Prospector’s Academy™ under the brand name Coldcalling101. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations – the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 214 483-5800 or at barry@coldcalling101.com.

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The 4 elements of the appointment setting process we can improve. (Part two of four)

March 24th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

What are they and how do we improve them? Part two of four – Art Skills (what do we say, when do we say it and how do we say it).

Are you like a lot of us ‘Hooked on Hopium’ when it comes to the success of your new prospect acquisition strategy? Do you concentrate most of your energy and focus on pursuing prospects that are already in the pipeline? After all, that’s how we get paid, right? We don’t get commissions for finding prospects; we get paid to close them. Our teams are good at closing, but suck at consistently filling the pipeline with quality prospects.

This series of four blogs focuses on the four main elements of a prospect acquisition process and how to improve move the needle in a positive direction on each.

The four parts are:

Target Acquisition (who do we call?)

Art Skills (what do we say and how do we say it)

Best Practices (process and messaging)

Science Skills (efficiency and improvement)

Part 2 – Art Skills

We just began asking participants who register for our webinars the question of which of these four categories of challenges pose the greatest challenge for them. The answer was overwhelmingly, number two; Art Skills. Most sales professionals just don’t know what to say to open the conversation, let alone what to say when the Target says ‘No’.

There’s not a whole lot I can do to help you fix this challenge in a single blog. However, I can help you identify whether it is something you, as a manager, need to address. Here’s what I would suggest:

Invest in Klpz as a process engine for telephone prospecting because it will (among other really neat things) automatically provide you with two key ratios to determine whether your charges are struggling with Art.

The first ratio is the Conversation Ratio – how many dials does it take to produce a conversation with the decision maker our sales professional wishes to meet with. In addition to this being a list problem, a low ratio here suggests we test how well our charges are leaving voicemails, sending coordinated emails and how well they handle gatekeepers.

The second ratio is the Appointment Ratio – how many conversations does it take to produce an appointment. A low ratio here has only one root issue – what they say, when they say it and how they say it once they are speaking with the person they wish to meet with.

Okay, maybe number 1 is a bit self-serving, but it really does work. So let’s try this if you’re unwilling or unable to do step 1. Ask your charges to begin writing down the results of their appointment setting process. First, have them record the time they begin and end making dials. Then have them make a tick mark each time they:

Dial the phone (D)

Complete a conversation with the person they wish to meet with (CC)

Leave a voicemail (LVM)

Get a returned voicemail (RVM)

Schedule an Initial Appointment (IA)

Trust me, it won’t be exactly accurate, but it will begin to paint a very valuable picture for you as you’ll begin to see patterns and gain insight into the process you’ve never had before. You’ll begin to see things like they are not making as many dials as they say they are because the time they say they are making calls doesn’t match up with what you know they are doing with their days. (BTW, figure on at least 6 minutes a dial if they use a CRM or contact manager; more if they are using spreadsheets or hand written lists. We’ve benchmarked it.)

In your next sales meeting, ask your team what is the number one negative response they are hearing when they get the decision maker on the phone. Then role-play how they are handling it. The lower the Appointment Ratio, the more you need to be prepared to cringe when you hear what they are saying.

In a subsequent sales meetings ask them to role-play:

Leaving voicemails

Handling gatekeepers

If you feel overwhelmed at the result – call us. Our typical customer will double or better the number of appointments their teams set.

Okay, sorry for the second commercial in this blog, but the point is if you will do at least steps 2 through 4, you’ll have a really good idea of whether or not Art is something you need to address.

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called The Prospector’s Academy™ under the brand name Coldcalling101. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations – the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 214 483-5800 or at barry@coldcalling101.com.

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The 4 elements of the appointment setting process we can improve. What are they and how do we improve them? Part one of four – Target acquisition or lead generation.

March 17th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

Are you like a lot of us ‘Hooked on Hopium’ when it comes to the success of your new prospect acquisition strategy? Do you concentrate most of your energy and focus on pursuing prospects that are already in the pipeline? After all, that’s how we get paid, right? We don’t get commissions for finding prospects; we get paid to close them. Our teams are good at closing, but suck at consistently filling the pipeline with quality prospects.

This series of four blogs focuses on the four main elements of a prospect acquisition process and how to improve move the needle in a positive direction on each.

The four parts are:

Target Acquisition (who do we call?)

Art Skills (what do we say and how do we say it)

Best Practices (process and messaging)

Science Skills (efficiency and improvement)

Part 1 – Target Acquisition

This may be truly one of real ‘elephants in the room’ issues. Every sales manager and sales professional thinks about this. The question is whether they really think it through or not.

We hear a very consistent message when talking to both these groups. Sales professionals just want to be handed a list of Targets to be called. Sales managers want them to go find their own. As soon as the sales professional has a ‘list’, the sales manager is relieved and goes back to more ‘important’ duties such as forecasting for the boss or trying to help someone close a deal. In other words, the objective incongruously seems to be the procuring of the list, not the ultimate goal of acquiring as many good new Targets as we can.

Here’s what we’re missing and why it is so important. This may be the most critical component of the process of getting in front of prospective new customers. Why do I say that?

Every other step in the selling process stems from the success of this step. Each of us is given the same number of hours each year to accomplish our task of bringing home some amount of new revenue and new customers. If we invest that time wisely calling on a set of well qualified Targets, we’ll do well. Invest it poorly on a list of Targets that are too small, outside our range of profitability, don’t use our solution, etc. and we will fail unless we get lucky.

What good are great skills at getting through and converting conversations into appointments if our list doesn’t contain Targets that are of the right size for instance? Not only do we waste time trying to set the appointments, but we also waste even more time once in front of the Target qualifying them. And if our qualification skills are poor, we’ll waste even more time trying to sell to them and service them after the sale.

What good did the time we invested to create a good set of the Best Practices do us if we can not leverage our prospecting time each day by building our territory with Targets that are truly qualified but may just not be ‘in the market’ right now. A well thought out set of Best Practices applied to this concept will reduce the amount of cold calling we must do over time because these same Targets remain on the list until they are ‘in the market’. I begin establishing credibility and at least

a ‘dialogue bond’ each time I speak with them. However, if I constantly must start all over with a new list, I am doing neither.

What good does it do us to simply be efficient or fast at reaching out to the wrong Targets? None. We’re just failing faster.

The moral of the story is that particularly as managers, we need to give great thought to, and invest the appropriate time to help our sales professionals acquire a good set of Targets to approach. We should ask ourselves what kind of lead generation programs are in play? How well are they working? Should we canvas? If we purchase lists, have we designed the criteria well enough?

Trust me; it will pay us back in spades, even if the current sales professional can’t cut the mustard. At least we’re continuing to warm up the territory over time.

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called The Prospector’s Academy™ under the brand name Coldcalling101. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations – the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 214 483-5800 or at barry@coldcalling101.com.

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Why standard selling skills don’t work in cold calling.

March 10th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

There are three distinct differences between what happens in an Initial Appointment versus a cold call and there is one difference in how the best of the best prepare.

Before meeting us, virtually all of our customers had used the same objection handling techniques they employ in closing situations in appointment setting calls. It doesn’t work and here are the three reasons why it doesn’t, plus how we must prepare in each area to succeed.

The Beginning Repartee

In the Initial Appointment, what we call the beginning repartee or banter is collegial. Our target has agreed to set this time aside for us so is friendly and open to us.

On the cold call, the beginning repartee is adversarial, not friendly.

The Pace of the Exchange

In the Initial Appointment, the pace of the exchange is measured or comfortable. It’s a normal conversation.

On the cold call, the pace of the exchange seems like it happens at 90 miles an hour.

The Responses from Targets

In the Initial Appointment, the responses we receive from our Target are generally thoughtful and based on business logic because they’ve agreed to invest the time with us so they’re interested in learning whether it makes sense to move forward with us at the end of the meeting.

On the cold call, the responses from the Target contain what we call Conditioned Knee Jerk responses that are designed to do nothing but get us off the phone. As a matter of fact, most aren’t even true.

The Preparation to Succeed

The moral of the story is in our preparation for each of these distinct stages of the selling process. Good sales professionals succeed once a Target becomes a Prospect (pipeline selling) because we are good at thinking on our feet. Those of us that are good at setting the appointments (telephone prospecting) invest the time to study what responses are heard most often on these calls, prepare their Counters to those responses and then practice, practice, practice until it becomes second nature.

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called The Prospector’s Academy™ under the brand name Coldcalling101. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations – the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 214 483-5800 or at barry@coldcalling101.com.

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The impact of lying to get through on a cold call.

March 3rd, 2010 by Barry Caponi

People buy from people they trust, so don’t use techniques designed to ‘trick’ a gatekeepers. It is only a short term gain.

I saw a cold calling technique on YouTube the other day designed to get a gatekeeper to put us sales professionals through to the decision maker. It went something like this.

GATEKEEPER: “May I tell him what this is about?”

SALES ‘PROFESSIONAL’: “It’s personal.”

So let’s say we get put through and convince the decision maker we’ve got a great widget that he/she should look at, so we get an appointment. Later in passing, the decision maker asks his administrative assistant why she happened to put this particular sales call through. She tells him and our sales ‘professional’ is now dead on arrival.

This technique may work when the gatekeeper is physically detached from the decision maker or doesn’t report directly to that person, but that still begs an even bigger question. Does the means justify the end? Are we honest in our approach or not? If we tell a little ‘white lie’ here, do we stretch the truth somewhere else as well?

Gatekeepers can truly be our friend. They are not charged with keeping ALL sales professionals out. They are a filter for their bosses. It is beneficial to engage them in our selling process.

To learn more about gatekeeper strategies, see blogs dated 1/2/08, 1/9/08, 1/16/08 and 2/17/09.

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called The Prospector’s Academy™ under the brand name Coldcalling101. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations – the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 214 483-5800 or at barry@coldcalling101.com.

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The 4 elements of the appointment setting process we can improve. (Part three of four.)

The 4 elements of the appointment setting process we can improve. (Part two of four)

The 4 elements of the appointment setting process we can improve. What are they and how do we improve them? Part one of four – Target acquisition or lead generation.

Why standard selling skills don’t work in cold calling.

The impact of lying to get through on a cold call.