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If cold calling, how many targets can a sales rep pursue each year? (Part 2 of 3)

May 26th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

 

When cold calling for appointments, it is important to note that if we follow a ‘Best Practice’ that consists of a certain number of attempts to reach someone, there is a finite number of targets we can pursue in a year. Part 2 of 3.
 
In last week’s blog, we explored the concept that it was important to have a well designed ‘Best Practice’ for cold calling that leverages the limited resource our telephone prospecting represents.
 
This week we’ll examine the components of a ‘Best Practice’ or framework for what we call a ‘Cycle’. Here are some simple questions to ask ourselves when designing one. But before I do that, here’s an example of a Cycle.
 
4 x 5 x 90
 
The first number designates the number of attempts I will make in this particular Cycle. The second number indicates the number of business days between calls, and the third number tells us how many days we’ll wait until we start a new Cycle assuming we do not reach the person during this Cycle.
 
There is no ‘Science’ to the design of appointment setting Best Practices, but here are a few questions to ask ourselves when designing a Cycle:
 
1.    What level of buyer am I calling into? The easier it is to get a hold of the person we’re calling does have bearing on both the number of attempts and the delay between calls.
2.    How many targets are there in my universe of potential suspects? The more there are, the fewer attempts I might make during a cycle, the fewer days I might wait in between, and the more I might wait before attempting another round of calls because I want to reach out to more targets each year. If I have a very few targets in my universe, I would probably at least shorten the wait between Cycles.
3.    When do I cross the line between being a persistent sales professional and becoming a pest or irritant?
 
Next week we’ll tackle the question of how many targets is the ‘right’ number to pursue in a territory during a given year.
 
For additional information, you might also take a look at my blog from May 12th of this year regarding when is enough, enough?
 

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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If cold calling, how many targets can a sales rep pursue each year?

May 19th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

 

When cold calling for appointments, it is important to note that if we follow a ‘Best Practice’ that consists of a certain number of attempts to reach someone, there is a finite number of targets we can pursue in a year. Part 1 of 3.
 
Why is that important to understand? Several reasons:
 
1.      In my blogs dated June 4, 2009 and September 16, 2009, I shared some statistics that indicate that most appointments (and sales) are set/made on the fifth through the twelfth attempts, not on the first. Therefore we should have a ‘Best Practice’ that includes reaching out to qualified suspects at least that many times.
2.      There is also finite number of dials each of our reps has to invest each year. For instance, if our reps commit to calling one hour a day and leave voicemails, they can effectively make about 20 dials an hour if they use our recommended product, Klpz. Therefore, they only have the capacity to make 4,400 dials over a typical year (220 selling days). The concept should then be, how to best invest those 4,400 hundred dials. Waste not, want not, as the old saying goes.
3.      Lastly, lead generation, or even list generation or list purchase, can be expensive. Sales reps by nature tend to be impatient. They try to contact someone a couple of times, aren’t successful and turnaround and ask, “May I have another please? That one sucked?” If we understand that it takes many attempts to get the appointment, it is wasteful to not have a ‘Best Practice’ in place that does not contain rules for multiple attempts to reach someone. It is also doubly wasteful to throw one away that has not been pursued adequately enough as we not only wasted the investment in attempting to contact the first target, but we also then turn around and unnecessarily invest in the acquisition of another one to replace that one.
 
So now that I’ve made this suggestion that we should have a ‘Best Practice’ for cold calling, you are probably asking:
 
1.      What’s involved in the design of one of these ‘Best Practices’?
2.      Is there also a way to figure out how many targets a rep could reasonably pursue in a year?
 
As I promised to keep these blogs relatively short when I began them back in 2007, we’ll tackle each of those questions over the next two blogs.
 
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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When is enough, enough when making cold calls?

May 12th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

 

Sales people many times ask me how many cold calling attempts to contact someone are too many.
 
That question actually comes in several flavors. For instance, how many times should I call this person today if I don’t get through, or how many times should I call this person over time until the law of diminishing returns kicks in and I’d be better off calling someone else for the first time rather than calling this same person again?
 
The reason this came to mind today is that I am in Chicago where I gave a talk yesterday to the National Automated Merchandising Association. I’m staying with my dad who is retired. He went with me yesterday, so we were gone all day. 
 
When we got home last night, he printed out a list of calls he had received during the day off of his answering machine. There was one phone number on the list fourteen times. (I’m not kidding.) It was a stock broker who has never sold him anything, but has been calling him for a number of years. When he spoke with the broker today (you guessed it, he called again), he tried to sell my dad a twenty year bond. My dad is 85 years old. Do the math…my dad did.
 
There are two points to this story. 1) This guy has talked to my dad on numerous occasions. He has never asked my dad what his investing goals are. He only knows my dad is a pretty active trader. So when he calls, he’s most of the time trying to interest him in things that just don’t make sense or that my dad has no interest in. 2) Why did this guy call my dad fourteen times and leave NO messages? Did he think my dad wouldn’t know he called that many times? Did he think that what he wanted to talk about couldn’t stand on its own enough to get my dad to call him back? What kind of credibility does he have with my dad?
 
Moral of the story:   1) It takes time to make a dial and time is money. Spend those dials just like you would any other limited asset. Make sure it is worth it before you do it. Making another dial to the same number over and over again so that you kid yourself into thinking you’re busy is foolish. Calling someone and throwing mud at the wall to see if something sticks is also a waste of time. Record your activity and look at the outcome. If you don’t like the results, try something else. Don’t keep doing the same thing expecting a different outcome. It’s the definition of insanity.
 

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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Cold calling and scripts. It is not necessary to memorize a script.

May 5th, 2010 by Barry Caponi

 

How many times do we hear our sales professionals tell us they’re much better on the phone when they don’t memorize a script? Here’s what we should be telling them in response…
 
“No problem! I agree with you. What we really should be doing is internalizing it. Make it second nature so that it just rolls off the tongue. Let’s hear yours.”
 
Be prepared for, “Well I say something like this…” After they stumble through it, go back to the written scripts and ask them how that relates to what the company went through great lengths (not to mention expense) to develop. Then throw as many negative responses as you can at them and see how they handle them. Trust me; they’ll stumble through that as well.
 
When sales professionals use our methodology called The Formula™, one of the benefits is that they’ll limit the different types of negative responses they’ll hear, which will make their job easier.
 
So back to the original statement: It really isn’t necessary to ‘memorize’ the scrip, but they do need to ‘internalize’ it.
 
What’s the difference between memorization and internalization, you ask? Nothing really. But you can tell them that it means to take the script, put it in their own language (without changing the underlying message), and practice enough so that it rolls off the tongue just like conversation. Only then will they deliver the same message every 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.

Comments: 3
 




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