 |
|
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.
Comments: Leave a comment
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.
Comments: Leave a comment
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.
Comments: Leave a comment
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.
Comments: Leave a comment
February 24th, 2010 by Barry Caponi
I just read a very good eBook by Nigel Edelshain, originator of Sales 2.0 Methodology. In it he talks about all of the excellent tools or processes that are now available to us to find information on our Targets, or use to get an introduction to the person we wish to speak with: Linkedin, triggers of events, Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, etc. All good ideas, but here’s the operative question we must ask ourselves prior to engaging the Sales 2.0 approach. Is it worth it to do all of this work prior to picking up the phone and asking for an appointment?
Shame on us if we set an appointment and don’t do this research prior to attending that meeting. And I am a big proponent of the Sales 2.0 thinking prior to trying to set the appointment, but it is not applicable in every selling environment and to every step in the process. To spend an hour, or even 30 minutes researching every thing possible about a Target in my territory when my average sized sale is small (i.e. I must close a lot of deals), my territory is large and my typical Target looks like every other business in that territory.
So here are four questions we should ask ourselves before deciding to do a lot of research or not prior to attempting to set an appointment.
- What is my average sized sale or what is the lifetime value of this potential customer?
- What do I sell (how complex a sale is it)?
- How big is my universe of targets?
- What level of management am I calling into?
If my average sale is small, I sell a simple commodity like product or service and/or my solution is sold into a ‘horizontal’ market, I may eat most of my profit in a lot of up front investigative time. On the other hand, let’s say my average sized sale is more than $50,000 and I only have 100 possible targets in my territory, then I can’t afford to miss one. I’m therefore going to be doing all of the networking, research, social media, etc. to make sure I don’t blow it when I actually try to get the person on the phone to set the appointment.
Also, if I’m calling into first line management or into purchasing and my sale will be quick, I’m not sure I would spend a lot of up front time doing research either.
In those ‘not-worth it’ situations, I’d prefer to invest my time in building a solid approach, voicemails and emails that tell my story of how we helped someone else, and work on how I handle the ‘nos’ I invariably still get. At the end of the day, when I place that call, I’m still trying to set an appointment with someone I don’t know, or just barely met. And just because I did a lot of research and got a strong referral, let’s say, I’m still going to hear exactly the types of ‘no’. They’ll just be nicer about it. I’ve still got to have the skills to counter that ‘no’.
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: 1
February 17th, 2010 by Barry Caponi
We believe that we are most effective over time if we adopt a long term view of prospecting our territory. Effective target selection provides us with a list equal to the number of targets we can reach out to in a year based on the adoption of well thought out Best Practice which includes the number of attempts and intervals between those attempts used to set an appointment with a given target. That number very seldom exceeds 1,000. For instance, here is an example of the use of our Activity Calculator2 determining the optimal size of a territory.
| How Many Targets? |
| How Many Targets can you pursue in a year? |
| Minutes per day on the phone |
60 |
| Average number of steps taken in your Best Practice before a pursuit ends |
3.5 |
| Average Time Per Step (CRMs are typically 6 minutes; Klpz is less |
3.0 |
| Number of steps you can make a day |
20 |
| Number of days per year you will telephone prospects |
220 |
| Number of times a target will be ‘pursued’ a year until you reach them |
2.0 |
| Replacement targets, as a pct. of total, that are needed to keep your calling list the right size |
25% |
| You need a list with this many names |
786 |
I will use email to actually double the number of times I reach out and touch someone (sorry Hallmark) as each dial includes an automatically generated email that matches my voicemail message. That works like targeted advertising as my Best Practice messaging (voice and email) should be what we feel this audience will best react positively to.
A sales professional trying to sell to more than the number our Best Practice prescribes is a waste of selling time and represents what most sales non-professionals use, and that’s the ‘drive by shooting’ approach. One must make multiple attempts to be successful.
As a manager, we should be paying attention to not only who our charges are calling, but also what is the process they are using. Time is a precious commodity. Let’s not waste it.
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: Leave a comment
February 10th, 2010 by Barry Caponi
Email is effective in a support role in the appointment setting process. Here’s how.
Email is good for the following things:
- Increasing the number of ‘touch points’ 1 in which the target sees and hears our key themes and messages
- Long term territory building (this assumes we continue to pursue this target over time)
- Reinforcement of a verbal message
- Finalizing (once a game of phone tag has begun regarding the time and place for an appointment, or to confirm an appointment
- Delivering attachments that support the messaging
- Delivering web links that support the messaging
- Provide a way for target to communicate back (even if they say no thanks)
- A few of our targets actually prefer to communicate that way
Bad uses for email in appointment setting:
- Sending without a voicemail first as the only vehicle to deliver our message
- When a conversation would be better (like when trying to set an appointment)
- Closing a sale – appointment or P.O.
We believe that the biggest advantages email can supply is being a quick and inexpensive, yet personal and reinforcing communication. So use it to support develop a warmer list to call for an appointment.
It should go without saying therefore that using email as our primary vehicle for setting appointments is ineffective.
1 The advertising industry rule of thumb is that it takes approximately 7 touches or touch points for a target to just recognize our name. So assuming we make 8 dials per year (4 per Cycle x 2 Cycles) including a voicemail and an email on each, we’ve touched this target 16 times with multiple messages (assuming each attempt in a Cycle has a different advantage to our solution/message).
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: 1
February 3rd, 2010 by Barry Caponi
I was talking with a manager of one of our customers the other day and he told me he noticed on some of his team’s Klpz reports that one of his reps was making very few phone calls but was still hitting her activity goals of reaching out to her targets each week. I asked him if she was setting as many appointments as she needed and he said no, her Initial Appointments had dropped.
Without boring you with his travails, let me cut to the chase. I’m sure there are markets somewhere where email trumps the phone for setting appointments, but I have yet to find it. If it’s yours, I’d love to talk to you. In the meantime, here’s what I think about email in the appointment making process.
My experience is that when sales professionals begin making more attempts to set appointments via email than the phone, it’s generally an indication of them avoiding making the calls and fooling themselves into thinking they’re still working at it. My advice? Nip it in the bud immediately and get them back on the phone. (It’s particularly seductive to do this in Klpz because sending the already created email templates requires only the click of a mouse to send.)
Surveys show that less than 5% of our universe of targets is ‘in the market for what we’re selling when we contact them’ – and realistically I believe it is closer to 1%. Historically, good direct mail (and email) campaigns show a 2% response rate, and that is not measured in appointments. So what makes our intrepid sales professionals think they can better what marketing experts can do?
Only in a conversation can we convince the 99% that don’t think they are ‘in the market’ to see us by asking the right question based on their response. We can’t do that in an email.
So use email where it is effective, but use the phone when trying to set appointments. (Next week, we’ll talk about where and how to use email.)
You can also check on my Blog dated 1/31/08 entitled, When the email left along with our ‘Cold Call’ is returned with a ‘Not Interested’. It discusses some of the challenges of using email to set appointments.
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: Leave a comment
January 27th, 2010 by Barry Caponi
I received a call from one of our customers this week. He was very excited because for the first time he could see exactly what his teams were doing in terms of cold calling. He’s a regional sales manager with several sales teams that were trained before the first of the year through one of our appointment setting Prospectors Academies™.
He told us that his reps had been truly pounding the phones now for a couple of months since the training which fixed his lack of activity problem. He also said that the activity was very consistent across his districts. He was also pleased with the fact he was now able to start deep drilling on the process and results a bit more instead of just focusing on the activity levels as he had to do in the past.
Reading his weekly Klpz reports had gotten him to ask why some of his guys were setting appointments like crazy and some were not. As a matter of fact, he was able to see that the ones that were being successful were all in the same districts. He told us that when he role-played with the different districts, they sounded pretty much the same. He told us that the teams that were not setting the appointments were getting discouraged and so are their managers.
Here’s a synopsis of what we found:
· We ran a report that found that his districts that were not performing differed in one key area from those that were having success. To put it frankly, their lists were awful. The successful districts were seeing about a 35% removal rate of names and the unsuccessful ones were seeing a more than 80% removal of names.
What this means is that after following the four steps in the process of contact we set up (we call them Cycles), the rep has three choices of what to do with the target: Recycle them for 120 days and try again; declare Success (they met with them and began a Buying Cycle); or Remove them from the list. After speaking with the District Managers, it became clear that the managers that had taken the time to put some effort into defining the lists their charges would call into (call it a semi-qualified list of suspects if you wish) were experiencing the most success. The ones that did not were filled with targets that were not good fits (for a variety of reasons). The targets were too small, the reps were not getting through to decision makers because a quick conversation with the gatekeeper determined the company was not a good match for their products, or once talking with the decision maker they determined the same thing.
There are two morals to the story. First is that by adding what we call ‘Science’ (Klpz (www.contactscience.com), to the challenge of prospecting for new customers, managers gain access to valuable information none of us have ever had before to help improve our prospecting processes for the first time. Second, we’ve talked about the value of investing time in refining lists and building territories over time in this Blog before (see January 20, 2010, November 4, 2009, March 26, 2009, March 19, 2009, March 11, 2009, and April 23, 2008), so we know the importance of this.
And by the way, just imagine the potential consequences of what might have happened if he hadn’t been able to define the problem. Would have some of his reps quit because of the frustration? Would he have incorrectly assumed he had a closing problem or a rep problem instead of a management problem?
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: Leave a comment
January 20th, 2010 by Barry Caponi
I’ve said it before, but let me say it again. The better our list is, the more often we’ll get through to the right person and the more often we’ll be able to convince that target that we’ve been able to help others like him/her solve like challenges.
In our ColdCalling101 Academies, we invest time determining the top challenges our participants solve for their customers and also the top benefits their customers tell them they derive from investing in their solution. To accomplish that, we suggest they start with their best customers.
When trying to build a territory list to call from, we suggest exactly the same thing. How do we describe what our best customers look like and then go find others the same. Well, here are three resources we’ve come across that provide tools for you to enter those best customers and then ‘clone’ them. In other words, find other companies that look just like them. They are:
- Manta.com
- InfoUSA
- Bizjournals.com (only works where the Business Journals publish
If you’ve got any more, let us know and we’ll share the knowledge.
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: Leave a comment
|
|
 |
