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Setting the basic activity objectives for the selling process.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:12:11 +0000

The basic activity component to the selling process is the dial. Do you know how many dials you need to make today so that you can measure your progress?

The last of the 2012 goal setting blogs is about setting activity objectives. If you went through the GOSPA exercise, you know that the Strategy piece of the process is very powerful. When you figure out how you’re going to accomplish a particular objective, then ‘do the math’ in terms of the activity necessary. You will sometimes realize that a particular objective is unrealistic, or you might discover you need to try to accomplish it in another manner. Regardless, the exercise itself is worth the effort to see if you really can accomplish what you want to in the way you think you need to.

If one of your objectives for the year was to sell more to new customers, you’ll need this blog as it will help you determine how many dials per day you will need to make in order to attain a certain revenue number.

Here’s what I suggest you do to be able to determine your daily activity levels. Ask yourself the following questions:

What is my revenue goal?
What is my average sized sale?
How many sales do I need to hit my goal, considering my average sized sale?
How many Initial Appointments do I need to generate one sale? In other words, what is my closing ratio?
How many conversations with decision makers do I need to have in order to generate an Initial Appointment? In other words, what’s my appointment ratio?
How many dials must I make in order to get a conversation with the decision maker?

If you don’t know the answer to these questions, use the following ratios as a starting point and begin measuring your own results to determine your metrics.

· Closing Ratio (Initial Appointments to closed business) – 15%

· Appointment Ratio (Conversations to Initial Appointments) – 18%

· Conversation Ratio (Dials to Conversations) – 8%

If you can answer those questions, you can begin to measure whether or not you’re doing the right things each day—and if there are enough hours in the day to do it the way you think you will do it. You can also determine the right amount of time to set aside for the all-important appointment-making step (use 6 minutes per dial, if you’re not using Klpz to manage the process).

My guess is that after you’ve run these numbers, you’ll be depressed as to the number of dials and the time you’ll need. Better to know than not, though, so you can adjust. Just set out to improve how efficiently and effectively you do it—or lower your goal.

If you’d like a tool to help you calculate that, let me know. We’ve developed an activity calculator that will do exactly that.

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called 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 817 224-9900 or at barry@coldcalling101.com. You can also find answers to many of your challenges in our books: Contrary to Popular Belief, Cold Calling DOES Work! Volume I: Effectiveness, The Art of Appointment Makingand Volume II: Efficiency, the Science of Appointment Making.

The most powerful way to accomplish goals.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:30:59 +0000

The mind cannot tell the difference between what is imagined and what is real.

Any self-help book worth its salt will talk about envisioning yourself where you want to be, doing what you want to be doing, and being what you want to be as a very powerful part of the process of accomplishing what you want out of life. The reason for that is simply this. Years ago, scientists discovered that the human mind truly cannot tell the difference between what is imagined and what is real.

Let me tell you a story of how I employed this practice to attain one of the biggest goals in my life.

In the fall of 1977, (I know, I’m telling my age), I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. The leaves, in their beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow were gently drifting on the rapidly cooling breeze as I got moved into my new place. When that occurs in Indiana, basketball season can’t be far behind. And not only any old kind of basketball, but high school basketball. It’s almost a religion there. Kind of like Texas and high school football.

That year I began a 30-year odyssey of refereeing basketball that took me from working junior high games in my early years all the way to Division I college basketball in the Southwest Conference as my career advanced. In 1977 though, I began that career working a steady diet of those junior high games. I fell in love with it. So, as that first season came to an end, I scored myself a ticket to the biggest game in town, the Indiana State High School Championship game at Market Square Arena.

Imagine yourself there with me and 15,498 of our ‘closest friends’ experiencing one of the most exciting games in years between a big city perennial power from Gary, playing an upstart suburban school from just outside of Indianapolis, Carmel High School. With five seconds left on the clock, there is a time out. You glance at the scoreboard as the teams head towards their benches and you realize that the score is tied. The building is alive with excitement as the crowd anticipates the conclusion to the game. You begin to look around the arena to soak in the moment. You see the excitement in the faces of your fellow fans, the cheerleaders are leading their respective fans in a cheer encouraging their players on to victory. As your eyes fall on the court, you see one of the referees standing with his hands clasped behind his back near one of the free throw circles waiting for the teams to return to the floor and you notice he is doing the same thing you are. He is also soaking in the experience, and as you wonder what’s going through his head, his eyes, that have been scanning the crowd, seem to lock on yours for a moment. In that instant, you can read his mind. He’s thinking that all of the sacrifices he’s made to get to this moment, the long hours in the car coming home from games late at night, the time away from his family, the thousands of terrible basketball games he’s officiated, the countless hours studying the rule book—they were all worth it. This is what it’s all about. This moment, right here, right now has made it all worth it.

Well that happened to me that night, and that referee, whom I’ve never met, spoke to me and inspired me to that 30-year journey. I realized in that instant that I wanted what he was experiencing that moment. So on the way home that night I set myself a goal of working a state high school basketball championship.

For years and years, each night when I went to bed, I imagined myself in that game at Market Square Arena. I could hear the crowd; I could see the players’ faces, the fear in some of their eyes, and the supreme confidence in the eyes of others. I could feelthe excitement. I would even get chills down my spine just imagining it, again and again. Driving to and from games, I would daydream the exact same image. I never tired of it. And as I did it more and more, I had no doubt that it would happen.

I won’t bore you with all of the details, but suffice it to say that I got my chance. As a matter of fact, I had the honor of being selected to work more than one of those games, although they wound up being Texas State Championships, not Indiana, and that ain’t all bad!

My point in sharing this story is that I learned a very powerful lesson from this without anyone ever sharing the practice of visioning with me. The experience I had, whether it was the actual state championship games themselves, or any of the many exciting and equally important games I had the privilege to work during my career were exactly as I imagined them. And as I reminisce writing this blog, I can feel it again as if it were happening once again, right here, right now. It is incredible how powerful this approach is.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve focused on the importance of setting the goals you want to accomplish in life. We’ve even explored how to do that. This week’s lesson is all about the power of envisioning yourself having already accomplished those goals.

One of the most powerful ways to accomplish that, and keep it in front of you every day so you do not lose sight of them, is through Vision Boards. Mine is a 20” x 30” foam backed board that has pictures of what I now have set as my goals along with an affirmative statement below each describing what it feels like to have already accomplished it.

It is leaning up against the mirror in my bathroom so I see it every morning. I take a moment before my day gets going to do some of that visioning I did in my basketball career, knowing that I will accomplish every one of those goals I now have in front of me.

If you’d like a document describing how to build your own vision board, send me an email to bcaponi@caponipg.com and I’ll send it to you.

A simple way to set goals.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:59:00 +0000

A powerful and easy to implement goal setting process that works in both our business and personal lives.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” In practical terms, what he’s saying is that if we don’t have a written set of goals that we’ve made public in some fashion (to help us stick to them), it’s just too easy to let life’s events lead us down a road to a destination different than the one we envisioned.

Last week, I talked about how to make our goals ‘public’, through the use of Vision Boards. This week, I’ll tackle the process of actually setting the goals.

Years ago, I learned a simple, yet powerful method to set goals. The process is called GOSPA and I believe it came out of IBM. My wife and I use it every year to set our business and life goals. It is very much a part of the fabric of our life now.

GOSPA stands for Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Plans, and Activities. The simple way to explain the process is that Goals are our dreams. These can be qualitative, so they don’t necessarily need to be time bound. This step is where we want to let our imaginations run free. As a matter of fact, Jim Collins, author of, From Good to Great, coined the acronym, BHAG—Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Make those Goals BHAGs to get you excited.

Objectives, Plans, and Activities are measurable, time bound and assignable. Objectives are annual, Plans are quarterly, and Activities are monthly.

What makes the GOSPA process so powerful, though, is the Strategies section. After setting qualitative goals and quantitative annual objectives, it causes us to think about how to accomplish our Goals and Objectives. This step involves a lot of thought that sometimes may even cause us to go back and change a Goal, but many times changes the timeline (Objectives) as the how we’ll accomplish things gets fleshed out. I believe this is what separates this process from other goal setting approaches I’ve seen before. It helps us be more reasonable when setting our measurable and time bound expectations.

It would take too long to describe the whole process here, but I do have two documents that describe both the GOSPA process and how to create a vision board if you’re interested. Just send me an email at bcaponi@caponipg.com with GOSPA in the subject line and I’ll send you both.

Two simple steps to make this year the best year of your life.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:13:43 +0000

“The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way.” Tony Robbins – Awaken the Giant Within

The beginning of the new calendar year always brings new energy and excitement for each of us. This will be the year! I’m going to accomplish so much. This year will be different. I will not allow myself to continue with those bad habits that suck time and positive energy out of my days this year.

Sound familiar? And does March, or even February still hold the same energy and excitement? If you are like most people, “Not so much,” as the saying goes. So how can you remedy that? Here are two simple steps to start that process in a way that is sustainable.

Start by making a commitment to break your old patterns that start your day. In his book, Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins talks about how to break old habits that sabotage us. He says that we must find ways to break the patterns of the old habit. I’ve never spoken to anyone that does not have a ‘ritual’ that starts their day. Find a way to break those old patterns and establish a new ritual that contains these two steps.

1. I review my Vision Board (more on that in two weeks) each morning before I do anything else. It is leaning against the mirror in my bathroom (sorry for the visual…). I take a moment and look at each life goal depicted on it before I do anything else. It regenerates excitement about where I am going and recharges my energy level so that by the time I’m done with breakfast and in my office, I am focused again on the things that are important in life. It keeps me from doing the things I’d rather do before doing the things that I need to do first thing. My days seem to snowball in the direction they begin, regardless of whether I get started down the right or wrong path.

2. Read 10 pages of a self-improvement book each morning before you start your day. I do this in my office before I do anything else. If you’re looking for a suggestion of where to start, try Tony’s book.

During the month of January I will be dedicating this blog to getting off to a great start in 2012. Next week I’ll introduce you to a powerful, yet easy to use goal setting process I learned from IBM years ago. In week three we’ll then talk about the Vision Board I mentioned above and the power they bring to those that use them (don’t succumb to the ITC disease—I’m Too Cool—because there are scientific studies behind why it works). In week four, I’ll cover how to determine the weekly and daily activity levels necessary to be successful in attaining your quota this year.

Most of us are hurting ourselves in the way we describe what we sell.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:30:32 +0000

Years ago, we learned to avoid talking about features and to describe the benefit of our solution to our prospect. There is now a better way.

Our targets have been programmed to believe that sales professionals are paid to say nice things about their product or service. In other words, they believe we’re prejudiced. Guess what, they’re right, we are. So start talking about what others say about what we delivered instead of describing the benefits of your solution and what we think we can do for them.

All B2B customers are risk adverse and we’re asking them to change what they are now doing, aren’t we? It’s why they all want references before they buy. So why not get out in front of that request and start talking about our references (or at least their stories) up front. In fact, the more we do this, the fewer times we’ll actually be asked for the references at closing time. And since the reference step takes time, it elongates the buying cycle. The longer the buying cycle, the more risk there is that the sale will not happen.

Want another reason? Social Media is where companies are investing a lot of time, energy and money today. The reason for that is that social proof is what customers are looking for. It drives people to buy. Ever gone out on the web and looked for what someone else is saying about what you’re thinking of buying? Ever asked a friend or colleague about their experience with a vendor or product? Of course you have. It’s called social proof and that’s what social media is all about. We’re much more likely to believe what someone else who bought what we’re looking to buy than the sales person who is trying to sell us.

There’s an expression in sales that goes like this, “Facts tell, stories sell.” As you try to change how you’ve been talking about the benefits your of solution, do it in stories.

Even on an appointment setting call, we should be prepared to provide examples of how our product or service is being used by another customer and what the value of that solution was to them. The closer the example is to their environment, the better of we’ll be.

As we get ready to go into a new year, here’s something to think about for a new year’s resolution. Why not invest the time over the next few weeks to improve your appointment setting process for 2012? Ask yourself this question: What would the impact on your 2012 business be if you were able to double the number of Initial Appointments you set in 2011? Our customers do it all the time.

One last thing: Stop relying on luck or on others for your success, make it a great 2012.

Why I can’t seem to make that first cold call each day.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:33:59 +0000

The challenge of who shall I call today.

When reviewing the results of one of our recent Prospector’s Academies the other day, we experienced a vivid reminder of one of the key lessons we provide to our customers.

Our latest Prospector’s Academy had spectacular results (pardon the self-congratulations…). At the end of 12 weeks, 24 sales professionals had increased the number of Initial Appointments they had set by the cold call by 600 percent! When you have that kind of success with a customer, you really have the luxury of looking at the details. When we did, we took a look at those that did not share in the success, at least early on when most of the others started to have success. After weeding out the few that just didn’t want to participate, we hit on what we thought was a common theme; lists.

Now we’ve addressed this issue before in this blog, and we address it all the time with the management teams of those we train. However, this time the way it surfaced actually made us see so obviously why so many people fail at the selling process of getting enough Initial Appointments.

There was this particular sales professional who was unfortunately forgotten when the lists were loaded and had no one to call in his first Call Block. When we talked to this person (after addressing his problem) we asked him why he didn’t just start calling those that he had been calling before the Academy began, after all, he wasn’t a brand new rep. He admitted he faced this situation every day. He had names on business cards, paper tablets, spreadsheets, scraps of paper and in his head. He said he was at a loss at where to begin because he had no way to keep track of where is was in the pursuit of any given target, let alone having a pre-determined set of ‘rules’ to follow in the pursuit. Now that he had learned a process to follow in the Academy, he didn’t know how to apply it to all of those that he had been approaching previously. In other words, he was suffering from paralysis of analysis. And, therein lies the lesson.

Many times, we are unable to get started because we’ve not made the time to create our list of who we wish to call today, because we no process to follow and no tool to keep us organized. Even if we know who we want to call today, we have to study each name on the list and think of where we are in the pursuit of that target, what have we’ve said to them before, and what should we say this time. We become overwhelmed and wind up doing nothing.

I can actually remember that feeling myself. I’d put the Call Block on my calendar, but when I got there, I’d open up my ACT!, or folders and floundered around looking for the first target to call instead of just picking up the phone and dialing the first number. I would wind up making follow-up calls and doing everything but what I had set out to do, all because I wasn’t prepared to start. Ever known anyone who is always, “Fixing to get started?” They never do quite get started, do they?

My good friend Sean Piket, founder of Sales Integrity, a company that provides sales consulting, outsourcing and training to small to mid-sized firms, likes to say that sales professionals fail for three reasons: 1) They are not prepared, 2) They are not organized, and 3) They are overwhelmed.

So, here’s the lesson. Ask yourself this question. What would be the impact on your business in 2012 if your sales team simply doubled the number of Initial Appointments they set in 2011? If the answer to that question is, “Significant”, then prepare them for battle in 2012 by addressing the three items Sean’s list. Don’t continue to operate under the mistaken assumption that it takes the same skills, tools and processes to get targets into the pipeline that it takes to get prospects through the pipeline. They are different. Provide them with the skills, tools and processes that will make them successful in 2012.

Otherwise, the best intentions of making the dials will never happen.

Six times more Initial Appointments thru cold calling.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:13:50 +0000

A case study of a 600% increase in appointments set in less than three months!

We just completed a Prospector’s Academy™ for one of our customers in which a team of 22 outside sales people increased their Initial Appointments set from 25 in the first two weeks of the Academy to 149 in weeks eleven and twelve.

I do submit to you that what they were doing before we ran the Academy was not very good, but it is not unusual. Many of our customers tell us that their sales team is spending all of their new business prospecting time responding to the few leads that come in door. The rest of their selling time is spent calling on existing customers trying to upsell and cross sell instead of finding new customers. It is not that they don’t want them to do that, but in all instances, these sales professionals also had responsibility for finding new customers as well as growing the installed base—and they weren’t doing a very good job of that at all.

If you’d like to read a case study on how they were able to accomplish that (and pay for the entire program within one buying cycle), send me an email at bcaponi@caponipg.com. Although a 600% increase may not be typical, 200% or more certainly is, and paying for our program within one buying cycle absolutely is.

When prospecting, here’s how to rid yourself of dry spells.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:48:47 +0000

Two metrics to manage your pipeline by to avoid experiencing another dry spell.

Almost all of us from time to time have a great month or quarter with great closing numbers followed by a miserable month or quarter with nothing to show for our efforts.

There is a way to reduce the risk of that occurrence.

First, answer the following questions and complete the tasks (estimate if you have to—but you should know these numbers):

1. How many Initial Appointments do you need to hit your required sales for the year?

2. How many discussions with decision makers do you need in order to generate those Initial Appointments?

3. How many times do you need to dial the phone in order to get the required number of discussions with the targets you’d like to meet with?

4. Divide that number by 220 (the typical number of selling days in the year) and you’ll have the number of dials you need to make each day.

5. How much time does it take to accomplish a step in the appointment making process? That includes figuring out who to call, what the status of the pursuit of that target is, determining what you’re going to say, dialing the phone number, saying what you want to (when successful getting through), sending email follow ups, leaving messages and recording the results.

If you don’t know, use six minutes as an average per dial. With Klpz (a tool I recommend), you can cut that in half.

6. Do the math—multiply the number of calls needed per day times the average time per call and you’ve got the number of minutes you’ll need each day to hit your number.

You will now have two key metrics to apply to keep a dry spell from occurring again. Here’s what they are and how to use them:

1. The first is the number of Initial Appointments you’ll need to hit your number this year. Divide that by 44 (the number of full selling weeks in a year) and you’ll know how many Initial Appointments that precede a buying cycle you should have on your calendar each week. If you don’t have that number at any point—you’ll know to make the time to get back on the phone and set some more appointments or you WILL have a dry spell again

2. The second metric is the time you’ll need to set aside each week/day to set those appointments. The best way to use this metric to avoid dry spells is to set appointments with yourself first each week to make the dials that are necessary to set the Initial Appointments needed.

(BTW, I’ve got a free tool to help you with this process of figuring out how to determine both of these metrics. If you’d a copy, click here to be taken to a page to send me a note to request one. I’ll send it to you.

The foolproof lack of sales early warning system.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:05:22 +0000

What is the best way to predict (and fix) a coming shortfall in sales revenue?

Ever had a great quarter or month followed by a dry one? We all have at one point or another. Those of us who didn’t want that to happen again have adopted systems and processes to reduce the risk of it happening again. But, what is the quickest and easiest way to predict a coming shortfall in sales?

Every sale is preceded by an Initial Appointment. Regardless of what we sell or how many calls it takes to close that sale, they all begin with an Initial Appointment. That appointment could be a face-to-face call, a web-based call or a good old-fashioned phone call. It really makes no difference.

So what does this have to do with an early warning system? Simple. We must know how many Initial Appointments it takes to generate a sale and then figure out how many Initial Appointments must be on the calendar at any given moment to provide the number of needed sales. For instance, in our case, we need five Initial Appointments spread out over any given two-week period at any time.

Now for the final step in the process: What precedes an Initial Appointment? The conversations and dials that are necessary to set up those appointments is the answer. So, the final question to ask ourselves is how many dials are necessary to generate those five appointments. Because the dial is truly the earliest step in the selling process, I can now monitor my dials to see what my sales will be.

Given our ratios of dials to conversations of 13% and our conversations to appointments ratio of 26%, we need to dial the phone 15 times a day between those of us who sell. Not a monumental task, but a task that must be done, nonetheless.

I look at my Klpz dashboard each week and can see both the number of dials and the number of appointments we’ve got on the calendar at any given moment. If either of those numbers is low, it is an easy fix to keep our sales two months in the future from cratering. Get on the phone….

The biggest mistake cold callers make.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:28:47 +0000

Decision makers do communicate with their gatekeepers, you know.

I was at an event with other CEOs and business owners this past week. Most of the attendees know what my company does so they love to regale me with stories of sales professionals who attempt to get an appointment with them. It is a great way for me to hear the target’s side of what works and what doesn’t.

This past week the subject came up of a ‘technique’ a sales professional (and in this case, I use the term lightly) had used to try to set an appointment with him. He said his regular administrative assistant was on vacation so it worked—for a moment anyway.

This particular seller told the ‘gatekeeper’ that he had recently met the CEO at a conference and that her boss had asked him to call to set up an appointment. Now there was potentially a grain of truth in this story as the CEO told me that he was at the same event. However, he said he had never even met the person, let alone told him to call for an appointment.

The good news for our intrepid seller—he got through. He proceeded to attempt to set an appointment never mentioning the ruse he had employed to get through. The even better news was that the CEO had some interest in what he was selling. The best news of all was that he got the appointment.

Now for the bad news: About an hour later, the CEO calls his temporary administrative assistant and asked her to set up a conference room for him for this appointment as well as to ask one of his direct reports to attend as well. It is at this time that the administrative assistant innocently asked if this was for the guy who called saying they had met at the conference.

Want to know how the seller found out his appointment was cancelled? From his sales manager, who got the cancellation call directly from the CEO.

Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall when this seller got the news from his sales manager?

If you’d like to read more about the impact of lying to gatekeepers to get through to the boss, read my blog entitled, “The impact of lying to get through on a cold call.”