Should I start broad in what I start talking about on a cold call if I sell a broad offering, or should I pick something specific?
We get this question all the time in our workshops. The full version of this question is, “We sell a lot of different things. Should my opening ‘reason for the call’ cover everything we sell to make sure that the Target knows everything we do? After all, how do we know which of our solutions they might be interested in when we begin a cold call.”
The answer is actually counter intuitive. We recommend crafting our ‘reason for the call’ with just one very specific offering, not all of them or by being purposely broad. The reason is that people are looking for reasons to say ‘no’ to us anyway, so why not make it easy for them? By getting specific, we give them what seems to be an easy way out of the call and to do it in such a way as to let us down easily. “Oh, we don’t have a need for green widgets right now, but thanks for calling.”
Silly them. They’ve now let their guard down a little thinking we’ll say, “OK. Perhaps another time.” What we should do is ‘Counter’ their reaction with one of our ‘Bridge Questions’ (see November 19, 2008 supplemental Blog for more on Bridge Questions) which gets us into a conversation about the other things that we offer (which is what we really wanted to begin with). Once we’re into a conversation, we can talk about the multitude of other things we can help them with (including what they originally said no to, by the way).
This works because of the dynamics of a cold call. Since less than five percent of the people we call think they’re in the market for what we’re selling when we call anyway, they don’t think they need to speak to us. We’re also interrupting them, so they don’t want to talk to us. Therefore, they will do anything, including lie, to get us off the phone. The ‘Counter’ and ‘Bridge Question’ techniques we teach as a part of The Appointment Making Formula™ are designed to get past that knee jerk reaction designed to get us off the phone and into a conversation, regardless of what they originally say to us. So why make sure we cover everything we sell to begin with? It just takes longer to get to the conversation we really want. Our techniques will let you get to it in a more conversational, less forced manner anyway. (By the way, it is not uncommon for the topic of conversation to return to one they originally said ‘no’ to. Why? Because they either lied to us to open the conversation, or didn’t realize the true value of what we sell until we got them into a conversation!)
The conclusion is this. When we’ve got a choice, get specific in the reason for the call and let them say no. Then use a Bridge Question to shift the direction of the conversation where you want it to go.
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