Train Your Sales Team: More Leads – Qualified

This article is based on a conversation with Keith Rosen, the award-winning author of Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions: A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives (Wiley, 2008) and a globally recognized authority on sales and sales leadership. He is the winner of the 2009 Stevie Award for Sales Education Leader of the Year and one of the five most influential executive coaches, according to Fast Company magazine. He can be reached through his firm ProfitBuilders. Email:info@profitbuilders.com.
Phone: 516/771-1444.
Web: www.profitbuilders.com.

Sales managers can be less than effective at helping their reps improve their cold-calling system. When a sales rep complains that cold calling is difficult, tiring, or not worth the results, sales managers may simply advise the rep to make more calls and be more resilient.

While that advice can increase the number of leads that turn into prospects, the increase will likely be miniscule. For example, if a sales rep is converting one out of 30 cold calls made each day on average, increasing the amount of time spent cold calling by 10 percent will only add one more conversion every 10 days.

Rather than simply ask reps to spend more time and emotional energy cold calling, sales managers must address the problems behind the complaints. In most cases, sales reps have difficulty cold calling for two main reasons: They have preconceptions about cold calling that set them up to fail, and they’re using a message and script that are ineffective at producing results.

So if you’re going to improve your team’s ability to cold call, you’ll need to address the way your team thinks about cold calling and the way that team members execute their cold calls. Address those two issues, and your cold-calling process will produce more prospects who are actually likely to buy.

STEP #1:
Redefine the Cold-Calling Process
Most sales reps, and indeed most sales managers, think about cold calling as a goal-oriented activity. The goal, of course, is to fill the pipeline with a certain number of prospects and create as many customers as possible. As a result, sales reps naturally see each lead-to-prospect conversion as a win and each cold call that ends otherwise as a loss.

This is a classic case of setting oneself up for failure. The nature of cold calling is such that only a small percentage of the people contacted will be potential customers. The majority will be people who simply aren’t interested or are not a fit for a variety of reasons.

But the win/loss way of thinking treats a lead’s lack of interest as a lack of skill on the part of the sales rep. The sales rep feels as if he or she lost, even if that lead had absolutely no use whatsoever for the product being sold.

As a consequence, cold calling becomes an onerous task in which the sales rep is almost always “losing.” Not surprisingly, reps begin dreading it, avoiding it, and become increasingly less effective when they actually get around to doing it.

The root cause of this deeply flawed win/loss thinking is the focus on converting a lead into a prospect. That focus also makes cold calling more difficult and ineffective in another important way: If the sales rep is focused on the result, he or she is, in a sense, living in the future. The sales rep can’t really listen to the potential prospect, because the rep’s attention is on an event that may or may not happen. That makes it extraordinarily difficult to be creative and flexible in responding to what the potential prospect actually says – which requires being in the moment.

Because of this, cold calling MUST be redefined, not as a goal-oriented activity, but as a process. Rather than focus on the result, the sales rep needs to focus on the potential prospect and on the process of communicating with that prospect to determine if, in fact, there’s truly a fit.

This shift in thinking immediately makes sales reps more effective because it removes the sting of contacting a lead that turns out, for whatever reason, not to be a real prospect. That fact, rather than being a loss, simply becomes something that the sales rep discovers during the process of cold calling.

More importantly, treating cold calling as a process keeps the sales rep focused on finding ways to help potential prospects and customers – and on not wasting the time of those who don’t need the help. Paradoxically, focusing on process rather than goals increases the chances that the cold calling process will uncover true prospects, thereby fulfilling the goals. An analogy can thus be drawn between cold calling and athletic events: Top athletes visualize winning before competing, but when they’re actually performing they focus on what’s happening right then and there.

STEP #2:
Create an Effective Script
The best way to illustrate what makes an effective script is to deconstruct a real-life example. The following script was created by a cost-reduction company for use when calling on C-level executives – arguably the most difficult demographic to convert. (The bracketed numbers refer to the explanations that follow the script.)

Hi, John. Jim here from Acme Cost Control.[1] Did I catch you at an OK time?[2]

John, I’m sure you’re busy and I want to respect your time, so I’ll be brief. [3]

The reason for my call is this: We just saved Universal Transport an additional $12 million in shipping costs, so I thought it was important enough to reach out to you and let you know, since every company has an obligation to its customers and shareholders to reduce expenses as much as possible. [4]

Now, you may be wondering how we can do this for you. Well, I don’t know if you currently have a need for our services. [5] But with your permission, let’s talk for a few minutes to determine if there is anything we’re doing that you could benefit from. [6] Would you be comfortable spending just a few minutes with me on the phone now?[7]

Explanation:
[1] Identify yourself. The contact will likely hang up on those who don’t identify themselves immediately.

[2] Asking this question demonstrates respect for the contact’s time and an understanding that your phone call is not the only thing on his or her plate for the day. While you may feel that you’re asking a question that sets you up to hear a no, this is not important because it doesn’t actually matter whether the prospect says, “Yes,” “No,” or “No, but go ahead,” because the next statement makes the response entirely moot.

[3] This statement still allows you to continue, regardless of how the contact initially responded, and avoid having to reschedule another time to call. You’ve finally got a prospect on the phone – the last thing you want to do is hang up and attempt to catch him or her at another time.

[4] This is the compelling reason for the call, which generates interest in continuing the conversation. Note that nothing is said about how the benefit was achieved. At this point, prospects don’t care what you do or how you do it. They only want to know what they can expect if they continue the conversation with you.

[5] This eliminates a potentially adversarial posture, lowers the contact’s resistance, and brings his or her guard down. It lets the prospect know you’re not trying to force the purchase of something he or she may not need or be ready for.

[6] This statement opens up a dialogue by getting permission from the prospect to have a preliminary conversation with you. 

[7] This establishes a timeline, letting the prospect know that you’re accountable for the length of the call, you’re respecting his or her time, and you’re not going to keep him or her on the phone. This eliminates the prospect’s possible assumption that this call will drag on for eternity.

Once you have gotten permission to continue with your conversation, you now have a prospect engaged in a conversation with you and the opportunity to determine if there’s a good fit.