Cold Call Tracking Sheet
Written by Brandon Hull on February 28, 2007
In many high activity industries, new business developers are placed in bullpen-like sales offices with their peers, dialing number after number to set appointments.
If you’re in this world, you’ve got to track your success ratios: how often you reach a live decision-maker, and how often you set an appointment once you’ve had a conversation.
We’ve just uploaded a new tool into the free downloads section for subscribers that gives you a legal paper-sized sheet you can use to stay on track when plowing through the calls. This tool is solely for use in making cold calls by telephone.
It’s highly useful, as it will help you know exactly where you stand, will help you quickly calculate your ratios, and it will work perfectly for multi-sales representative offices where such reports need to be turned in to sales managers.
Subscribe and you’ll gain immediate access. Your email address will never be shared or given away…
Momentum
Written by Brandon Hull on February 26, 2007
Here’s some good advice from David Lorenzo on how Mondays can give you momentum for the rest of the week.
Momentum’s a curious thing. In nearly every profession beyond sales, it’s just picked up along the path to results. This post suggests that for sales professionals it should be a target all by itself. It’s real, however incapable we are of measuring it. But because it’s all in your head, it’s also a selfish thing — just as fast as you gain it, it can be gone with one piece of bad news.
My recommendation to sales professionals is to do everything you can to put yourself in a position to be successful. As you do that, even the smallest of victories give you that confident edge you need to succeed. Going into a meeting with an important client or prospect will be a far greater experience when you walk in knowing you don’t need the client’s business, than desperately feeling like this deal better fly…
So it’s Monday. Go read David Lorenzo’s post and see what you can do to seize momentum this week and in the future.
How to Cold Call Management
Written by Brandon Hull on February 21, 2007
For those who don’t subscribe to Paul DiModica’s brilliant newsletter, he and his team are hosting a teleseminar titled, “How to Cold Call Management, Add Value, and Set Up Your First Appointment” on March 1.
More details can be found here. Looks like some pretty solid content…
One Call Close
Written by Brandon Hull on February 21, 2007
Thought-provoking article from Jacques Werth, founder of High Probability Selling, on one-call closing.
Now, it’s not strictly a how-to on doing this, so to speak, it highlights Jacques’ emphasis on disqualifying prospects as hard and fast as possible, and an introduction to his concept of “conditions of satisfaction,” which I’m a huge fan of…
Here’s my bigger question. How many of you are generating one-call closes in 2007? What industries are you in and what are you selling?
One Way to Kill Future Sales
Written by Brandon Hull on February 21, 2007
What do you get when you cross a fraudulent credit card transaction with a customer calling in to dispute the charge? Apparently, an opportunity to sell!
My initial plan when noticing a recurring transaction on my statement the last three months was to call my credit card bank and dispute the charges, but instead I chose to call the company billing me. Interesting response.
When they saw “my” account had a completely different phone number and email address associated with it, I told them I wanted all three $39.95 charges immediately credited back to me along with a confirmation email, I got this response:
“So…would you be interested in giving us a try and subscribing to our service after all?”
He followed his protocol. He did what he thought was right — try to turn a negative into a positive. And while I have no use for his company’s products or services, I certainly won’t be using them now out of principle.
When your company has inadvertently caused people frustration or anger, it’s best to show empathy, take action to fix the problem, and then let the wounds heal before shifting into sales mode. You will alienate most buyers doing this.
Two Powerful Tips for Better Cold Calls
Written by Brandon Hull on February 20, 2007
Cold callers always leave literature. It’s typically replete with paragraph after paragraph detailing all of the oohs and ahs of companies and their products.
Have you ever read your own literature yourself? Have you begun at the first sentence and read through it in its entirety? Or have you even scanned it to know what it really promises? Boring stuff.
Your prospect’s don’t either. They will generally never get past the top headline on a glossy slick.
So if you’re stuck making in-person cold calls as your primary method of lead generation, I’d recommend doing these two things to generate more responses.
Disciplined Steps for Managing Leads
Written by Brandon Hull on February 20, 2007
We’ve now let you know about four online contact managers here, here, and here (three are available now — FunClient, BigContacts, and Oprius Foundations, and one, Highrise, is coming soon).
Here’s a link to an online system called LeadsOnRails. At first glance, I believe it’s aimed more at companies that want to ensure sales and marketing professionals follow a disciplined process for following through on leads, rather than those looking for an online pipeline management tool such as Pipelinedeals or SalesinSync.
In short, you put every lead you receive via a Web site, trade show, or any other source, on a “track,” with a track being a series of steps taken in order to win the prospect’s business. Each step in a track can be assigned to any user you’ve added to your team, with a deadline for when it should be accomplished (for instance, 3 days after the previous step was completed).
This is an interesting concept. Of course, sales professionals have always had the notion of “steps in the sales process.” But this service will cause you to think both strategically and tactically about this in a more disciplined way.
More Online Contact Managers
Written by Brandon Hull on February 12, 2007
Add FunClient and the forthcoming Highrise to the growing group of online contact managers available.
I previously mentioned Big Contacts here and Oprius Foundations here. Check those out as well, if you haven’t already. It’s now really up to you as to when you want to uninstall Act/Goldmine/Maximizer, gain the ability to share with your team, and enjoy more flexible and powerful database features. The services are now out there to make Act irrelevant.
12 Traits That Define Success
Written by Brandon Hull on February 10, 2007
Last June I shared my opinion that we are capable of greatness, not destined for it.
What I really appreciate about this post at Leading Blog and the idea behind the book Smarts mentioned in it (I’ve not yet read the book yet), is that while it’s titled “Are We Hardwired for Success?” it actually suggests there are 12 “brain-based” skills/traits that are developed by young adulthood that largely determine future success.
Check out that post. And let’s look into the book…
Charles Says: Don’t Close Sales
Written by Brandon Hull on February 9, 2007
Charles H. Green, co-author of the excellent book, The Trusted Advisor, has a wonderful post/article titled, Stop Trying to Close the Sale. My previous thoughts on closing are here, here and here.
Key takeaway from his article (also found at Raintoday.com, free membership required):
“Clearly, the idea of ‘closing’ is alive and well in sales. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for you. The higher your average sale price, the more complex the sale is, the more relationship-driven it is, and the longer it takes — the less ‘closing’ is likely to help you.”
Where the stakes are high, I’d suggest you collaborate with prospects to make the right decision, rather than whip out closing technique #134 to nail the deal down. When you do this, the “closing skills” you use are merely helping prospects make the best next decision.
