Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 @ 12:48 AM
One of the challenges in breaking a verbal habit is that it's nearly impossible to fix it by making your adjustment only while at work. In my telesales training classes, two of the most prevalent habits we work on correcting are the "you guys" and the "how are you today?" habits. And to fully correct them, you need help from the folks with whom you live (and play). Before we discuss "How are you today?" and its inherent problems, I want to review "you guys" for a bit. In the telesales courses I teach, I try to get people in our classes to stop referring to the prospect's company as "you guys", as used in "how are you guys addressing [the technology in question] today?" Especially when you're calling high, using "you guys" doesn't work very well in peer communication with a high level executive, and many women are resistant to that term at any level. "You guys" makes it sound like you're an adolescent, as well, and the prospect almost anticipates the word "awesome" to follow somewhere in the conversation. A better approach is to use the name of the company you're calling in place of "you guys", so let's say the company we're calling is called QED Technology. All you'd have to do, to sound a lot more professional, is to restructure your question by asking "how is QED addressing [the technology in question] today?", inserting the appropriate technology issue in the brackets.
So back to "How are you today?", the topic of today's post. It really doesn't matter too much whether or not you use this on a warm call, where you already know the prospect. Where it really hurts you is on a cold call. At an executive level, you will get hung up on frequently if you open a call with this question. In one of my coaching sessions recently, even though we rehearsed a better way to open the call, the rep did it anyway through habit, and got slammed immediately. There are a number of reasons not to begin your call with this shopworn phrase, but the main reason is that business-to-consumer telemarketers have been flogging it for decades, and it's associated now with getting interrupted by a telemarketer during the dinner hour. It's disliked so much that there's even an acronym for it (HAYT) because people "hate" the question so much from someone to whom they've never spoken. It's much better to open your call by saying who you are, why you're calling, and telling the individual what you need. In most cases, you need to know if there's a current initiative looking for a solution that your product or service can fix. Pretty good way to start a call.
But fixing ineffective communication habits often isn't easily done at work, so I recommend asking personal friends to help out. If you're in the HAYT habit on cold calls, ask your significant other, family, and friends to stop you whenever they hear you using the term when on the phone making personal calls. Chances are, you'll soon get tired of them nailing you, but you will break the habit. And once you've broken it at home, you'll pretty much have it licked at work.
It's hard enough to reach people these days, and you only have one opportunity to make a great first impression. Avoid using words and phrases that annoy people, and enlist the help of friends at home when you really need to fix the problem. A friend of mine once ran for Superintendant of Public Instruction on the platform of "inculcation of sophisticated spoken English." You don't need to go that far to be a great business communicator, but professional speech is terrifically important, especially when speaking to high level executives. Add that level of professionalism to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 22, 2009 @ 01:49 AM
I was coaching a rep during a telesales call last month, when she said to her prospect "So, I assume that you'll need the development process to run more efficiently" (she sold application development solutions that streamlined the development process). The prospect at that point became annoyed, and testily responded with "actually, we're pretty efficient as it is now, what have I said that indicated it wasn't?" (he was a Director of Software Development). While the prospect had other reasons for looking at the rep's solution, efficiency wasn't one of them, so by "assuming," she hurt the rapport she'd spent all call building up, and had to back up a notch and say she was mistaken for putting words in his mouth.
Fact is, we never know exactly what our prospect wants, or thinks, unless we ask through an "open" question, or the prospect volunteers the information first. We're never as smart as the prospect, as much as we try to be. In my telesales training courses, I discuss the concept of being "intelligently ignorant", which means that you want to ask a lot of questions, even if you think you know all the answers. In the United States today, there's lots of "assuming" on the part of companies looking for ways to attract customers, and all it does is result in products and services that reflect the least common denominator. Many Thai restaurants, for example, are making their tam yum goong (spicy prawn soup) with hardly any spices because "Western people don't like spices." As a result, the soup is nothing like you'd find in Thailand, and in many cases virtually inedible, but the Thais think they're doing the Yanks a big favor by lowering the quality of their product. For years, Ford has been marketing the cute, sexy, high mileage "Ka" car in Europe, but doesn't do it in the U.S. Did they ever ask the U.S. consumer if he or she wanted a car like that? Probably not, because Japanese automakers seem to be selling all the sexy small cars in the U.S. right now. And how's the U.S. auto industry doing these days, by the way? I could give you many other examples, but I think you know what I'm saying. By failing to ask the prospect what he or she wants or thinks, we're losing information that is essential to getting more customers and making the sale. In each case above, the "manufacturers" force-fed product to the customer, and in doing so failed to provide leadership or attempt to educate the prospect. And they're losing business because they assume the customer isn't bright enough to make an informed decision. Regardless of what you're selling, I hope you'll understand the metaphor.
Getting back to telesales, now, why not consider dropping the "assumptive" habit yourself? Instead, change the way you ask questions. Try to avoid asking questions that begin with the words "Is... ?" or "Are...?" , which most often lead to assumptions. Instead (and here I'll use applications development examples, for continuity's sake), try the following ways of asking a question:
"Describe", "Would you explain", "Would you elaborate on" and "Tell me about" are great words and phrases that you can use to start learning more by having the prospect tell you in his or her words where the problem areas are.
As much as some people seem to be telling us, there aren't all that many "one size fits all" sales situations, whether it's soup, cars, or development tools. You owe your prospect your best quality solution, and the way you diagnose it is by asking good open questions prior to making recommendations. Focusing on asking your prospect about his or her priorities should be your priority. So be "intelligently ignorant", assume nothing, and add open questions to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 @ 01:22 AM
I've written before on the critical importance of using strong professional verbiage to position oneself as a peer when calling high and talking to a prospect at the CXO, VP, or Director level. Asking permission ("Is this a good --- or bad --- time to talk?") and beginning the conversation with "How are you today?" are two things I strongly suggest you do not do on a cold call, because by doing so, you're giving the subtle message that you don't really have anything important to say.
Today, I want to discuss some additional weak verbiage that will erode your position as a peer to higher level prospects, namely the use of diminutive phrases that convey the feeling that you are not as important as the people to whom you're speaking. Four of the most common are:
1) "I'm just..." (as in "I'm just calling to see if you've looked at my proposal yet.")
2) "I'm new here." (or "new to the territory")
3) "Are you the decision-maker?"
4) "Would it be all right if I called so-and-so?"
Each one of the above phrases erodes the confidence that the prospect needs to have in you, and you stand to be in danger of losing the business to a competitive rep with more professional communication skills. Not only should you not use these phrases with high level prospects, you shouldn't use them with lower level prospects either. Let's discuss them individually:
1) "Just" gives you no justice. In my example above, it's more like a whine, and is reminiscent of how a child talks to a parent. Remove that word "just"from your telesales vocabulary to fix the problem.
2) Prospects like talking to "the buck stops here" reps that have all the answers, or at least project an image that they do. They don't care whether you're new to the territory, the company, or the planet, but they need to have confidence that you're the right guy or gal. Save "I'm new here" for bar talk, not business talk.
3) Who's going to answer that question with "no, I'm not the decision-maker"? Most of you reading this blog sell or qualify leads for companies selling enterprise solutions, where one individual rarely makes a unilateral buying decision. To get the information you're trying to get, ask "How does the decision process work?", and you'll obtain better information about all the people involved in the decision, and sound more professionally savvy as well.
4) Asking permission to do anything rarely invites a positive response, and when you're told "no", then you feel uncomfortable in going ahead and doing what you're paid to do, which is calling everyone in the decision process to ensure that you've comprehensively qualified the opportunity. You should have the philosophy that you'll call anyone at the prospect company at any time, and feel confident enough that you don't have to ask anyone's permission to do so.
Using professional verbiage is not only important in communications with prospects and customers, it's terrifically important within the sales department too, particularly when you're in close communication with field sales reps. As inside sales professionals, we fight an ongoing battle to prove to our field sales colleagues that we know just as much as they do, are as smart as they are, and can close as much business as they can. Many field sales people feel that if telesales people were really clever, they'd be working in the field instead, a prejudice many of us in the telebusiness industry have spent years in the process of changing. In my telesales training courses, I always find time to discuss the fact that inside sales has to be more efficient, more effective, and more professional than our field counterparts, because we've always got something to prove. And one of the best ways to do it is to use powerful, professional verbiage, and kick those weak phrases out of our vocabularies for good. Add powerful, no-nonsense terminology to your Best Practices playbook, and you'll increase sales and improve team communication at the same time.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 08, 2009 @ 01:00 AM
I'm conducting one of my telesales training courses this week for a network solutions company that has a challenge common to many inside sales organizations, namely cold calling into companies where there has been no prior telephone contact, at any level. In some cases, there are individuals that have downloaded whitepapers, attended tradeshows and seminars, or signed up for webinars, but in most cases, there has been no previous "touch" at all. In calling these companies, it's absolutely critical to mine the prospect's website for clues that can be used to turn the cold call into a warm call.
There are several critical things you can find by visiting your prospect's homepage, and you can do it all in three minutes or fewer (if it takes longer, you'll never meet your call metrics, so you have to know what to look for, and how to find it). You'll want to focus on your solution, and find clues on the website indicating that the prospect company could have a need. If you sell application development tools, for example, you'll look for indicators that the prospect is building applications; if your prospect is selling its own applications on its website, you now have additional ammunition you need to make a more meaningful opening call.
Here are a few classic web elements that are indicators that the prospect could potentially use a solution like yours, if you provide development or networking solutions, as an example. If you don't sell these types of solutions, you can use this as a template to create a list of your own "hot" web indicators for your solution. Look for elements such as these that you can refer to when engaging your new "cold" prospect:
- Bill paying capability
- Online account management
- Order entry
- Reseller portal
- Taxes or auto registration
- Shipment tracking
In addition, scan the homepage for any corporate news that could be valuable, such as acquisitions or mergers, or press releases or whitepapers mentioning the thoughts and ideas of upper-level management. This data will be critical when calling high, and again, turns your cold call into a warm call.
Your prospect's website is invaluable in telling you how the company makes its money. As I've said many times, prospects will only buy solutions if they will help the company to make money, or stop losing money. To build rapport and begin strategizing an ROI-based sales formula with your prospects, learn these three things from your website research:
- what product or service your prospect company sells
- who buys its products and services
- how its customers buy those products and services
And last but not least, check the Management page to determine the name of the appropriate CXO. It's better than any other source on the internet, because it's always current.
If you take the steps I've outlined in this post, you'll find your cold calls go a lot better, because you've taken some important steps that prove to your prospect that you know his or her company well enough to make an intelligent value proposition based on intelligence instead of guesswork. Remember to take 3 minutes or fewer per prospect (the more you do it, the more efficient you'll get), and add this powerful technique to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 01, 2009 @ 01:38 AM
After nearly 30 years in the business, it's pretty hard to shock me, but just this last week I became aware of two factors that some managers are weighing as they hire new inside sales people: college SAT scores and memberships in fraternities and sororities. I've never known these factors to be elements critical to the successes of telesales reps, so let's drill down a bit. If you're a manager who heavily values these, I'd like to you to reconsider. Here's why:
I've got a couple of degrees myself, and have attended more than one university. Frats and sororities were mainly known for one thing, and it wasn't academics! Many students I knew didn't have time for extracurricular activities, as they were busy working a part-time job to put themselves through school. They were learning the ins and outs of business while they were students, and many were developing leadership and team communication skills on the job while paying for their university studies. These are people that shouldn't be ignored in the hiring process, because they tend to be self-starters, are used to hustling, and "entitlement" is not a word often found in their vocabularies.
SAT scores are not a predictor of telesales success either. I had a fairly high SAT score myself, but even then realized that it was more a measure of test-taking ability and rote learning than it was an indicator of creativity and business savvy.
So what do you look for when hiring an inside sales rep? Look for somebody that's got something to prove! I've trained and coached thousands of reps in my telesales training courses, and many of the best came from lower-economic backgrounds, where their parents never attended college, but spent their time working in blue-collar jobs to get their kids ahead. And their kids worked, too. Many of these great telesales reps were children of immigrants, and were among the first members of their families to ever attend college. They were never on track to become members of Greek societies, and juggling work and studying in high school may not have given them an astronomical SAT, either. Nevertheless, they had something to prove. To their parents, to their fellow students, and to the world in general. They were bound and determined to make it, they were going to figure it out, and they were going to succeed!
If there's a lesson here, it's this: when you hire Inside Salespeople, don't be so concerned that your prospective employee comes from a good background, had a high GPA in college, and has all the right social contacts. Instead, concern yourself with finding people who see your opportunity as a dramatic step up from their past jobs, who have something to prove to themselves (and to you.) They might not have attended college, either. They might be restaurant servers who have great people skills but don't want to depend on the vagaries of tips anymore, actors who can tell a good story, are great listeners, and are curious about the world they live in, or rental car agents ready to incorporate their people skills into the technology sales world. I've seen many high-performing reps come directly from job situations such as these. They are motivated by a new career and tend to be quick studies that can hit the ground running, rapidly embrace new concepts, and become productive almost immediately.
Regardless of what testing companies will tell you, I've never seen a test that can predict success in inside sales, but if I'm talking to a prospective inside sales rep that's got something to prove, I'm going to listen! I always ask people that I train to tell me a little about their backgrounds, and I'm constantly impressed at the varied backgrounds in my classes, and how these talented people have used those backgrounds to be creative in sales and better understand the business environments of their prospects and customers. So if you're heavily weighing test scores and the college social milieu when hiring your telesales reps, I urge you to reconsider. If you don't, you'll be missing out on some of the best.