Cold calling: Are you an information provider or an inside sales rep?
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Sep 20, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
Recently I ran across a blog post by Don Fornes titled http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/crm/why-wont-anyone-return-my-call-1091610/ Don, who’s the president of his company, had to step in and make some calls when one his reps went out on maternity leave. And he got frustrated, because his calls weren’t getting returned. His post made some cogent comments about how prospects are now getting their information over the web, so tend to engage with inside sales reps only toward the end of the sales cycle. He also added good advice on having a good value proposition, an understanding and practice of using of ROI principles, and focusing on solutions to problems, three concepts I’ve been preaching on this blog since I started it.
So where does that leave business development and inside sales reps, whose job it is to cold call? In my inside sales training courses, I’ve said for years that cold calling is really about searching for people with a problem. And if you call enough, you’ll find them. Yes, you have to use great techniques to identify them and be engaging enough in the first five seconds to get them to actually want to talk with you. But your call objective has to be to sell or qualify on that call, not to “provide information.”
Think about the lives of your prospects for a moment. If they have a problem, they’ve probably already done a little research on finding a solution. They may even be close to making a decision. But if you cold call, and break in there, you’ll probably get an opportunity to compete. And you really do have to close them on some call to action on that very call. I train people to do it in 8 minutes or fewer, because that may all the time you get on that call. Or ever.
I’m not one of these people that thinks cold calling is harder than ever before. With all the great sales tools at your disposal, I think it’s actually easier. But the key is that you’ve got to have fun doing it, you’ve got to be genuinely interested in people and problems, you’ve got to have (or adopt) a questioning mind, and you have to be a bit of a detective, looking for clues in what your prospect is saying.
People are fond of saying that people don’t return voice mails these days. They never did. Wordy “informational” voicemails have trained prospects to delete after about six seconds. Instead of leaving a lot of voicemails, I believe in calling around the company, finding a human to talk to that has information you can use, and determining as quickly as you can whether there’s a problem that needs solving (and you can solve), or whether --- at least for now --- it’s a disqualified opportunity.
And even when, as my old boss Vince Amodeo used to say, you’re “a day late and a dollar short,” and you lost the business before you got there, all may not be lost. If you know your solution is better than the one they’re just implemented, you’ll want to leave the door open to come back in a few months. A significant portion of my business comes from companies that have initially gone with low-cost providers that aren’t very effective, and I’ve gotten their business a few months later.
As noted earlier, there’s too much information out there for you to consider your main role to be an information provider. You’re a problem solver and detective all in one, and being great at it takes intelligence, curiosity, inventiveness, and tenacity. If it didn’t, your company wouldn’t be paying you the big bucks, would it?
So what’s your opinion? Is cold calling harder today or more easier? And if it’s easier, how do you make it easier?