Get your opening out in 5 seconds or you’re finished
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jul 18, 2011 @ 10:02 AM
One of the most important concepts I teach in my inside sales training courses is this: get your call opening out in 5 seconds, or you may not get any more time to qualify or close on your call. And your opening had better include your call objective, too. This was really underscored in a coaching session I ran last week. Here’s the story…
I was coaching a very good, veteran inside sales rep, and we discussed how he’d handle calling one of his customers for follow-on business. I do a lot of message customizing for my clients, and the model for the opening follows this model: “Here’s who I am, Here’s what we do, Here’s what I want.” It’s as simple as it sounds, but the devil’s in the details, so it actually has to be crafted and customized to sound professional and be effective. So I rehearsed it with Jim, the rep, and it sounded good. But then Jim had another idea. He’d looked up the customer’s website, found a neat conversational hook based on something he saw on the website, and suggested he start the call that way. So I said “OK, let’s run with it.” I didn’t rehearse it with him, and that was a mistake (mine). Here’s what happened on the call:
Jim: “Hi Bob, this is Jim from [My Company]. You’re a customer of mine, and I’m looking at your website, and I’m curious, because it says you sell haberdashery items, and yet, when I’m looking at your product list...”
Customer: (Abruptly) “Look, I don’t have time to discuss this. Call me tomorrow, will ya?”
Jim: “Well sure, what would be a good time to call you tomorrow?” Ad infinitum, and the call ended there.
So we have a couple of problems here. I didn’t rehearse Jim’s new opening with him to ensure it was crisp. He was way too wordy, and all over the place. Jim then took the bait, didn’t get to the point of his call (the “here’s what I want” step), and agreed to reschedule it. Rescheduling calls is always a mistake without first getting to the objective of the call, because in 5 seconds, you can follow the model, state why you’re calling, and determine if the need is there or is worth discussing. If you can’t do that, then there’s no guarantee the customer (or prospect, if that’s who you’re calling) will bother taking your call at a later time. And roughly 95% of the time, the prospect or customer will take the extra few moments to determine if it’s worth discussing it right now, rather than later.
So Jim and I backed up a bit, rehearsed the 5 second opening, and it sounded great. But I should have insisted that he start the original call like that.
Veteran reps love to be creative, but sometimes too much creativity ends up with the call being dropped prematurely, without the sales process being accelerated. We know how difficult it is to reach someone in the first place, and that’s why I tell people that they’ve really only got one call to get the sales objective accomplished.
So getting back to basics, always ensure that you get to the point of your call in the first 5 seconds, and save the creativity for later. That way, you’ll have fewer unnecessary callbacks, will avoid voicemail hell, and will accomplish your call objective immediately. So add a 5 second, bulletproof opening to your Best Practices Playbook. And don’t deviate from it.