In this final article, we will address those who claim that they were unsuccessful with sales prospecting in the past, so they think it is a waste of time.
Yes, sales prospecting CAN be a waste of time. And depending on the number of people you have doing it and the amount of time they are spending on each call, it can be a HUGE waste of money.
But that is when it is being done POORLY!
Done correctly, your staff will be setting appointments and driving the sales that will GROW your business, not sink it. But to be done correctly, sales staff must be trained in the techniques and skills that WORK. They need the words and processes that produce qualified leads, set appointments and close sales.
Our training will prepare YOUR inside sales team to make the most of their time and your money. We prepare them to make effective calls, setting appointments and collecting the key information needed to close sales.
And if you are not ready to hire a sales team, hire US! Our highly trained salespeople can work on your behalf, keeping your funnel filled with qualified leads.
Call us NOW at 908.879.2911 to learn more about the sales training, sales candidate and lead generation services we offer to ensure that YOU are not wasting YOUR time and money when sales prospecting!
In this post we will address the excuse that people are too busy with the work they already have to be bothered with sales prospecting.
A frequent complaint we hear is that people are just SO busy with the work they have that they don’t have the time or bandwidth for sales prospecting. This can be a GOOD problem to have, for a while. Then it becomes disastrous when you wrap up all the existing work only to realize that your sales funnel is EMPTY!
Here are a few ways to address issue and to avoid this dilemma:
MAKE TIME
Even if you haven’t experienced it yet, if you don’t do sales prospecting on a regular basis, you WILL find yourself with a dry sales funnel. And it takes TIME to fill that funnel. Make time to prospect for sales BEFORE your funnel runs dry.
Hire help
If you really don’t have the time manpower to do this, we can find well trained sales people to do this work for you. We identify competent, effective sales people who can take this task and RUN with it so that when you come up for air, your funnel will be full and ready!
Outsource
Not ready to hire someone full time? Call US. We have a staff of highly trained, professional sales people who can make calls, schedule appointments and provide you with the qualified leads you need to KEEP your firm busy!
If you are too busy to do this yourself, or if you just want a more robust stream of sales leads, give us a call at 908.879.2911 – we can help!
And check back for our next and final article in this series where we will address the concern that Sales Prospecting hasn’t been productive in the past, so you think of it as a waste of time.
In our last article, we talked about Sales Prospecting, discussing why it is crucial to business growth and why people don’t always do it on a regular basis.
Here are the top reasons we hear for why businesses don’t bother sales prospecting:
They don’t enjoy it so they avoid doing it.
They are too busy with the work they already have.
It hasn’t been productive in the past, so they think of it as a waste of time.
In future posts, we will address the other reasons but in this article, we will address the first point – people don’t enjoy sales prospecting so they avoid doing it.
Kind of like having to eat your vegetables in order to stay healthy, sales prospecting is a task that MUST be done in order to keep your business healthy and growing. And to make it worse, it has to CONTINUE to be done, on a regular basis, to be effective and to keep your sales funnel full. But it needn’t be something to dread!
Let’s look at some of the common reasons that people don’t enjoy this task and give you some suggestions to make it all easier.
It’s not FUN
Well, MAKE it fun. At One of a Kind Sales, we are big fans of fun! See if you can inject some humor, or at least some levity, into your calling process and see if that makes it any less painful.
I don’t know what I am doing
We will talk about this a bit more in the last article in this series but our TRAINING can help you feel better prepared and more effective.
It doesn’t work
TRAINING will help here as well. Not everyone is a born salesperson but we can give you the skills and tools YOU need to make you the best salesperson you can be.
It is never ending
Yes, it is true that you need to keep doing this task, on a regular basis but if you feel like you are ALWAYS making calls, I suggest blocking out a specific time to do this task. Try 2 hours each morning if you are a morning person, or the 2 hours after you’ve had your afternoon coffee if that is when you feel most energized. People tend to have low energy when they are doing tasks they dread and the call recipient can definitely hear and/or sense that. Low energy does NOT set appointments or close sales. Pick a time when you feel energized, make a set number of calls or make calls for a specific amount of time, then stop! Move on to your next task and don’t spend any more time than necessary thinking about it. Yes, it needs to be done regularly, but it does not need to consume your entire day.
Add value
If you dread calling because you think people dread hearing from you, change that! Bring VALUE to the call. Have industry insights and stats to share with the people you call. Even if you don’t set an appointment, if the person you called thinks you shared something of value to them, they WILL take another call from you and maybe that one WILL lead to an appointment and/or sale.
Change it up
New techniques, a different time of day – stick to your script but changing your approach can energize you and in turn, the person you are calling.
Rack up some wins
Once you are well trained and energized, you will probably find you have a few more wins. And THOSE, in turn are energizing, making it more rewarding and hopefully something you can actually look forward to!
Rinse and repeat
Once you have some wins, take the time to think about what worked and what didn’t. This isn’t rocket science – drop the talk that seems to turn people off and elaborate on the passages that seem to engage and convert.
Keep learning
Click here to learn more about our TRAINING programs and follow us on LinkedIn for industry insights, tips and advice to keep you sharp, productive and successful!
In the mid 1800’s over 300,000 people made their way to California in the hopes of finding gold. When they first arrived, some were able to use their hands to gather flakes of gold running in the rivers and streams! Others used the pans we associate with images of the era, squatting along the waterways, sifting through acres of water, gravel and dirt in search of nuggets. As the financial rewards increased, advanced techniques evolved to reach the source of the metal and involved diverting the water from streams and mining the river bottom. This was difficult, dangerous and back breaking work.
Today, sales prospectors are looking for qualified LEADS which will be converted to CLOSED SALES. While I think we can all agree that we have it easier than the gold prospectors, many business people still DREAD prospecting! Even though we are sitting in our warm/ cool, dry office with a phone, computer databases and all the modern technology known to man, many business people we work with still seem to think of sales prospecting as difficult, dangerous and if not backbreaking, definitely a pain in the neck.
And then they don’t DO IT.
As a result, their sales funnel dries up and their businesses flounder. We see this all the time and over the next few months, we will be addressing many of the reasons people don’t bother prospecting for sales. We will offer tips and suggestions you and your team can use to help YOU become a more effective prospector.
But first, a quick reminder WHY Prospecting needs to be a key part of your business plan.
1.No leads = no sales!
Without prospecting, we have no leads. And without leads, we have no sales.
2.It IS a numbers game.
It can take more than 8 – 12 calls to get a single appointment set. And appointments are how we close sales. So you do the math – how many appointments do YOU need to make, per week, meet YOUR goals? Multiply that by 8 – 12 to get the minimum number of calls you need to make per week.
Essentially, the answer to ‘why bother prospecting?’ is, to keep your business alive and growing!
Here are the top reasons we hear for why businesses don’t bother prospecting:
They don’t enjoy it so they avoid doing it
They are too busy with the work they already have
It hasn’t been productive in the past, so they think of it as a waste of time
Over the next few weeks I will address each of these concerns and provide actionable solutions for each.
And for now, each time you dread picking up that phone to make a prospecting call, remember those dirty, sweaty guys, crouching along a stream in 1840’s California in the 100 degree sun and think to yourself, ‘well, at least I am cool and comfortable as I pan for my gold!’
And if you need help RIGHT NOW, give us a call at 908.879.2911, we LOVE cold calling and can take this dreaded task off your hands. Don’t let another day pass without prospecting calls being made on your behalf – call us TODAY to keep your sales funnel full and your business on track!
Cold calling can be scary. Sales people making the call are afraid of rejection. Call recipients are fearful of picking up the phone, afraid of having their time wasted. Scariest of all is the bottom line, when dozens of man hours and thousands of dollars produce no, or poor quality, leads.
If this fright fest is familiar, you need to try our winning approach to cold calling which drives qualified leads and bottom line results!
At One of a Kind Sales, I’ve carefully trained my team to deliver exceptional sales results, using our proprietary process. If your company is struggling with your sales process, here are some of our winning strategies that you can incorporate to BOO’st your frightful cold calling results:
Define your sales process. I have found that the more structure you can put into your qualified lead generation process, the easier it will be to educate and train your team. An efficient and clearly defined sales process increases production and gets new sales reps up and running quickly.
Be results oriented. In order to deliver results, a team must know what is expected of them and when. Establish high but achievable goals. Make sure everything in your process is working toward achieving those goals.
Train and train again. Don’t rest on your laurels. Strive to constantly make your team better. Even after years of success, One of A Kind Sales continues to train on consultative selling skills and how to draw out information from prospects. We have found that giving your team opportunities to share
Coach constantly. Make no mistake, I have found that coaching drives production better and faster than any other single practice. The highly effective sales managers I work with place a high priority on coaching to build confidence and optimize results. I suggest you take advantage of every opportunity to provide feedback that will make sales reps perform better.
Provide the right technology and tools. Don’t let your team wing it. I encourage you to provide your inside sales team with scripts that can be personalized and used to progress the conversation. The right CRM will ensure higher productivity.
When your sales people are properly trained on our proprietary call process, they are more engaged and effective. Business people who receive calls from these well trained sales people are more receptive and interested in learning more about your products and services. Your investment pays off in warm leads that convert to sales.
Last issue I talked about the importance of uncovering your prospect’s pain and the value that it brings to your sales process. In this issue, I’ll be sharing how to uncover that pain. Talking about your products or services isn’t going to earn you loyal customers. You need to be proactive towards understanding their concerns and constraints.
Listen more and speak less. There’s a type of sales rep called “Crocodile Rep”. They have a big mouth and small ears. They do most of the talking and conclude the discussion without understanding the prospect’s pain. Always listen to your prospects before engaging them.
Ask open-ended questions. The best way to have successful sales discussions is by asking open-ended questions. The primary aim is to get them speaking about their business, and prospects generally love to do that. This strategy will keep you from overselling and help you build a great bond with the prospect.
Dig a little deeper. Uncovering just one problem may not be enough. When there is a pause in the conversation, nod in agreement or say you understand, but also give them another opening to continue the conversation. Use some of these probing questions to get the prospect to expand on the pain.
How did you resolve this issue or is it still a concern?
Tell me more.
Is there anything else?
How would resolving this issue feel?
Talk like them. Use your prospect’s language when talking about pain. This technique can go a long way in building trust with your prospect. Show them that you take them seriously by using their language and terminology.
Don’t answer questions too quickly. Take note of how your prospect asks a question and then think for a moment about how to best respond. If you answer too quickly, the conversation may end and you won’t get the information you need.
Discovering your prospect’s motivators means getting your prospects to talk. Try conversations that let your clients take the lead. Then listen and discover.
Last issue I talked about the importance of uncovering your prospect’s pain and the value that it brings to your sales process. In this issue, I’ll be sharing how to uncover that pain. Talking about your products or services isn’t going to earn you loyal customers. You need to be proactive towards understanding their concerns and constraints.
