MASTERING THE CONVERSATION

Selling is fundamentally about conversations.

Sometimes they happen in emails.  Sometimes on the phone.  Sometimes face-to-face.

But it all comes down to this:  what words are you using, and how are you using them?

When I was a lawyer (now fully recovered), words were everything.  Lawyers are careful about words because they affect outcomes.

Same thing with sales.

Your first ten to fifteen seconds on the phone with a prospect are important.  Get the words right.

Your email’s subject line matters.  The content matters.  Before you compose your email, follow the advice of my tax law professor:  “Think it through.”

Mastering conversations also requires good timing.  Reply immediately, or at the end of the day?  

Think about the best venue for your conversation.  Just because you received an email doesn’t mean it’s the best forum for your next communication.  Perhaps you should advance to a phone conversation, or an on-site meeting.  

Read carefully.  Emails can be misleading.  Without gestures, tone, and pitch, you may not understand what a prospect is truly thinking.   I’ve sometimes mistaken curt language for anger.  One of my maxims:  when in doubt, pick up the phone.

Lead qualification is all about words.  

Sales:        “Do you have budget for this?”  

Prospect:   “Absolutely!”

That’s an example of a poor initial qualifying question yielding a vague answer.  Choose your words differently, and you can do a better job of qualifying.

THE #1 PROBLEM WITH COLD CALLS

Reports of the death of the cold call are greatly exaggerated.

I received two of them lately.   But neither were very good.

After decades of books and seminars and in-house training, why are salespeople still so bad at making cold calls?

The key problem:  the salesperson doesn’t explain why they are calling.

Most cold calls I get begin under the ruse of a survey, such as, “I’m just wondering what CRM tool you are using,” as if I might leap at the chance to disclose this to a total stranger.

The call I received today also began with a question, something about whether I managed a certain type of team.

Please:  just start by telling me your name, your company, and what you do.  

Feel free to complete your first sentence with a question.  But don’t hide the fact that this is a sales call.  

“Hi I’m Dave calling from Appcelotron, we help companies share large files, I apologize for barging in on your day but I wondered if you might be interested in a better way to share large files?”

That pitch takes all of 12 seconds to deliver in a moderately-paced voice.

Feel free to take out the apology, or add some spice to the value proposition, but don’t leave out the most important part:  who you are and why you are calling.

IS THE SALE LOST, OR ARE THEY JUST BUSY?

Many times you’ve done a great job during your first call with a prospect.  You’ve identified a real need, and they’ve agreed on a date and time for a second call.  

Then the prospect fails to show up.

So an email goes out, and a follow up phone call, in hopes of rescheduling.  This was a buyer, not a tire kicker in need of brochures.  Sending them a whitepaper at this point is, well, pointless.

What do you do?

a) Persistent patience.  

   There are all kinds of reasons for a no-show.  Illness.  Vacation.  Week-long trainings.  Sudden change in priorities (your prospect is in a large company and has finally found a window to solve a nagging problem, but now his boss comes in and closes that window, reassigning him to a different task).

   Try reaching out at different times, using different methods.  Check with his colleagues, at the same level on the org chart; below that level; or if necessary, above.  And if that feels uncomfortable, enlist your manager as a wingman for this task.

    

   After several failed attempts, I’ve sometimes sent an email with this subject line:  Are We Done?  It regularly gets some kind of a reply.  

  The goal here is not to keep up appearances by sending this person relevant content every week.   You need to find out why the agreed next step is not happening, and whether this opportunity really exists, and what the real timeline is.  

b) Re-check your qualification

   Even though the prospect agreed to call #2, it could be that their actual timeline is far different than you thought.  Their disappearing act could be a version of “the check’s in the mail.”   Rather than rejecting you directly, they found it easier to talk at length and schedule a meeting they viewed as optional.  

  In some cultures, this is a way of “saving face.”   For example, in Japan, you may never hear “no”; you will simply hear a lot of “yes” that does not materialize.   

 When people don’t show up, you may have identified a serious need, but no real timeline, i.e,. the buyer has no commitment to do something about the need near-term.

Sometimes buyers will tell you this in the first call.  Just be sure you are listening!  Don’t let a screaming need cloud your other senses.

GET MEETING TWO DURING MEETING ONE

You’ve had a great first call with a prospect.  You asked about Need, Timeline and probably Budget and Buying Process.

   How should you end this call?

   a) Thank them profusely and promise to call them next week

   b) Send them the whitepaper they wanted, right after you hang up

   c) Invite them to join your LinkedIn network

   d) Schedule the next step

I hope you picked d).      

If you’ve determined they are a qualified buyer, the best next step is to get an agreement on the time and date for the next meeting.  Always leave sufficient time to do this at the end of your call.  

The best time to get someone to calendar something with you is right now, when you have them on the line.  Even if they need to invite colleagues whose calendars are unknown, pick a date and time as a placeholder.  

If they refuse to provide a date and time you are no worse off for asking, and you may have just gained some additional insight into their true needs and timeline.

VOLUME IS YOUR FRIEND

You will lose sales.

Get over it.

The best salespeople who ever lived lost sales.  Babe Ruth struck out, and so will you.

Stay focused on the volume and quality of your opportunities.  Or, in baseball parlance, quality at-bats.  

Feed the top of your pipeline, and qualify well.  Do those things, and you’ll have plenty of happy customers --- singles and home runs --- over time.   

P.S.  The same holds true for those of you responsible for named accounts.  You won’t have hundreds of those, but within each account, don’t get hung up on one individual.  Broaden the breadth and depth of your relationships within the account.      

I remember being focused on signing a key reseller in the legal industry.  There were only a handful of resellers in that vertical with the kind of installed customer base that could transform our sales velocity.   We simply had to sign them.  

The challenge was that their key decisionmaker seemed less than interested.  Even after I tracked him down at an event and introduced myself in person, he was very skeptical about partnering with us.

He agreed to give us a hearing, so we scheduled a phone conference that would be attended by at least a dozen of his consultants.  At the start of that meeting, he expressed his tentative decision:  no sale!

Fortunately, during the seven months prior to this conference, we’d slowly built up a base of fans among the consultants.   I’d met some in person.  Some had tried our product.  Many had asked their customers about us.

When the consultants around the room heard “no sale” they sprung into action, eagerly talking about how this was in fact the right product at the right time for their customer base.  Twenty minutes later, the principal had come around, and we had a new partner.    

Volume is your friend.