Prep For Your Sales Call: Do 3 Things

You have an inbound lead!  There it is in your CRM tool, with your name on it.

What next?  

Do these three things before calling (yes calling, not emailing) your lead:  

- Who is this person?   

Looking up prospects on LinkedIn should be like brushing your teeth.  Why?

Some LinkedIn profiles tell you exactly what you want to know, like whether they are directly responsible for your kind of product/service, and whether they have decision-making authority.   

You may also discover that you have a lot in common with your prospect.  I don’t expect prospects to buy from me just because we went to the same school, or know the same people.  But those things can help establish trust, and ease the way to a business relationship.

- How well is their company doing?  Knowing the revenues and profits of your prospect will give you some context for your discussion about price and budget.   

- What else is on the company’s plate?   Are they downsizing? Consolidating their data centers? On an acquisition binge?  I had a prospect two years ago who was very interested in my company’s product, and was a great fit; but every three months there was a new acquisition they had to deal with, so they didn’t prioritize our solution.      

This kind of call preparation may be easiest for leads that are larger, public companies.  But even small, private companies and their employees are visible to some degree these days through social media (blog posts, twitter, facebook, industry associations and local chambers of commerce).  

Unless you have to contact, say, 100 prospects per day (ouch!), you can find the time to do this basic research that will greatly improve the quality of your conversations with inbound (and outbound) leads.

Lead Nurturing - 3 Ways To Get A Reply

Here’s an email I received recently.   Effective, or not?

"Hi David,  I have tried reaching out to you a few times now but it seems as if my timing could not get any worse.  I saw that you have expressed some interest in X by downloading some of our content so I just thought it would be a good idea to speak with you for a couple of minutes in order to gauge whether I could help you or not. Let’s connect sometime today or next week, which time works best for you?  Thanks David!"

At least the subject line worked (I opened it).   But there’s nothing in this message that will get me to respond.  If you want prospects to reply, do these 3 things:

1) Ask For What You Want (Be Specific)   If you want a phone conference, ask for it.  Effective salespeople ask for what they want, and make specific proposals, like this:  “Let’s talk for 15 minutes on Monday at 10amPT (or would Tuesday at 4pmPT work better for you?).”   That’s how you ask for a meeting, while offering the prospect an alternative.   

“Let’s connect...sometime today or next week” is not compelling.  “What works for you?” provides zero guidance.  Don’t make your prospect guess at your availability.  

2) Make Your Case  If you want a meeting, please give them a compelling reason to say yes.  If you want a meeting “to gauge whether I could help you or not,” well, you should already know the answer to that one!  If you think you can help them, say so:  “I can help you achieve X.”   If you are not sure if you can help them, you've got the wrong prospect, the wrong value proposition, or your confidence needs a boost.      

3) Grab, and Hold, Their Attention  Your first lead-nurturing sentence is the most important.  So why are you starting with your own troubles as a salesperson?  (“I’ve tried reaching out to you...”).  Do you think your prospect really cares that you’ve found it hard to reach them?  

Lead with something interesting or significant.  Or, express gratitude, and ask a meaningful question (“Thanks for downloading X, can you please share with me which feature you found most compelling?”).  Explain how someone else is using X successfully.  Share a fact that will be useful to their business or career.  

Ask for something specific.  Explain why.  Say something useful.  Do these 3 things, and your replies will grow.

Handle Close Dates Like Plutonium

Sales forecasting, like nuclear power, can be a dangerous business.

When a customer provides you with a date --- “we will purchase by December 15th” --- please handle this statement with extreme care.

The worst thing you can do:  take the date at face value, and tell your sales manager it’s the date you expect to receive the PO.  

Whenever you think you have a date certain for receiving an order, don’t celebrate.  Instead, put on your skeptic’s hat and ask questions, such as:   

Who needs to approve this purchase?

What forms must be completed prior to purchase:  an NDA? a Master Services Agreement? a Statement of Work (SOW)?  A W-9 tax form?

Will we need to be processed as an approved vendor?  

Will the purchase be made through a channel partner?

Here’s an example.  Two years ago a large bank told us with complete conviction that their absolute can’t miss purchase deadline was December 15th.  After inquiring further, they insisted that by that date (within the next 30 days) they would review competing products, issue an RFP, get through a security audit, and issue a PO to the selected vendor.  Yes, they communicated that timeline with a straight face, as if they were telling us the sun would rise tomorrow.  

But to us, it defied the laws of physics.  And so it did.  By December 15th, they hadn’t even finished reviewing our solution, let alone issued an RFP.  Purchasing was not a gleam in anyone’s eye by that date (and the purchase didn’t happen for another three months).  

Why would a buyer issue an unrealistic timeline to a vendor?  Let me count those ways in a future post.  Meantime, when you hear a close date from a prospect, bring your questions to the table.

Who's Closing Who?

There’s nothing more sacred in sales than the idea of closing.

It’s the stuff movies are made of.

But it’s an old paradigm that has been fading for years.  

Do salespeople in the 21st century really “close” CIOs and IT Directors?  More likely, these buyers may or may not select your product, after a lengthy period of investigation, trial, and internal discussion among multiple stakeholders.

An articulate statement of the salesperson as “closer” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 2012 and seems as old school as it gets:

"Dominance is gaining the willing obedience of the customer. The customer listens to your opinions and advice, internalizes your recommendations and agrees with them, and when you close the sales call follows your course of action. Your personality greatly influences the way in which you establish dominance during sales calls…

A salesperson’s goal is to gain dominance over a submissive customer.”

Submissive?  Today, buyers are just as intent on dominating the sale as salespeople.  Asking salespeople to engage in a fight for dominance sets them up to lose.  

It’s true that salespeople need the internal drive to steer a sale to a successful conclusion, and need to take the wheel when the ship seems off course.  When things are not working during a sales cycle, it’s critical to get to the bottom of things and figure out how to get the process moving forward again (or whether it’s time to move on).

Today, buyers see themselves as co-pilots at the very least.  It’s essential that 21st century salespeople learn how to navigate towards happy outcomes while sharing power with their prospects.

This may not be true in all situations.  There may be products and markets where there are few alternatives and buyers must bend to the will of salespeople in order to get what they have to have.  But with most technology products there are multiple vendors, the differentiators are thin, and, thus, the tables are turned.  

Most importantly, buyers of technology are often not just looking for a one-time purchase, they are looking for a relationship with a company they will need to engage with for years, who can improvise, customize, and demonstrate the ability for give and take.  

In this century, the most successful closers will likely be those who are better advisors, catalysts, orchestrators and negotiators than dominators.

Time is your enemy

Patience is a virtue, and it can help in sales.  

As long as you remember this: time is your enemy.

“Aren't you beginning to feel time gaining on you? It's like a predator. It's stalking you.”

Dr. Tolian Soran

The longer it takes to close an opportunity, the greater the chance you will encounter some kind of sales-killing alien.  The dreaded Reorg.  The Disappearance of your coach/champion.  The sudden Freeze on spending.  

Best to take coach John Wooden’s advice:  be quick (but don’t hurry).

Speeding The Sales Cycle - 4 Ideas

"Why can’t you close more deals?”

“Because our sales cycle is so long.”

“So what are you going to do about that?”

Here are four ideas:  

1- Limit pilots, trials and evaluations to 15 days

The length should match the complexity of your product, and the employee/revenue size of your prospects.  For example, major banks will need more than 30 days to test your complex on-premise solution.  But an SMB should be able to test your hosted mobile app in less than 30 days.   

2- Limit to 15 days with a 15 day extension

This is a good compromise if a prospect explains the need for a full 30 days.  You can ask for a day-14, calendared status conference, to ensure you get their feedback and supply any needed support before the 30 days expires.  If there are issues or concerns, you don’t want your first follow-up conversation to occur on day 30.

3-Conditional POs

For smaller prospects and lower-priced offerings, consider offering the opportunity to buy it now with a 30-day return privilege.  There won’t be anything to physically return in most situations, so effectively it means you won’t invoice them until day 31 (assuming they “accept” your solution).  It’s a way to address the perceived risk, while avoiding the added layer and documentation involved in pilots.

4-Success Criteria

For more complex solutions and larger ticket sales, you should know what specific functions are going to be tested, and what will be judged a success.  Otherwise, you may be asked for extensions to test “just one more thing.”  Make a detailed list and get their (digital) signature on it.  You won’t know where you’ve been, or where you’re going, without this kind of roadmap.

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.

THE EFFECTIVE SALES EXECUTIVE

“The effective executives I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and their abilities, in what they do and how they do it, in their personalities, their knowledge, their interests --- in fact in almost everything that distinguishes human beings.  All they have in common is the ability to get the right things done. “

That’s Peter Drucker, back in 1966.  I didn’t read The Effective Executive until 2001, but when I did it changed my life.  

Much, if not all, of what Drucker writes applies to salespeople.  He outlines five habits that are required to be effective:

1.  Know where your time goes.

2.  Focus on results.

3.  Build on your strengths.

4.  Do first things first.

5.  Make good decisions.

A friend of mine once told me about a mantra she had received, which for me seemed to summarize Drucker perfectly:  “Focus, and Deliver.”

Some of Drucker’s gems:

“It is amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.”

“Meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule.”

”If I had a son or a daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?”

“The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.”

After reading the book, I began to ask myself, nearly every day:  what is the mission-critical inch of my business?   It was my way of running a daily Drucker diagnostic, to ensure that I was laser-focused on the most important thing I could contribute to my company that day.

I couldn’t possibly do justice to Drucker’s words, so I will simply say:  read the book.  And if that’s not enough, I’ll leave you with this:

“The [executive] who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank.  But the [executive] who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management.”

HOW TO IDENTIFY BUYERS

It’s not an easy thing, parsing interest from need.  

If we can accurately parse, i.e., qualify, then we can spend more time with people who are ready to buy.   And allocating our time wisely is how salespeople make quota.   

Here’s a good self-diagnostic:  how many sales are you losing to the competition?  If the deals you lose are due to competition, congratulations!  you’ve been spending time with buyers.  

So how do you know if someone is just kicking the tires, or whether you are just in a really long sales cycle?

A buyer does these kinds of things:  

- identifies a real, meaningful, material pain or goal;

- indicates that, to some degree, time is of the essence;

- involves you with more than one person at their company;

- takes a test drive;

- reveals their full shopping list (perhaps an RFP); and/or

- has tried or at least fully investigated other solutions.

The first one is the most important.  An initial qualifying question to ask is, “how did you become interested in us?”  

If they just read an article about you in TechCrunch that’s nice, but it says nothing about whether they have the kind of toothache, or ambition, to buy anything from you.

Window shoppers look more like this:

- their primary (or sole) inquiry is regarding price;

- there is no driver for their inquiry:  no pain, no incident, no project, no RFP, nada;

- they demand information immediately, i.e., they are facing a deadline for filing a report, not in the process of making an informed purchase;

- only one person seems involved in the sale (most companies don’t buy in a vacuum); and/or

- they have not looked at any competitive solutions.

Making quota is not about forcing as many square pegs as you can into round holes.  It’s about qualifying prospects, and allocating more time to those who intend to buy.

SALES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

In Sales, who you know is much less important than it was ten years ago.  You no longer need a "rolodex" to reach prospective buyers.  Today, we're all reachable and knowable, through blogs, tweets, and profile pages (thank you LinkedIn).  A question that used to give salespeople a headache --- "Who is their IT Director, and how can I reach him?” --- is no longer a migraine.    

What you know is also less important.  Salespeople no longer own all the available information about their products/services.  Buyers don’t require brochures or on-site visits to get the ball rolling. Today, the buyer may know 75% of what you know by reading your website, whitepapers, third party reviews, and blogs.  And they may know quite a bit more than you, because a buyer can often get better access to competitive product data, including pricing.    

We are becoming a world in which all people are reachable and all data is available.  In that world, how can salespeople continue to add value?  

Here are a couple of answers.  

Salesperson as Catalyst  

The modern salesperson's task IMHO is not so much to "get in the door" as to get on the buyer’s To-Do list.    Regardless of their access to data, buyers still wrestle with priorities and decisions.    Salespeople need to understand that To-Do list, and try to find ways to help buyers overcome inertia (or to find reasons to  re-rank their top three initiatives).  

An example:  I have a long list of products and services that I am currently thinking about buying related to my home.  I will take action on very few.  But a polite, persistent stream of intelligent contact from a salesperson might get me off the dime on one of them, or at least get me to make a decision sooner.  

Salesperson as Advisor  

Buyers have more information, but can probably still benefit from advice on how to make sense of all that data.  Separating the wheat from the chaff is still a considerable task. This means that salespeople today need to deeply understand the competitive products, and to act as advisors and domain experts, as opposed to simply being an evangelist for their own offerings.