B2B sales appointments discovery calls sales & Phone Scripts

Appointment Setting

B2B Sales Cold Calling Contrarian Truths: Get It Right by Knowing What Most Get Wrong

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B2B sales people who optimize sales performance by gaining access to decision makers, convert those meetings to business cost-effectively… and sustain that success, stay congruent with the sales process and script strategies used by those who are successful appointment setters.

Let me share some b2b sales tips and contrarian practices used by b2b sales reps who sell more. They generate more qualified opportunities because they understand truths that the most will not accept.

1. Top Sales Achievers Do What Works, Even If it is Uncomfortable, inconvenient or against what the great unwashed “know” to be true.

The top sales producers do what works. No matter whether it is accepted by most, comfortable for them, they want to do or they really really really want to find prospecting success another way.

Guess what? Cold Calling for Appointments is not rocket science. Not easy, but not rocket science either.

If you cling to the fantasy that you are different, your industry is different, your customers would not respond to those strategies… do it your way, and keep banging your head against the wall.

2. This game is more about disqualifying sales leads than it is about qualifying.

You got that right. Disqualifying. Up front, quickly, no benefit of the doubt, ruthlessly and with certainty, is far more important to accelerate sales ramp up.. The goal is not to make excuses and conjure up reasons to keep the weak and hopeless alive. There is no Heimlich maneuver in sales prospecting, no mouth to mouth, no chest compressions. The best appointment setters and sales closers identify and kill the weak. ASAP.

Those who are best at finding gold are best at identifying what is not gold. Deciding whom NOT to call, whom NOT to call again, who NOT to meet with is critical. Get good at not wasting your time and guess what… you spend a lot more time with worthwhile prospects.

Reality is that most b2b sales staff and team members are dealing with a long sales cycle. Sales cycles of six months to two years are not uncommon for a business to business sales rep. That is a different situation than b2c. Top b2b sales producers are very good and have the guts to identify and properly slot those that are not worth the sales effort right now.

3. Giving up is very important. Sales People Must Know When to Move On.

You think you will win this game by initiative and effort? Call call call and then call again. You are wrong. Big mistake made commonly is to continue to invest time well past the point of diminishing returns. Work a plan. Work a process. When you reach the end of the plan, let go.

4. Don’t Pay Attention to What They Tell You. It is usually not literally true.

This one is a little tricky. I guess what I am trying to say is don’t listen literally to what a potential customer or account says. Many, who tell you they are “all set,” “want info” or a call back are not giving you an accurate picture of the situation. If you at that moment do what they say, you will be losing many opportunities. You must have responses to these common forms of resistance so that you can uncover the accurate story and get the meeting now when possible. When you hear objections like those above a calculated response will get you a meeting now about 25% of the time.

4. Gatekeepers and Sales Influencers Are Much More Willing to Give you what they think is UNimportant to you.

This is kind of stupid but true. On the phone, if you come right out and ask for something… qualifying info, direct dial, extension number… gatekeepers will keep the cookies in the bag. Yet, if they think the same info is unimportant to you, they give it much more freely.

Use the “Columbo” strategy. Ask for what you really want after the fact. Your first request you don’t really need, it’s the afterthought you just remembered as they were about to hang up or transfer you that you really wanted. I find I can get qualifying info and info that makes it much easier to get someone to pick up the phone when using this “Columbo” technique.

5. Many, who tell you they are “all set,” will in fact buy from a competitor within 2 – 12 months.

Happens too often. Someone who swears satisfaction, no money, no interest, no need and no time is called back six months later and guess what? Just signed a million-dollar contract for products and services they had sworn they didn’t need. And with a lousy competitor to boot. Too late.

If you are a b2b service provider reality is that if it is cost effective to cold call and set appointments that most of your targets don’t buy or change vendors often. It’s more like every two or four years, maybe. In a business to business sales environment you are far more likely to interact with someone when they are not in active buying mode. You must have phone script strategies to flush out those that will have a need in the near future. If you don’t, you are doing all the work to run 99 yards to the goal line but stopping on the one-yard line with no one in sight. (I hate sports analogies.)

Use model responses to resistance and quick probing questions to ID those opportunities after they say “no, no, no.”

6. Lead Generation Success has much to do about basic management, being setup properly and working efficiently.

Your sales manager, or, if you are managing yourself, your own self management efforts matter most at the beginning phases of the sales process. What you do early on has the most impact on ultimately closing a deal.
Why would someone torture themselves prospecting for 5 – 10 – 20 hours weekly using a paper system or an excel spreadsheet trying to set appointments and getting little but headaches, but won’t spend the one time 3 – 5 hours it takes to get properly setup to work at maximum efficiency all the time. Productivity doubles with this one step. No joke.

You wouldn’t go swimming with weights tied around your waist, ankles and neck. Yet, when you prospect without being setup properly, which takes very little time compared to the time and torture you will invest in calling, you doom yourself to failure. You just can’t move fast enough to survive.

Spend just a little time to make sure you have the basics in place first, then build from there. List selection, contact manager setup, basic script paths, a call process, an automated follow-up system, just getting the basics right in these key areas greatly increases the odds of your success. Without them, you are doomed.

Manager yourself properly by being setup with the basics from the beginning. That has far more impact on your closing than “magic words” used on poorly qualified prospects when you are desperate to make any deal.

7. Call Lists that are far too large for available time and resources.

Pull down a call list many times larger than you or your sales team can call and you guarantee wasted time, inefficiency, poor targeting and calling frustration. Heed this b2b sales tip at your peril.

The most common result by far of failed sales campaigns is too much time spent on lower probability targets. You don’t get more results by downloading 25,000 records (see it all the time) when your sales team can at max call 3,000 in the next six months. Those records degrade every month. Plus, managers usually pull down far too many records because they don’t know how to prioritize the call universe.
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They won’t spend the few hours, or simply don’t know how to generate a qualified list, yet expect results when 80% or more of sales time is spent talking to totally unqualified suspects. I see this often and the good people always flee these environments.

8. Lack of sales script preparation.

You only tend to hear 5-7 things on the phone over and over again with b2b lead generation, yet many have not completely thought out the best response. You kill yourself to get a conversation. To not have a tightly worded powerful response ready is self-defeating. Those who “wing it” every time thinking they sound more conversational are deluding themselves.

9. How many people answer their phones only to tell you they are in a very important meeting and can’t talk, but will schedule a meeting with you, if you know what to say.

Happens all the time in business to business sales. People answer the phone to whisper that they can’t talk to you because they are in a meeting. Your first thought? Well, why did you pick up the phone from an unknown number knucklehead? But you don’t ask. It’s tough to get a prospect that meets your best account profile to pick up the phone. Don’t retreat to wimp mode. “Um, OK. Sorry. Click” Prepare for this moment and you will be surprised how many appointments and worthwhile follow-up calls you can get.

10. The number of dials is not the most important factor in B2B appointment setting success, despite what the hordes believe.

The most successful appointment setters generate qualified leads in a steady stream. But they don’t make the most dials. You have to make enough calls to be in the zone, but “more dial” is never the reason for call success when other factors are not present.

Making more dials when you have few conversations or convert too few to appointments rarely makes the difference. Once you are in a reasonable range of dials, improving on those other 2 areas, having more conversations, converting more conversations to appointments, typically will get more drastically improved results. Improving on those things involves some strategic thinking, knowledge of the sales and marketing principles that drive success, preparation and practice, not “more dials.”

11. You can’t model behaviors and beliefs of those that set too few sales appointments, yet expect drastically different results.

Albert Einstein is credited with saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Yup. So why would an ambitious salesperson study the collective judgment of the mediocre, the struggling, those that are not top producers, those that abandon their plan every time they hear about a “fresh strategy” or a “new rule of selling” are doomed to forever tread water?

Why would someone buy into the sales thinking of that group and say “Now there is my ticket to sales success!”Makes no sense but it’s the modus operandi of far too many salespeople.

Identify and model the prospecting behaviors of those that have actually done what you seek to do. Whether you like it, want to do it, it is uncomfortable or not. Do it. You will get comfortable when you start making more money.

12. You are interrupting and are going to annoy people. Get over it.

The same verbiage and sales script paths and responses to objections and gatekeeper interactions, that are welcomed by many and lead to maximum conversion to happy satisfied accounts, that same verbiage and approach will be an unwelcome interruption and annoyance to those with no need.

Non-buyers will always be annoyed by something they are not interested in. Of course. Worry only about your message to the buyers and communicate well with them. Totally ignore those who are annoyed.

Your main objective should always be to maximize your reach to qualified buyers and have something worthwhile to say to them when you do. The first 3 seconds and the first 30 seconds are most important to that conversation.

When someone with a need and authority to buy picks up the phone (and of course you don’t know that when you hear “Hello.”) be clear, direct, specific and say something that is meaningful to the prospect and enables them to understand you are credible and can help them. Enable them to quickly “get it”and let them say “yes” or “no.”  That respects the time of your prospect.

In my humble opinion, those that drop to their knees to beg and start with “Hi, how are you?” “Have you got a minute?” “I know you are busy and will only take moment.” “I am not worthy, I am not worthy.” They are the ones that annoy the most as they suck up time and say nothing that is helpful to the prospect.

13. There are far more good profitable accounts within that group you speak to but won’t meet, then there is in the group you meet with.

Think hard about this b2b marketing truth. There is far more great profitable business within the group that you speak to yet initially refuse your offer to meet, than you will close from those that agree to meet.

There is far more gold just below the surface of those that agree to meet with you, than you will skim from the top. Most of you reading this are dealing with long sales cycles. It makes perfect sense that the odds of you bumping into someone at exactly the perfect time to sell is low. Yet many of those you speak to will buy from someone else in the foreseeable future.

If your response to someone that says “no” to your request to meet is to ask if you can call back in three months to check in, you should admit that you are clueless and change your approach. You must have script strategies to identify those that have needs and will soon change vendors or buy from another.

14. Elvis lives and cold calling is a waste of time.

I teach phone prospecting but I don’t love it. I set 2,000+ C-Level sales appointments and it was work, not fun. Appointment setting is usually equated with cold calling but many set appointments with existing accounts, dormant accounts, referral sources and those that have been referred. Core B2B appointment setting success behaviors are the same whether the call is cold, warm or hot.

Appointment setting, cold, warm or hot, is just a marketing tool. Like any business to business marketing or sales tool, use it when it makes sense for you to use it. If you have better tools, use them. If you do decide to appointment set, then do it right. With B2B sales cold calling and appointment setting, like any tool, used correctly in the right places it gets results. Used Incorrectly in the wrong places… it doesn’t. I have seen businesses turn around and lives change using this tool. To arbitrarily dismiss it in all circumstances seems foolish to me.

15. Not allocating your time to the best quality pool of suspects is the biggest mistake I see.

If there are a lot of things not right about your appointment setting process and all you did was start calling and zeroing in your highest probability suspects, you would immediately see lead generation results improve. You could continue with your lousy scripts and poor call process, yet just interacting with a higher quality pool of sales prospects can deliver an immediate jump in qualified opportunities.

Remember this. No matter what else you are doing right with your appointment setting and cold calling, if you have not prioritized and focused your efforts on your highest probability prospects, you are doomed. Don’t care how good your phone scripts are or how adept you are with your CRM. You are doomed.

Example: You only have time to call and follow-up on 50 new suspects weekly. You can identify 1,000 suspects who look like your best clients. You can identify 20,000 suspects who fit the profile of your average, low volume, little profit accounts. It is mind boggling to me how many salespeople, who could choose to spend 100% of their prospecting time talking to suspects with a high probability of being good accounts, will slog through calling all the rest saying “I don’t want to miss anyone.”

It makes no sense.

Well, there are a lot of crazy things that happen out there in sales prospecting land.

Go get em.

A Tale of B2B Appointment Setting: How an IT Salesguy Increased Prospecting Results 5X in 3 Months.

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How an IT sales guy increased prospecting results 5X in 3 months with the economy tanking. Three tips I gave him to get even more results.

Russ from Georgia calls me. Sells IT services. Very competitive, commonly perceived to be “generic” in the eyes of prospects. So, no easy task to stand out and find worthwhile people willing to meet with you.

Three months ago (in 2009,) Russ decided to “get serious” with his prospecting. The last 3 months he set 28 qualified appointments. In the previous 3 months he had set only 5, which was typical. Russ handles the complete sales cycle. He sets the appointments, goes on the meetings and closes the deals. Very difficult to juggle.

The big picture view: Competitive industry, hard to differentiate yourself service industry, economy tanking. Yet Russ is meeting more qualified prospects, has increased his closing ratio and is selling more. How??

Before I share with you three ideas discussed to increase his productivity even more, let’s summarize what earned him these results the last 3 months.

    1. Chose his targets more carefully. Got very serious and spent just a little time about profiling his targets. Now 100% of his prospecting time goes to high-probability targets. No more calling everyone and saying, “You never know.” He picked his spots.
    2. Created a system of sequenced touches. Calls, Emails, Voicemails. Rather than call intermittently and haphazardly, he calls in accordance to plan. He works that plan to the end for every record, then lets it go. Next!!
    3. He reworked his scripts to go from “Hey, how are you doing.” (his words) to a benefit laden pitch. People respond.
    4. He uses a contact manager. If you are not, you simply cannot sustain sales improvement. It is self-defeating and simply nuts to not use one of these tools properly.

So, Russ, who had increased from 5 appointments set in 3 months to 28 set in the last 3 months, had a couple questions. Here they are…

1. Russ asked: What is the proper sequence of calls? He says that many times he calls, and the only option is to leave a voicemail, which he does. Is that good?

My advice: Feel free to hang-up after being transferred to voicemail without leaving a message. I would make at least 3 dials without contacting my target before leaving a message. You want to make enough dials to have a reasonable expectation that someone will pick up the phone, but you also must leave touches. So, three dials, then leave your voicemail, send your email. That way people get 2 or 3 touches. Do this every three-business days for 3 cycles. That way people get at least 9 dials and 6 to 9 touches. Results will shoot up.

Russ was kind of doing this but not making enough dials in the sequence.

2. Russ asked: I use three voicemails. Is it a good thing to have different voicemails to leave at different times?

My advice: I never did. It’s hard enough to come up with one good voicemail never mind multiple versions. Consistently builds credibility and recognition. Use one.

3. Russ asked: I track my conversations to meetings set ratio and it is about 3 or 4 pitches to one meeting set (pretty decent,) how can I increase the number of conversations?

My advice: Two strategies. Use all those gatekeeper interactions to increase the odds that you will get them to pick up the phone in the future. That usually means getting more direct dial and extension numbers. We discussed some script path and gatekeeper interactions strategies to accomplish that.

Also, use “power calling,” which simply means calling select groups of records to which you have extension numbers in a certain way, before and after regular business hours, to have more conversations.

Strategies used to have more conversations with decision-makers are very different from the strategies you will use to convert a conversation to a meeting. Know the difference.

The biggest lesson from Russ’s experience? Even in tough economic times buyers are out there. People still are running companies and have needs. People are buying from your competitors.

Russ took a little bit of time to greatly increase his efficiency to find more qualified prospects to sell to. He also improved his ability to communicate value to break through complacency and “we have no budget.”

There are buyers out there. Work the right plan, the right strategy. You can get them.

Your B2B Appointment Setting Lead Generation “But’s” are Killing Your Results

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Nothing quickens the heart… and stimulates sales, better than a flurry of meetings with qualified prospects.

There is no greater torture than to stare at an empty calendar with the belief that making a call or sending yet another email is the equivalent of waterboarding yourself.

How do people turn it around? When you are working hard but sales are not happening. When the economy is tough and fewer are buying. How do you make the sales you must make?

It’s more than “techniques.”

You must lay your “butts” bare and do what works.

What works works.
Whether we like it, are comfortable with it or choose to accept it.

You must do what works without exception or watering it down. You must dedicate focused time to it.

Particularly when you are economically challenged.

Lots of people prospect successfully. The wheel has been invented and there is a process that tends to work.

But, when what has been proven to work is explained, instead of following it, start with the “but’s.” “But” in my industry, “but “my locality, “but” my customers… on and on ad nauseum.

So, with their “but’s” they rationalize why what works for the best, the leaders in their industry, those that generate high probability prospects consistently and at a reasonable cost, won’t work for them. They then do something totally at odds with top prospecting producers and wonder why they don’t get results. Nuts.

In another article you read about Craig from MI whose 5-person in-house prospecting team went from 20 to 100 appointments a week in the middle of a bad economy. He is one of many that turn it around.

Susan D. from CA called me after listening to that interview to happily report a tremendous turn around in appointments and an end to torturing herself. She said the Craig interview helped a lot.

How I asked, expecting to hear stuff about scripts, process, etc.

She said, and this is critical for you to apply, “Craig kept going back evaluating what he was doing and making constant tweaks to the behaviors of his team.”

Let me rephrase that. He paid attention to the details, tracked stuff, made changes and went from 20 to 100 meetings a week in the middle of a bad economy.

I hear a lot of result stories like that.

Two lessons. This is where you lay your “butts” bare and turn around your prospecting torture train.

  1. You must do what works without exception or watering it down.

Example. Last week got a call from a seminar attendee who asked that I review her scripts. The scripts were the exact opposite of what were taught. Contained 3 things I told them never to do.

Hello! If you are taught exactly what to do and choose to do the exact opposite, you are not going to win. The more you vary the harder you make it for yourself.

I see and speak to people all the time that “get congruent” with behaviors of successful appointments setters and go quickly from frustration to getting qualified meetings consistently.

  1. Make time and bear down.

Answer me this. Why do people have time to do what doesn’t work, things that don’t move them forward, that are even counter-productive, yet… they don’t have time to do what works?

Like Craig and Susan above those that turn it around get ruthless about carving out time to focus and implement. I’m not talking about doing more on top of what you are already doing. I’m talking about stepping up to the plate, facing reality as to all you do that is not contributing to success, and making ruthless no excuses break the furniture type change.

Stop clinging to what you are comfortable with and wish would work and ruthlessly eliminate it from your life. Break the furniture.

This stuff is not rocket science. Tons of people are doing it well and earning new accounts. They may not love it, never met a person who does…heck, I teach the stuff and don’t love doing it, but the point is that there is a way of setting appointments and generating b2b leads that works and gets you the results you need.

Recognize that people are successfully doing it. Even when times are tough.

You can too.

 

Laser Focus On Economic Buyers. Throw Everyone Else Down The Stairs

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Setting appointments and discovery calls is about ultimately closing sales. Your prospecting efforts are one part of an overall process that generates new business cost-effectively.

People who have no needs, no money or no time will be annoyed and bothered regardless of what you do. Their feelings are irrelevant.

Your objective – your sole objective – is to get the most out of the time/money that you invest in prospecting (to schedule the most appointments with qualified prospects as you can).

For your company and yourself, you cannot let those who have no needs you can satisfy, dictate your actions. Focus only on how to deliver your message effectively to those who have a need. So, at the moment of truth, when you only have a few seconds to deliver your carefully calculated, benefit- rich message, those prospects will absorb it and be receptive to it.

Always speak and act as if you were speaking to someone who would be receptive to your message.

What do I mean by this?

Well, the great majority of people we speak to have no need or desire to buy what we are selling. That being the case, many salespeople water down what they say to be comfortable with prospects they expect will say no.

They don’t want to bother or interrupt people. They don’t want to annoy them (whatever that means). What ridiculous thoughts. You want to interrupt people. You decided to interrupt them when you chose to call them. You want to interrupt them and get them to focus on you.

Think only of those who you can reach; who have a need; and who, if they can comprehend and absorb the major benefits you can deliver to them, would meet with you. Ignore everyone else.

Focus only on actions that would be welcomed by those that are reachable, have a need and would be receptive to meeting with you.

Everything you say and how you say it must assume that you are speaking to an economic buyer, someone who has a need and will be willing to take the next step, as soon as you’ve said the things buyers want to hear.

You have a very limited time to make your case before the minds of suspects’ and prospects’ shut off, and they conclude that you are wasting their time.

Don’t waste precious time probing to see if they have a need or interest before you unload the heavy guns and deliver your powerful benefit-laden message. Don’t ask decision-makers who don’t know you “if they have a few minutes”? Waste no words that don’t communicate benefits to those who need what you offer. Deliver only words that communicate benefits to them.

Deliver only the words that would get someone who has a need you can fill to sit up and pay attention to you.

Those that don’t recognize a need or are not buyers will reject you no matter what you say. Don’t focus on them or give that group even a moments thought.

Focus 100% on saying words that buyers need to hear to conclude you are worth more of their time. Assume everyone is a buyer until you learn otherwise.

Most of your best clients fit a certain profile. They respond a certain way to your calls and move through your sales pipeline pretty much as all your other good clients did. The more you vary from your desirable new account profile or an appointment setting or sales process that works, the fewer results you will get.

Assuming you have picked the right pool of targets, all you have to do is move methodically through that pool and deliver a very clear, precise benefit-laden message. When you do, the ears of your future new clients will pick up, and they will identify themselves to you. If you are concisely delivering a benefit-laden message to the right audience, they will respond.

If they do not, maybe you are not clear and concise. Maybe you are not communicating enough benefits that they need. Or, maybe you have cast the net far too wide,  defined the pool of targets you will call too broadly, and far too many you call have no needs you can help with, so they reject what you say.

Focus solely on “Buyers.” Say what “buyers,” those that recognize a need, have some discomfort with their present situation or are open to a new vendor relationship, need to hear to determine you are worth more of their time. Ignore everyone else and ruthlessly toss them down the stairs.

Researching Before Your Appointment Setting Call. Worth it or Waste of Time?

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When seeking to set a sales appointment or discovery call, should you research a company before you call or send an email? Let’s answer that question 3 ways. 

Now you may be thinking, well, uh, scott, isn’t it a good idea to research a company a bit so that you can communicate that you know something about them and spent time to learn something about them before you call?

Well, it certainly seems to a popular belief and sales reps just seem to accept it as correct, but I have to tell you, I personally believe that it is probably the DUMBEST bit of sales prospecting advice given.

Sales prospecting four letter word: M A T H. 

Whoa Channell, bold statement there. How can you be so sure. Well, there are two reasons, the first one is common sense and the second is a four letter word. M a t h. Math.

Lets take a common prospecting situation and keep it simple. You have identified 100 high probability prospects to reach out to. These HPP’s (high probability prospects) belong to a group with similar characteristics and needs. Now ponder that scenario again because we will come back to its significance. You have identified 100 high probability prospects to reach out to. You are going to reach out to them with some combination of calling, emailing, carrier pigeon, voicemails, emails, ravens, whatever, doesn’t matter, but you are going to use some sort of consistent process to interact with your targets. It takes a certain amount of time to work your process on these 100 targets, lets say it takes 10 hours. So you call 100 targets in 10 hours and get X as a result.

B2B Appointment Setting and Discovery Call Outreach Time Spent Researching Is Time Not Spent Calling or Emailing

But a lot of people advise you to research before you reach out. You only have so much time out of your sales day prospecting. Time spent researching means time spent not calling. So you spend 3 hours researching and 3 hours calling. Now, in order for your research to be worth the time it needs to double your results. If you cut your call time 50% to research you must double results with your remaining call time to break even. Not going to happen. Common sense tells you it will not happen and math proves it is a waste of time.

Well, then why do so many preach it and believe it. Well I think it has to do with a fundamental mistake often made about prospecting. Many suffer from the delusion that you can increase overall prospecting productivity and schedule more sales appointments and discovery calls if your individual suspect thinks you know something about them, that you have taken time to research them. That is absolutely wrong and is reverse of the mindset you should have when seeking to book appointments.

It is not what you know about them that matters, it is what they think you might be able to do for them that matters.
Enabling them to conclude that you might be able to help them is what matters, nothing else. That is what earns you meetings that convert into sales.

Maybe’s, exceptions to the rule and the lunatic fringe don’t count

What might work some of the time is not what is going to lift sales results 20% or more consistently. Every rep and sales team has a certain amount of time to devote to lead generation and must consistently spit out the highest amount of qualified first steps that convert for the time and money invested. That is always the goal. You want to be working in the zone where you are working a system on the most valuable targets you can for the most consistent results over time.

Now go back to our example. You are calling 100 high probability prospects that are similarly situated, that is the key. If you are manager in charge of a sales team it is your sacred duty to know what profile of targets are most responsive and buy the most. You always are allocating your time and money to the most responsive GROUP you can. Groups.

Research the GROUP before your set the sales appointment call. Not the individual companies.

And that is where the research magic happens. You research the group before you reach out, and know the needs, situation and results needed among the GROUP you are targeting stone cold. You structure your messaging to enable the best response, the most sales appointments or discovery calls from that GROUP for the time invested. Call a group of 100 over 10 hours and get X result over and over again. Not spend 5 hours researching individual companies and 5 hours calling and expect to get double the response just to break even on the time, not going to happen.

Research the GROUP before you call and research the individual company once you have secured the first sales appointment or discovery call.

Another reason why researching each company you call is a waste?
The reasons why they need you are not publicly available.

In my long career and with all the reps I have helped and trained, I can’t think of one instance where a major account was landed due to knowing some easily available public information.

If you are working for an experienced reputable company with credibility and dependability up the yazoo, do you really think you help yourself by getting Mr. or Ms. Big on the phone and saying “Hey, see you are opening a new location. That you are hiring new employees. That you just got some award.” Do you really think that impresses anyone and is enough to get you in the door?

In fact, I think it diminishes your crediblity when in the first crucial seconds of an interaction you relate some mundane piece of info at the expense of clarifying what you do, your credibility, what you can achieve. You should be enabling someone that has a problem to conclude that you are worth spending time with. Mundane info does not do it. Info with impact gets you in the door. You must enable a buyer to conclude “Hey, they might be able to help me.” I will listen more. I will meet.

If you would like to make sure you are calling the highest probability groups of targets, improve your messaging or outreach process for more sales appointments or discovery calls, or need a speaker or trainer for your next sales meeting. Contact us and lets discuss.

Prospect and prosper.

Prospecting One Level Below The Check Writer: The Impact On Closing Ratios

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I’m going to share with you a rule of thumb I have used in prospecting I call the 6x rule.

The origins of the rule came out of an appointment setting project I did years ago. This project was done for a management consulting company that worked across the United States.

They had very strict rules for their appointment setters. The meeting must with the President or CEO of a company with 1,000 or more employees, or, the head of a distinct business unit with budgetary authority and responsibility for bottom line results if that unit that had 1,000 or more employees. No exceptions were allowed.

Sales Results: 6 meetings for a starter project, 1 in 3 starter projects convert to a larger project worth $500,000 or more. 

Their results were that for every 6 meetings set one would convert to an analysis project worth about $25,000. One in three of those analysis projects converted to a larger project worth a minimum of $500,000 and often $1 million or more.

Now this consulting company had been doing this a very long time. They had a team of independent appointment setters, they paid for meetings set and held and they paid very well.

They had studied what worked from every angle and shared with me a fun fact that I have embraced. This lead generation rule of thumb I am about to share with you has been an integral part of my thinking on every project since then.

That fun fact I learned that has stuck with me ever since? It’s this.

An account was 6X less likely to close when the sales process started one level below the decision-maker. Set the meeting one level below the ultimate check writer and it is 6X less likely you will get that check.

For that management consulting firm, even if the process started a whisper away from the CEO at the Executive VP level, the result was the same. It was 6X less likely that this management consulting company walked away with a gig. 6X. That was a fact, not a guess.

The prospecting concept is not the surprise. It is the number.

Now the concept is not what is significant. We kinda know that the odds of closing a deal go up when we start with the ultimate check writer. We know in general that it is harder to close a deal and takes more time if we start at a lower level and must work up. But 6X? Whoa.

I have never had a client since then that studied and tracked that as well as that management consulting company did. But having worked on many projects in many industries over a long period of time, I believe that number to be consistently true.

You are 6X less likely to close a deal if your first meeting is one level below the ultimate decision-maker.

That does not mean that it may not still be very profitable and worthwhile for you and your team to start the sales process at a level below the top decision-maker. That may be A OK for you. But the reality remains that the odds of closing a deal go up by a factor of 6 when you can start with the top dog. 6.

What consequence does this have on your b2b appointment setting strategies and tactics

You have some choices to make. Quality vs quantity. Activity vs results.

If you go direct to the top dog it will be harder to get in, it will take longer to get in, you will close much more frequently. On average I believe 6X more frequently.

Would you choose to work 50% harder to get a meeting if you knew you were 6X more likely to get a close? How about twice as hard or even three times as hard to score a meeting?

What is right for you? What prospecting price in extra effort would pay for that closing result?

Many sales teams and individual reps start at lower levels thinking it will give them practice, be easier to get in. Starting at a lower level makes you feel good. Hey, I’m getting somewhere, have meetings on the books. Another reason a rep will start low is that it gets their sales manager off their back. It you have the misfortune of working for a lousy sales manager in a major sales environment quantity and activity is emphasized rather than results. Calls, meetings, more, more, go, go. “Whip them harder” environments are mediocre at best.

The problems with feeling good in the short run or escaping your sales managers’ wrath temporarily by booking meetings that are unlikely to lead to a close, is that at some point those chickens come home to roost. At some point, you must face the reality that you are doing a lot of work and not closing much.

A major benefit for starting prospecting at the top, other than you are 6X likely to close.

A good reason to start at the top? You learn how to do it.

Top dogs think differently than those below them. If you are going to earn a meeting with the ultimate decision-maker or top dog it takes a certain peer to peer swagger, a confidence, and different language to earn some time with them.

Those at the top think more long term, more strategically and are more bottom-line oriented than those below them. You want to develop the small details of difference that enable you to start your sales process at higher levels. You need to develop that muscle memory.

Where is it best to gain entry into an account

My belief is that you should always try to get in at the top first. Make that investment of time. Learn how to do it. Develop the habits, the confidence and the language to earn meetings at the top. Those meetings will sharpen your thinking, presentation and interactions.

Once you reach the point of diminishing returns on those efforts, you should strategically choose whether it is worth the effort to prospect for meetings one step below or move on to another prospect company.

If you spend most of your time in the bowels of the beast, when you reach the top you are in unfamiliar territory and closing results will reflect that.

In the case of that management company I referenced, they simply did not allow anyone to start their process other than at the top. Because they knew projects were 6X more likely to close. It simply was not in their DNA to start any lower. So they refined the skill set to do just that and reaped the benefits of it.

Discovery Calls & Appointment Setting B2B. Top 10 “Scottisms” for Success

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Success in scheduling discovery calls and appointment setting B2B, Lead Generation and sales prospecting all boils down to some basic core principles.

Over the years of smiling and dialing and helping sales teams to do the same these core principles have been embodied in “Scottisms.” Stupid simple sayings that capture the essence of appointment setting and lead generation success.

Top 10 Scottism’s and what they stand for…

  1. Don’t make it easy for them to lump you in with the idiots.
  2. #1 reason people don’t meet with you is that you don’t give them enough reason to meet with you.
  3. If you think your competition is saying something, don’t say it.
  4. It is not about qualification. Focus on active disqualification.
  5. Focus on buyers only. Throw the rest down the stairs.
  6. Its’ better to not make the calls and not get the meeting, than to make the calls and not get the meeting.
  7. ‘No’s” are perfectly acceptable. “Maybe’s” will kill you.
  8. “Great sales scripts” are not going to save you.
  9. If you are not using a contact manager, you are swimming with weights on.
  10. Never try to convince anyone of anything.

Don’t make it easy for them to lump you in with the idiots.

Buyers get a lot of sales calls. Most of those calls are from people who are unprepared, who are winging it and waste their time on the phone. If you act like or say the things that idiot time-wasters say on the phone, guess what? Buyers will lump you in with all the other knuckleheads that waste their time and immediately disregard you. Don’t say the things that the knuckleheads and time-wasters say when seeking to schedule a sales appointment. Even if you, in fact, have a great offering and high credibility, your prospect won’t know as they tune you out as soon as you sound like a time-waster.

#1 reason people don’t meet with you is that you don’t give them enough reason to meet with you.

Reality is cruel. People not agreeing to meet you? The reason why can usually be found in your mirror. Sad fact is that you are not communicating enough value. Rip out every word that does not relate to providing buyers info they need to determine you are worth more of their time. Communicate what you do and why you are credible clearly, succinctly and quickly.

If you think your competition is saying something, don’t say it

Are you saying things like “We help companies just like yours,” “I’ll only take 20 minutes,” “How are you?” “Do you have a moment?” or anything else common and ordinary? Stop. If you can easily imagine your competition saying something. Don’t say it. Most callers waste the time of buyers. Don’t sound like all the rest. Be different so that they will listen longer. They are aching to find a reason to dismiss you and when you say things that time-wasters say, they immediately dismiss you in their mind. Once their mind clicks into “This person has nothing for me” mode, you are toast, no matter what else you say. They are not listening.

It is not about qualification. Focus on active disqualification

There are some major myths out there in appointment setting land. One is that you should focus on qualifying. Uh uh. As someone who has set more than 2,000 B2B sales appointments, I can tell you that your focus should be on ACTIVE DISQUALIFICATION. The faster you can identify those worth little or nothing, the less time you waste on them. Critical to lead generation success. If you typically make 10 calls to a prospect, would you rather find out they are worthless on the 1st call or the 10th? Don’t try to keep leads alive with rationalizations and wishful thinking. Actively try to root out the worthless early in your process. All those calls not made to the worthless can now be made to those worth your time.

Focus on buyers only. Throw the rest down the stairs

Everything you do and say should revolve around how it plays with BUYERS you speak to. Of course, when you start speaking you don’t know you are talking to a buyer so you must assume they are. Worry only about how buyers will respond to what you say. Do not spend one-second thinking or worrying about what the non-buyers will think. Throw them down the stairs.

Those seeking to book appointments and discovery calls worry way too much about non-buyers. Many of those who are unsuccessful water down what they say so that they can have more comfortable conversations with those that are never going to agree to meet. Forget about them. Say the words that buyers need to hear to recognize that you are worth more of their time. Forget about what the non-buyers think.

Its’ better to not make the calls and not get the meeting, than to make the calls and not get the meeting.

Think about that statement. Many want to make more dials, never give up, follow-up endlessly on anyone who whispers a sweet nothing… ridiculous. If you allow yourself to make calls that have a high probability of getting you nothing, those calls can’t be directed where you have a much better chance of achieving your sales prospecting result. Better to not make those calls.

‘No’s” are perfectly acceptable. “Maybe’s” will kill you

“Maybe’s” and their close cousins… “call me back” and “send some info” are lead generation cyanide. They pile up and pile up and are guaranteed prospecting death. Everything you do should be structured to get a clear “yes” or “no.”

“Great sales scripts” are not going to save you

Is this you? Your prospect list is poor. You are essentially calling the phonebook, picking leads off the internet (awful,) and really don’t have a firm grasp on the differences between a good list or a bad list. You are calling off paper or spreadsheets. If you do have a contact manager you are not using it well. Do you call haphazardly without a consistent call process? Sound familiar? If so, “good scripts” are not going to save you. There are no magic words that will transform garbage into gold. Scripts only work if you are communicating with the right people and enough of them. If those other components are broken, good sales scripts won’t help.

If you are not using a contact manager, you are swimming with weights on

You simply cannot be consistently successful in generating worthwhile appointments and opportunities if you don’t use a contact manager properly. If you are not, you are swimming with weights around your waist, ankles and arms. You may keep your head up for a while, but you are going down.

Never try to convince anyone of anything

The buyers are out there. Right now there are a ton of buyers doing business with competitors or contemplating buying what you offer. Your goal is simply to bump into them and let them know what you do, why you are credible, the benefits your offer and what you want. They decide. You move on. Do not put the burden on yourself to convince anyone of anything.

Hope these Scottisms get you thinking about your appointment setting process.
If you or your sales team could use some help, contact me.

Top 10 Benefits of a System that Consistently Spits Out Sales Appointments and Discovery Calls

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Quality appointments and discovery calls improve your budgeting, cash flow, and profit margin.

Let us review all the benefits that come to us when we can consistently and cost-effectively generate substantive first sales conversations with those who can authorize checks, that would clone our best and most profitable clients.

1. You can move beyond your personal network and referral sources
2. You add a tool to your prospecting toolbox. You improve the mix of your interaction.
3. You can scale growth.
4. When your other marketing and social media efforts are not delivering you have another option: Go directly to the buyers
5. You avoid sales peaks and valleys.
6. You don’t miss out on opportunities that are out there anymore.
7. You gain control over your sales life.
8. You can value from the unreachable and No’s
9. More accounts, revenue, profits, and higher margins.
10. Your closing ratio improves.
Bonus. You can easily follow-up for future sales.

1. You Can Move Beyond Your Personal Network and Referral Sources

This is a call I get a lot.
Companies that have grown and done very well relying on repeat business, word-of-mouth, their personal networks, and referral sources, now have to reach out to strangers for new business.

Sometimes the repeat business slows down. The referrals just don’t come in like they used to. The marketing that used to work does not deliver what’s needed anymore. Sometimes the Rolodex and personal network have no more to give.

Now what?
Talk to strangers?
Yikes.

What is sufficient to close a deal with those who know you or referred to you, will not close a deal with strangers.
What you said to get a meeting with those familiar with you will not be enough with strangers. You will need to move through a larger group of targets systematically to have any chance of success. You will have to prepare new things to say.

Strangers will cut you loose much faster if they don’t perceive value. This will be new to you. Working a process will not be easy. You will need to be disciplined in ways you never had to be.

But the good news is that the methods of gaining traction with companies or with people that could be great accounts have been invented. It is rooted in rock-solid basic marketing and sales principles that can be learned.

2. You Add Another Tool to Your Sales Tool Kit

Outreach to set appointments and discovery calls is not for everyone. It’s not for every business. It makes sense in some places, is foolish in others.

For some businesses being able to set discovery calls or in-person appointments is the core of new business development. For others, it is just part of a larger picture.

For those of you new to this, you add another option to your sales and marketing kit. For those of you already setting appointments, you get to sharpen a tool you are already using.

Think of appointment setting as a tool to be used as needed. You might use it very strategically to infiltrate a new vertical. You might use it to avert trouble when business slows down. You might use it day in and day out as the core of your new business process.

It is neither good or bad. It is a tool.
Use it if it is the tool you need.
Use it in the right place.
If you use it, use it correctly.

3. You Can Scale Quickly

Sometimes you need to go from zero to 60 in seconds flat.

In some situations, you can’t wait for the biggest buyers to bump into your content. It might be too big a stretch to assume that your other marketing initiatives and social media efforts will translate to qualified leads and sales in enough volume to meet goal.

If you are in a venture-backed situation, you scale or you don’t get the next round.
When you need to scale quickly, you need a system. Fast growth is not an accident.

4. When Other Marketing Methods and Social Media Efforts Are Not Delivering What You Need, You Have Another Way.

Sometimes marketing methods stop producing.
Longtime dependable sources of business dry up.
Word of mouth and referrals reduce to a trickle.

Sometimes you can’t wait. You need business now. You need to interact with buyers directly.
A system which puts you in direct contact with buyers solves that problem.

5. You Avoid Peaks and Valley

How many times have you have had this problem? You either have more business than you can handle or are dying for dollars. When you are in that boom or bust cycle, something very bad is happening.

When you’re dying for dollars you take business you should not take; you make price concessions you shouldn’t make, and you make promises for delivery and quality that are unrealistic.

When you’re in a rush to book business, you often short-circuit your production or service processes. Before you know it, you have no processes, just chaos. The odds of a dissatisfied client and unexpected problems go way up.

When you can generate a steady stream of first sales conversations, you won’t feel pressure to cut your profit margin to seal a deal. You won’t be tempted to make unrealistic promises or work outside of your service delivery systems.

You no longer trade short-term cash for longer-term success.

6. You Won’t Miss Out On Opportunities Any Longer

Good clients are just waiting for your call. Great clients are searching their emails for messages from you. But you are nowhere to be found.

A sad reality is that there are a lot of really great accounts out there, buying from competitors unaware that you exist.

You didn’t identify them or get their attention. You were not there at the right time. If you did speak to them or get their attention briefly, your messaging did not communicate your value or credibility.

They, therefore, lose the opportunity to work with you. A provider they would be thrilled with. You lose a great client who would pay well and provide a steady stream of profits for you over a long period.

7. You Gain Control Over Your Sales Life

You are in charge. Not your prospects. Not your clients. You.

When somebody wants you to take 10% off, or they threaten to go to a lower priced competitor, you’ll tell them to take that deal. You won’t care.

When somebody asks you for impossible delivery times or tells you that they have expectations that are not realistic, you’ll walk away. You won’t care.

You’ll drop all those small accounts that are a pain in your neck… all those low-margin or no-margin accounts that you currently service.

You see, when you know (really know) and have confidence that new leads and inquiries will continue to come on schedule as a result of your system, you’re going to be far more selective about whom you do business.

8. Gain Value From the Unreachable and Those That Have No Immediate Need

What do you do with the majority of people you cannot initially reach? What do you do with the majority of people who you do reach, yet don’t immediately agree to see you? Are those calls wasted? Far from it.

In a big-ticket or complex sales environment, most people are unreachable. Most people you interact with will say “No.” Many of those same people, at some time in the next 3-18 months, will recognize a need and be prime candidates for the services or products you offer.

A good system enables you to identify those that say “no” now but will write a check to a competitor in the near future.

9. More Profit, Margin and Accounts

You get revenue. More accounts. Higher margins.

These rewards are the natural result of a prospecting engine that is running smoothly.

You will be meeting with more qualified prospects so you can choose to work with the best and say goodbye to the rest. You can now negotiate from strength on proposals. Why shave the margin to get a piece of business when you know from your full sales pipeline that you are already on target to meet or exceed your sales, revenue and profit goals?

10. Your Close Ratio Improves

I once conducted a prospecting intervention for a $100 million company with 27 salespeople. After my coaching intervention, which lasted a few months, the closing ratio of this team increased by 25%.

There were two reasons for this increase. Better closing ratios are determined, in part, by the quality of the prospects and the quality of the sales process.

Quality of the prospects: There is a certain pool of prospects that is ideal for your company. You understand their needs; you can service them and keep them happy. The problem is always getting in front of them and being able to tell your story to the right person.

The process I teach helps you to infiltrate a much higher percentage of their ideal target group and get in front of the top decision-makers.

Quality of the sales process: Because they were in front of more prospects, this client got more practice and became more proficient at each step of the sales process. They focused on what to do at a first meeting to advance a sale, how to better cross-sell, how to best avoid and respond to resistance and how to improve proposals.

If you get more appointments with widget sellers, you get better at knowing what to do to advance and close a widget deal every step of the way.

Bonus Benefit: You Can Easily Follow-up

I hear again and again and again from salespeople: “ I don’t have the time to follow up.”

No offense. But it is just downright wasteful and insane to spend all that time smiling and dialing… asking questions… and getting tons of information not to follow up.

The biggest investment of time is your initial foray to the prospect. The largest dollar expense is buying the target list, getting it into the database and investing the time to work it the first time through.

Easy follow-up is something planned for before you make your first call.

Follow-up can be simple when you have planned for it, and you work with “groups” of prospects.

You invest a lot of time and money to make the first pass to a prospect. It takes just a fraction of that time and money to follow-up when you have a system to do it.

Do you have a system?
Is your system delivering these benefits?
If not, contact us to discuss options.

CRM / Contact Manager Functionality for Appointment Setting

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A CRM is not a CRM is not a CRM. Especially when it comes to booking sales appointments and discovery calls. Appointment setting has some special requirements as to functionality and layout you want to be aware of. What works and might be acceptable in one sales environment is woefully inadequate when it comes to setting sales appointments.

Many times, the easy choice on day one, or the newest program, or one with the most knobs and the shiniest knobs is not the one that will enable your team to book the most appointments. If you do quick and easy up front without understanding the functionality you need to book meetings, that choice will cost you big time every day as you work your program.

The following is a short list of considerations to selecting a CRM that will add efficiency and effectiveness to your lead generation program. (At the end I will let you know my preferred program for small teams.)

Two big reasons why you must get this right.
1. Call efficiency: If you don’t pick the right tool, with the right layout, with the right customization and sorting options, it will slow your appointment setter down. If info is not organized so that “at a glance” callers can be prepared to pick up the phone and call, time is wasted. You lose opportunities and it takes more effort to get results. The good callers flee poorly setup environments as it is much harder for them get results and make money and they get frustrated with a tool that slows them down.
2. Call effectiveness: As your team smiles and dials repeatedly they need to differentiate the time wasters, from the worthy accounts from the very few that represent the largest opportunities. They need a place to note those factors which enable them to make those judgments. You as the manager and the callers need to be able to “slice and dice” or segment the list by potential value so that you can properly allocate resources. Time and money. Don’t have this capability or enough of it? You are doomed to investing a lot of time on records not worth your time. And those that are worth more than the rest? They won’t get the attention they deserve as you won’t know who they are or be able to zero in on them quickly.

Things you need in a CRM to set sales appointments.

1. A “one look and call” setup. You need your caller to pull up a record and immediately see on one page, with a glance, all they need to know to make the call. Boom.

If your callers must open 3 or 4 pages, and scroll down them no less to find info and know what has happened on this record and what to do on this call, that significantly slows things down.

2. Ability to organize the layout: Part of #1 above is having the ability to move the fields around and group the data for easy absorption and action. Example: In my preferred layout info about the contact is in one row, info regarding the company is another, and all the worth info re business needs and revenue potential is in another. Boom. Quick glance. Know what is going on. Call.

3. Ability to customize fields and dropdowns: You need the ability to add a good number of customized fields and dropdowns. You will typically need fields for worth, current vendor, criteria for clues as to potential worth or product/service used, product/service they might buy, estimated spend on items annually or by project, contract expiration dates, review dates, on and on. When you create those fields, you want to be able to create dropdowns for ease of use and consistency of labeling.

Important. Every bit of worth, or what they might buy data, or how much, must have a separate field so that you can find it, access it and sort by it. If the answer is “it’s in the notes” that is totally worthless, as you can’t access it quickly or sort by it.

4. Ability to sort by multiple fields. You want to be able to “slice and dice” or sort by pretty much any variation of multiple fields. You should be able to search for all your “A” value targets, that are left handed, in zip code range 02210-05936, where you have a decision-maker identified, a direct dial or extension number and a review date within three months.

Why is this so important. You need to prioritize.

You need to properly allocate limited resources of time and money where it will do you the most good. If you can’t segment and sort by multiple criteria of your choosing you will be working very inefficiently, resources will be squandered and it will be much harder to get results.

5. You need to use a program popular enough so that you can get training or easily find people that have used it when you need help. You can waste a lot of time setting things up, trying to customize or troubleshoot problems on your own. Assume you will need help and you want someone that has used your program in your environment. Many times, the help from the software developer is not very practical, particularly if the tool is very new. Give me tried and true every day.

6. You want to be able to get help at a reasonable cost and quickly. Questions come up. Glitches arise. Who are you going to call and how much will it cost? Select a program where you can get help where it won’t cost you an arm and a leg and there won’t be a 5-day delay every time you need assistance with something.

7. You want to be able to make basic changes yourself.

You need to think ahead in choosing a CRM for appointment setting.

I advise my clients to think ahead to when they have called hundreds, typically thousands, or if a team is involved many thousands of companies have been called. All sorts of recon and data has been collected about potential value, current vendors, products or service lines they might buy, on and on. The better programs are set up to access that info and make better decisions and properly allocate resources.

The less successful programs are stuck with trying to call faster and faster to make up for poor planning or poor infrastructure. A lousy place to work form.

If you are setting up an appointment setting program or changing tools, that setup or switch is a very big deal. If you get it wrong, you may very well be stuck with it. You may suffer, and many do, with underperforming programs or opportunities identified at a higher cost because they didn’t pick a CRM / contact manager with the right functionality.

If you pick the wrong program it may be harder to keep decent people. Prospecting and appointment setting is a job filled with repetition and drudgery. If on top of that you make it much harder for your callers to call, or add unnecessary clicking and scrolling and page bopping on top of what is already a monotonous job, the good callers will run away from you.

These posts will give you insight into what I use and expand on the above.

Why I use ACT for appointment setting B2B

B2B prospecting pro and contact management consultant opine on ACT CRM

Good luck.

Three Core Reasons for Appointment Setting Success (or Failure).

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Hi, this is Scott Channell. B2B lead gen and appointment setting programs can under-perform for a variety of reasons, but there are three core reasons I see again and again, as the root cause for failure. If you fix, or don’t make these mistakes in the first place, you greatly increase your odds of creating new qualified opportunities.

Here is a 4-minute video discussing what to fix first, or avoid in the first place.

Number one: Not calling the right targets. If you get this wrong, I don’t care how many other things you are doing right, the odds of lead gen success plummet. I get a lot of appointment setting 911 calls and by far the biggest reason for failure is that too much time and money was being spent on low value, no value targets, while high probability high value targets were not being touched. Having a tight profile of your most likely suspects and prioritizing segments by value are critical. It only takes a few hours of time to make sure you get this right. Do it before you spend hundreds of hours of call time sifting through muck trying to find something worthwhile. The greatest leaps in productivity I see come from getting this right.

Second core reason for underperformance? Not communicating your credibility and benefits delivered in your call scripts or email messaging. Sadly, shockingly, I see again and again companies that have a lot of great accounts, a solid record of results and success stories to tell, communicating as if they were just starting out and calling from their parents’ basement. Don’t make it easy for them to lump you in with the idiots. If your pitch is essentially “Hi, this is Scott from Mega Industry we do stuff and save companies like yourself 20%, we would like to come by and learn more about your business and provide you a free quote, would Wednesday at 10 or Thursday at 2 work for you?” Please, just shoot me. Pathetic. Particularly if you have something to say that could communicate credibility, experience, and results. Many companies are sitting on this stuff and not using it at all. Work it into your messaging and your meetings and conversion rates will go up.

The third core reason for underperformance may surprise you. It is simply not doing the basics well. I see far more quantum leaps in results from just getting the basics in order than I do from use of the latest tech gizmo or current strategy of the month. Basics. Have a tight profile of targets, be setup to work efficiently, work a process, communicate with impact and follow-up follow-up. Most of the time, just doing the basics well is enough to enable you to run circles around the competition.

So, if your team is underperforming, ask yourself. Have we done the best job at defining our top prospects and allocating our time? If not, just a couple hours of effort can provide a massive bump. Is our messaging effectively communicating our hard earned credibility and value, or is our messaging weak and lump us in with lower value competitors? And last of all, are we solid on the basics, are we working from a solid foundation with purposeful actions or just running around crazy with activities for activities sake?

If you need help, reach out.

Lead Generation: Bumping Into Prospects at Right Time is Worth a Big Bang at Closing Time

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Great scripts, pimped out CRM, a magnetic personality and having a great shiny widget. Ya, those things can help close a deal. But you know what beats them all? “Bumping” into the right person, at the right company, at the right time. Hands down. No contest.

You can stack up your strategies to the moon, but they won’t impact getting the deal as much as “bumping” into the right person at the right time.

Now some might be thinking that if you make more calls, knock on more doors, shake more hands at more networking events that you increase the odds of bumping into people who can write checks for your widgets as a service at exactly the right time. Um…. ahhhh…. No.

Engaging in more activity… calls, knocks, carrier pigeons… as a strategy for success, is for knuckleheads. Embraced, for example, by those that drink the Kool Aid on commission only gigs only to burn themselves out after months of running around with very very little to show for it. Running around crazy because anyone could be your next client is just plain dumb. But ah, I digress.

YOU ENGINEER THE BUMPS THAT BANG

Bumping into buyers at the best time to close a sale is not a matter of luck, accident or coincidence. Well, actually that is not totally true. I happen to believe that 85% of success is due to your process, your consistent implementation, your skills. The rest is luck, accident or coincidence. When you work with human beings, wacky things happen around the edges. But funny thing, those that work purposely and with a plan and process, seem to have many more profitable fortuitous lucky breaks. Those that don’t work a process, or work purposely may have some lucky breaks, but they are more due to randomness and lottery ticket luck, than the spinoff of a process based upon solid sales and marketing principles.

Bumping into more buyers at exactly the right time is something you engineer. It takes a lot of purposeful planning to generate more of those accidental bumps.

HOW DO YOU GENERATE MORE SALES BUMPS AT THE RIGHT TIME

Step 1: Fish where the fish are. Prospect where the buyers are.

Before you start to worry about the timing, you need to worry about the buyers. Example: If you were going to call, email, door knock (shoot me) or beg a group of 100 suspects, would you prefer to interact with a group that contains 10 buyers or 2 buyers? Your choice, if you decide to make it, is to call the group with the most buyers within it. This assumes that you know the difference. Most don’t know. Many don’t know how to profile the best group to interact with. Many decide not to decide and just start interacting with the list that is most convenient or cheapest. Good luck with that.

Increasing the odds of you bumping into buyers at the best time to make a sale starts with you choosing to work pools of suspects that you know have the greatest percentage of buyers within them. Buyers who will buy in the right amounts, and hopefully again, to make the effort worthwhile.

If you get this step wrong. If you choose not to invest just the few hours it typically takes to profile and identify the pools of suspects that contain 10X more buyers than the rest (I am not exaggerating.) If you choose to skip the profiling process, and make up for it with hundreds of hours slogging through piles of garbage looking for the few nuggets to be found, then your luck will be due more to randomness than purposeful action.

If you want to bump into more buyers at exactly the right time, you start by choosing to allocate the limited time and resources of your team to the groups of suspects that have by far the most buyers within then.

ENGINEER MORE BUMPS WITH BUYERS AT THE RIGHT TIME

So you start by working defined groups that you know have the most buyers within.

But, have you ever had this happen to you? You call a great group, get just the right top decision-maker at a company that you could serve well to pick up the phone. You deliver the perfect pitch only to hear “All set, never going to change, love our vendor, get lost.”

Being the dutiful little lead generator you are, you call back 5 or 6 months later. Same drill, but this time you hear “Oh, too bad, we just signed a million dollar contract with one of your competitors. Wish you had called a month ago.” Happens all the time.

REALITY CHECK: Many that say “no” will buy from a competitor within 6 – 9 months.

If you are appointment setting, you are probably selling something that people don’t buy frequently or they don’t change vendors very often. In fact my rule of thumb is that only 1/6th of a high probability target group is “in play” at any particular time. That means it is far more likely that the decision-maker you speak to is either not in active buying mode, or knows it is likely they will add or change a vendor, but feels it is too early to mention it. So, many times “all set” really means… “too early,” or, “We know we can do better but not ready to do the vendor dance.”

It is critical that you identify as many of these future opportunities as possible.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that identifying future opportunities worth following up on is as important as booking a meeting now.

COMMON APPOINTMENT SETTING B2B SCENARIO

You call, get the right decision-maker to pick up, slay them with a script delivered perfectly filled with credibility, benefits and the goodies they will get at the meeting. You hear “all set.”

But you deliver a response filled with more credibility, benefits and good reasons to meet even though they are “all set.” You hear “nope.”

Now if you just mumble “thanks for your time” or heaven forbid disclose that you are a sales moron unworthy of anytime by asking “Is it alright if I call in a few months to check in again?” you are really missing an opportunity for major gain here. You sweat blood to get that conversation. You know that it is as likely that they buy in 6 or 9 months (and not willing to tell you, if they know,) as it is that they are in active buying mode and willing to meet. To make no attempt at all to determine this is suicidal.

Having just clearly communicated, and reinforced, what you do, how credible you are, the benefits you deliver and what they would get a meeting, now is the time to strike. You have nothing to lose.

Have a strategy and implement a strategy to determine whether they have future plans.

If you want to bump into more of the right people at the right time you must use every opportunity to identify those with future buying plans as early as possible.

My style was to say this after having been shut down on my appointment setting pitch and the objection response. “Not an issue, don’t want to be on your back, but obviously we do a lot of this. Could you suggest a time I should be back in touch?” Then shut up. No extra words, no dribbling on. Be quiet.

MANY DECISION-MAKERS WILL NOW SHOW THEIR CARDS

You will be surprised how many will say “call me in a month.” “Call me end of 2nd quarter.” Now that dead end call suddenly turns into an opportunity with a prime target (you would not have called them otherwise.)

You then end with “Sure, happy to do that. May I ask why that is a good time to call?” They tell you and you say good-bye.

BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME IS SOMETHING YOU ENGINEER

By your actions and behaviors you can greatly increase the odds of being in the right place at the right time. By adding that little “could you suggest a time” script on the end of go nowhere calls, a good number of people will tell you when to call them back. 50% of those call backs will result in meetings set.

50% OF THOSE THAT OFFER A SPECIFIC TIME FOR A CALLBACK WILL RESULT IN A MEETING

So let’s apply some simple math. If add on “could you suggest a time” to all your seemingly going nowhere calls and 2-3 decision-makers a week gave you a date, that would be 9 – 14 quality callbacks a month. That should earn you 4.5 – 7 meetings. If your closing ratio is 20% you earned an additional closed account per month. No because you “just made more dials.” But because you were calling strategically and with a process and got more from your efforts. Quantity and quality.

A THIRD COMPONENT TO BUMPING INTO MORE BUYERS

This point is counter-intuitive but critical. If you want to increase the odds of bumping into more buyers at exactly the right time, you must make it your mission to identify those that are non-buyers and not worth the effort buyers ASAP. Very simply, the less time you spend on non-buyers, like magic, the more time you end up interacting with quality buyers.

In my calling hey day, I would consciously think “what percentage of my calls are going to higher probability worthwhile prospects?” If you are not proactive at every stage of your prospecting process at identifying and kicking out the non-worthy, then the more no-probability and low-probability calls slip into your call process. That means that the percentage of your time spend on the very worthwhile is plummeting.

So, if you want to bump into more buyers at the right time you must be aggressive and ruthless in throwing the non-qualified down the stairs.

SUMMARY TO BUMP INTO MORE BUYERS AT THE RIGHT TIME

So you engineer your ability to bump into more qualified decision-makers at the right time to close a sale.

The first step is to ignore and laugh out loud at those that believe you bump sales by “just making more calls.” If your company is of the “just make more calls” culture and that is the extent of your sales coaching and guidance, my best advice is to flee that environment or resign yourself to the fact that you will never make any real money.

Once we acknowledge that, three keys to bumping into more buyers.

  1. Profile and limit your calling to reasonably sized GROUPS of records that you know fit your profile and are most likely to contain the most qualified buyers within. By definition, that also means that you know the profile of the least productive groups of suspects and make sure you stay away from them.
  2. When you reach a decision-maker and hear “all set,” end that call by asking them if they could suggest a time for you to call back. It is important that you not suggest the date. The date must come from them. You will be surprised how many supposed dead-end calls end up giving you a date. 50% of those turn into meetings. Do the math.
  3. Actively disqualify records as you call. Want to increase the percentage of the time calling the very worthy? Get very good at identifying and not spending time with the non-worthy. The result is that a much higher percentage of your prospecting time is invested with high-probability suspects and voila, you end up bumping into more buyers at exactly the right time.

Call smart. Not more.