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4 Ways To Fall Short Of Sales Potential in 2020

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Some salespeople have a mental disorder called BSNT or Bright Shiny New Thing Syndrome. Over and over again, the lure of something “new” that will bring sales riches is tried until it disappoints and is replaced by another new thing.

You can lurch from one “things are different today” revelation to another, discover yet another new “ism” of selling and embrace the latest “next new thing.”

But you know what, if that is your pattern, and in the past 3 months, 6 months, one year, two years, if you are still relatively in the same place in terms of sales volume and income, you have to do the hardest thing in the world for a salesperson to do.

What’s that?

Face reality.

Your plan, your beliefs, your way of doing things is not moving you forward.

For some failure means disaster. But for those with the ability to achieve more, with the potential to do much better, failure is standing still.

1. Embracing the next new thing based upon the “new rules” of selling.

Remember that infomercial that said it wasn’t your fault if you ate ten bags of potato chips a day. “They” were making you do it, and it isn’t your fault.

We are bombarded with the same thing in sales. The economy has changed, people are so busy today, there are new rules, the game has changed. It’s not your fault.

What crap.

Quantum leaps in sales productivity happen frequently. And sometimes those turnarounds happen in part due to some new revelatory strategy. But almost always, even the advanced stuff, the “new” stuff that works, is based or built upon the fundamentals of selling. I see far more quantum leaps in sales team productivity by getting basics right than with the use of some new technology or strategy.

Without a firm grasp of selling basics and without a solid, consistently executed sales process, you got nothing.

You can’t build a castle on garbage.

Take a step back and work on your fundamentals. Don’t assume you are “OK.”

Over and over, I see hard-working salespeople with no process (they think they have a process, they don’t) lurching from hour to hour. Ask them how they handle a sales situation they see over and over again, and you hear, “Um, ah, it depends. Every situation is different.” Top producers don’t respond that way. The mediocre respond that way. The wanna be’s that never will be, respond that way.

Reality is most of the time you are not selling to your full potential because you don’t have a firm grasp on the basics. You are not prepared. You are not consistent. You are not learning and improving with every interaction.

Take a step back and retool your fundamentals.

2. Stop using “no time” as an excuse.

Time and again, I see sales teams and individual salespeople engineering quantum leaps in their sales productivity with about six weeks of effort.

Yet many hard-working salespeople, working very hard and investing tons of time in activities getting them nowhere, profess they have “no time” for anything that might take six weeks, maybe longer.

Plenty of time to do things over and over that get them nowhere, plenty of time to try yet again another new overnight miracle cure, plenty of time to spend with low probability accounts they should have dumped long ago. Yet “no time” to do it right.

Stop being the hamster in a wheel in 2020. Bite the bullet and do the right things just once, and you will build upon that solid foundation and reap the benefits over and over again. Continue to take shortcuts due to lack of time, and this time next year, you will be in the same place.

3. Stop spreading yourself too thin.

Focus.

When the sales environment gets tough, the winners and top producers tighten things up. 

They tighten up their target profile to spend less time with non-buyers.

They tighten up their sales process.

They punch up their value communication.

They measure just a few key things.
They execute, execute, execute.

This is where quantum leaps happen.

Doing the basic stuff well.

4. The answer is never one thing

It will never be “one” thing that vaults the productivity and results of you or your sales team. Never. It is always multiple things that need to be improved or tweaked up.

An example. Ninety percent of those that approach me for B2B appointment setting help think of just improving scripts. Contrary to the beliefs of the great unwashed, what is the least likely thing to improve b2b appointment setting results? Better scripts.

Why? Because better scripts don’t help you if you are talking to the wrong people and working very inefficiently. Be dead on with your targeting, be set up to work efficiently, and consistently execute a decent call or outreach process, and even with an average script, you will be grabbing your competitors’ lunch money.

What should you be doing in 2020?

– Communicating only with high-probability targets. Forget the rest. Most think, “we know who to target.” Reality? Most are wasting far too much time on low or no-return targets.

– Work a coordinated campaign and process to get in the door.

– When you show up for that meeting, have a well thought out plan to move them forward. Choreograph those meetings like a ballet.

– Identify and follow-up with the higher value prospects that you can’t reach now or don’t agree to a meeting now. That is where you will make most of your money. Don’t limit thinking to the short term.

– Recognize you are already investing time. Use that time more wisely.

– Try to avoid Bright Shiny New Objects and the “one” thing that will make all the difference.

Best wishes for great selling in 2020,

Scott Channell

6 Random Thoughts On Appointment Setting B2B

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1. Are you a rustler or a rancher?
Too many are appointment setting rustlers. They start the day with nothing hoping to catch a few strays to sell. It is better to be a rancher with a herd. Nurture your herd, and you will sell far more cattle. Interact, feed and pay attention to those not quite ready to buy yet and you will sell more and close faster. Thanks to Claude Whitacre for the rustler/rancher analogy.

2. Need an appointment setter or agency?
I have a shortlist of agencies/individuals I have seen in action and could suggest you explore. Different strengths, price points and programs.
Get the list here.

3. Just how much low hanging fruit is there?
Have you thought about this question? Even among “great lists” only about 18% recognize a need on some level and are likely to act within 3 – 15 months. Only 3-5% will agree to a meeting if you connect with them. If you focus only on the low-hanging fruit and do not identify or nurture those just below the surface of acting now, you are doing all the work and receiving only a fraction of the results you could have for it.

4. Stop thinking of individual disconnected tactics
Stop thinking about tactics for a moment and start thinking about how to best interact with your highest probability targets. Many make the mistake of thinking of outbound as individual disconnected activities. It might be calling, the linkedin cure, email miracle techniques, direct mail, any number of offline tactics. Most abandon something that could work and would work if they stuck with it and improved it and then declare, “it doesn’t work.” Focus on integrating about 3 techniques that can work together. Be determined to tweak up the tactics you use until you get the result.

5. Do this before all else
Appointment setting not working. Take a step back to sort, sift and select your target audience for best results. If you do this right, then solid prospecting efforts will be like pouring gas on a fire.
Here are the steps to take

6. The drowning man that thinks he is swimming
Some prospecting efforts make me think of a person drowning that comes up for a gulp of air once in a while and thinks they are swimming. Nope. You are drowning. You just don’t know it yet. Same with prospecting. Some commit random acts of marketing and nab a meeting, prospect or sale once in a while and think they are prospecting. Nope, you are not. It’s only a matter of time before you tire and sink. If you are sputtering, recognize your situation and take action before it is too late.

13 Tips to Improve the Quality of the Prospecting Sales Scripts you Use

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1. Three-second rule.

You have mere moments to ignite something in your prospect’s brain that says “Whoa, maybe I should listen to this.” Once those seconds have ticked away, and your prospect’s brain thinks “waste of time,” your odds of success plummet, no matter how good you are or how much you might help them.

So, if you work hard to get a quality prospect on the phone and start with “How are you?” “Got a minute” or “I know you are busy I will be quick.” You are providing no information that is helpful to them and driving them to the conclusion that you are a time-waster.

Particularly painful if you happen to connect with someone that needs your service and would welcome a new option. You lose opportunities if you don’t hook them immediately.

2. There must be immediate absolute clarity as to what you do.

Your “what we do” statement must be easy to grasp and understand. Long multi-part sentences are hard to understand and knock you out of the box immediately.

3. Relate to what is familiar to them

The themes you touch, the benefits you speak of, the examples you give must be familiar to them. If they can’t relate, what you say will not resonate, and you will not achieve your objective.

4. Sell hope.

In the beginning, more than anything, you are selling hope. That given what you do, your credibility, your track record, your record of results, the long list of companies that you have helped, you enable prospects to conclude that you might be able to help them.

5. Stay focused on what matters.

You need to stay focused on objective specific behaviors that will advance a sale with a qualified prospect. Sorry to burst some bubbles out there but being conversational, sounding natural, keeping it short and not sounding salesy (don’t get me going) should not be your goals.

Are you saying the right things that enable possibly great future accounts to conclude that you are worth more time? That is the only thing that matters.

There are plenty of hard working underpaid reps that focus on the wrong things such as not sounding salesy. But guess what, what sounds salesy to non-buyers is what your next great account wants to hear. Focus on that.

6. Create some suspense and tease a bit.

It takes multiple interactions to build trust and comfort. Different prospects absorb and process information at different paces. Many times, without a second or third interaction, you are not getting a check. Earning that next interaction is key.

Hint that if they spoke to you again that there would be something delivered worth their time. Strategies, proven methods, case studies, examples, lollipops, something.

7. Don’t leave a giant hole in your script: Credibility Statement

Want to know the most common giant sinkhole in scripts that sucks away qualified prospects? The lack of a credibility statement. Mind-boggling.

Companies or individuals that have proven track records, plenty of satisfied clients, that could rattle off the names of reputable, well-known companies that have chosen them that could relate impressive results obtained, say absolutely nothing about any of it. Nothing. Not one syllable.

Without a credibility statement, callers don’t know whether you are reputable and maybe worth their time or calling from your parent’s basement. And don’t get me going on the knuckleheads that think it sufficient to mention saving them money. They are truly a lost cause.

Why should someone invest time with a provider without knowing if they are credible? They won’t and don’t. They go to Google and with a few keystrokes find possible vendors worth their time.

If you have credibility, use it. Be so credible your prospects think “ I may not find someone this good online, I’ll meet.”

8. Be believable and fact-based. Avoid hype.

Understand that when you are prospecting initially, as there is no familiarity, history or trust with you, that prospects will discount anything you say that may seem hyped or they are not sure they agree with. If you use words like “best” “superior” or make a claim that seems exaggerated, your prospects immediately discount the claim, and you are on shaky ground.

In the beginning, keep your claims matter of fact without hype or anything that suggests exaggeration. A strong fact-based no hype script will get you more “yes’s” as it will be believable.

9. Don’t lead with price.

I am at a loss as to how to sugar coat this. There are so many factors that go into a buy decision. If you lead with the price, you are not relating more important points likely to get you deeper into the pipeline. Leading with price is a very thin foundation upon which to build a sale and attracts the wrong type of customer.

If you are one of those that call people up and say “We can save you money,” you need to unlearn everything you think you know about sales. You truly are doomed.

10. Vary your pace and vocal tone.

People don’t absorb every word of your scripts. Not all words are equal. They absorb words and phrases that stand out to them. Make sure that your most important points are emphasized by varying your pace and vocal tone on those points. Lowering your voice and slowing down a bit makes important points stand out.

Have you been chosen by “500 companies in the East Yazoo area?” Is your typical result to “improve ROI by 22% within six months?” Make those points stand out by altering your pace and tone.

11. Eliminate the boring parts

When you write, you should delete the parts that people will skip.
When you write sales scripts, you should delete anything that sounds like the same old same old, heard it before, here is another one, yada yada yada. Delete that crap.

If you can envision a competitor saying the same thing, don’t. Don’t waste words. Keep it fresh.

12. Eliminate “I” and “we.”

Keep what you say focused on your prospect and your happy clients and accounts. “I think” “I want” “I’m calling today to” “we think” “We would like to.” That is the totally wrong focus. No one cares a whit what you think or what you want.

Turn your “I’s” into “You’s.” Keep the focus of your scripts on them.

You will have to say “We do X” But other than that, all your focus should be on them and the experiences of your current and prior satisfied accounts.

13. Remember that value knocks down doors.

Every syllable of your sales scripts should ooze with credibility, benefits, specifics, and value. Value knocks down doors.

If you are communicating value important to top prospects, they will forgive that you sound a little scripted or what you might consider being too salesy. (Don’t get me going.) If you are saying the things they want to hear, need to hear, you will open doors.

I have seen plenty of reps that were not the smoothest or most natural talkers, that sounded a bit scripted and salesy even, rack up opportunities consistently. Why? Because they are communicating value and the words your next great account wants to hear.

Many reps make the fatal mistake of not understanding that a lot of people don’t need what you are offering. You get rejected because they don’t need you. Not because you don’t sound natural, are not conversational enough or sound too salesy. Those are your insecurities.

Don’t water down your verbiage to have more comfortable conversations with those that have no need and will say “No” anyway.

Keep your scripts laser-focused on communicating value to those that do have a need. They will ignore what you might consider imperfections in delivery if you are communicating value and credibility important to them.

Value knocks down doors.

Have fun out there you crazy kids.

Voicemail Disruption in B2B Prospecting Land. 6 Fun Facts.

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Six fun facts about using voicemail in your sales prospecting process.

There is disruption happening is voicemail land. You want to be aware of the changes and do what is necessary to stay ahead of your competition. Let’s review some statistics on voicemail volume, rates of retrieval, abandonment and why transcription and smartphones should have your restructuring the voicemails you do leave. Then I have six recommendations for you.

There is no question that voicemail use, on both sides of the phone is changing. These are statistics I’m seeing consistently from various sources.
Voicemail volume is dropping 8% a year.
Retrieval of those voicemails is dropping 14% per year.
30% or more of voicemails left are not listened to until 3 or more days later.
Voicemail abandonment rate is 50%- 75% and increasing.
30% or more of voicemails are being read (not listened to) via voice to text services on smartphones.

So not a surprise to those of us in sales prospecting and appointment setting land. People are leaving fewer voicemails. More and more are not listening to their voicemails. More and more callers are reaching voicemail and bouncing rather than leave a message. And, significantly about 30% of voicemails left are being read, not listened to, but read, on a smartphone.

What is happening in voicemail land is not change, it is disruption. The increasing numbers of those that don’t leave or listen to voicemail is not a trend, it is a stampede.

So, if you are a sales manager tasked with generating opportunities by use of phone, voicemail and email, or an individual salesrep whose paycheck is dependent upon generating sales appointments that convert, what does all of this mean and what do you do?

1st point. The trend is thundering away from voicemail.
That does not mean that NOBODY is listening. There are fewer and they are much quicker to say bye-bye, so when you use it adjust your expectations and make your message count.

2nd point. If people are listening to your voicemail at all, they are deleting quicker and a significant number are reading it on their smartphones. So, what they see on the first 2 or 3 lines determines whether you get dismissed or they read further.  The days of you leaving a voicemail starting with “Hey this is Billybob over at Mega industries and I know you are busy and I will only take a minute but we are a full-service blah blah blah yada yada are over.

To have even a shot of success with voicemail today you must lead with an interruptive statement wedged next to credibility or you are toast.

“Sally, is your widget service performing satisfactorily? More than 500 companies in the East Yazoo area chose us to get big benefit A, mega benefit B and humungous benefit C, yada yada yada…” Boom, Boom and Boom.

No name up front, no how are you doing, no wasting time by telling them you won’t waste their time, drive home with clarity and impact right up front so that the buyers, those that know they have a need, can immediately recognize that you might help them and that you are worth more time.

Those rules were always the case when leaving voicemail but they are even more important now.

3rd. You want your competitors eating your dust, you don’t want to be left scrambling for the crumbs they leave behind. You must be ahead of this voicemail curve to compete. 
You must make your voicemail messaging more effective today to beat your competitors. If you are leaving voicemail messages today craft them to have the greatest chance of success. In addition to that, as voicemail effectiveness declines, you must integrate alternatives into your prospecting process to beat your competitors. Y

4th. In some industries most appointments and discovery calls are being made by email without phone calls.
Effective use of email is becoming rapidly more important. If you are going to beat your competitors it means knowing how to craft an email to get a response, no small challenge, and getting very familiar with the great tools out there today that enable you to find and send emails to your targeted decision makers. Tools like Hunter, getprospect, anymailfinder, findthat.email do an amazing job of providing accurate email addresses. Some even integrate with Linkedin Sales Navigator. Review these tools and decide which ones will help you.

5th. Companies ahead of the curve have learned how to integrate calls, voicemail and email into their process for best appointment setting and discovery call process results.
Some, that see great results from email have said “Wait a minute. Our emails are getting responses and meetings. Why not just email those top prospects we don’t have the time or resources to call for even more meetings now?” They are doing that, parallel to their more traditional phone outreach effort and reaping a lot of opportunities because of it. This can give you a big boost quick if done correctly. Look at tools like outreach, persistiq and quickmail for cold emailing those you cannot call.

6th. Like fashion trends from the 90’s that are coming back what’s old is new again and marketing tools like direct mail are getting more use and attention.
Now, am I advising you to ditch what you are doing and start mailing? No. But I am telling you that as calling and voicemail become more challenging that you will need to add more techniques to your repertoire to stay ahead of the competition. Certainly, as to your best prospects, your highest potential value prospects, you should at least think seriously about what other marketing techniques make sense, and direct mail should get your consideration.

So that’s it. Some fun facts about the state of voicemail and six tips to help you stay effective in generating new opportunities.

If you need some help in this area or want to talk about your situation, contact us for a chat.

Prospect and prosper,
This is Scott Channell

If Your Appointment Setting System Is Not Working, What Do You Do? 3 Core Reasons For Poor Results.

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What if you or your team are smiling, dialing, emailing, leaving messages, working hard and yet, too few sales appointments and discovery calls are being set. What do you do.

Let me share with you my 3 step process for getting an appointment setting program on track.

Three Core Reasons For Poor Results

1. The List:

You are not interacting with enough high-value/high-probability targets. Too much of your activity is directed toward low-value no-value lower-probability targets.

If you were shooting fish in a barrel, you would not only want that barrel to have plenty of fish but for the barrel to be drained and the fish lying on the bottom. Those are good odds.

If you are working hard and not getting results, one reason could be that you have stacked the odds against yourself by allocating too much time, often way too much time, to targets that are not as valuable to you as others.

You need to do two things. Tighten the profile of your bullseye targets so that your time is invested with records that provide you with the highest probability of success. Also, be ruthless about discarding or pushing records aside that are lower value or probability or that with which you have reached the point of diminishing returns for your efforts.

Top producers are best at allocating their time where it will do the most good. Do not be like the knuckleheads who work hard with little to show for it with thoughts such as “you never know,” “there are some good prospects in here,” or “I don’t want to miss one.” Idiots.

Work Probabilities, Not Possibilities.

Be willing to let go.

One of the quickest ways you can boost results is to make a concerted effort to stop calling all the low-probability records in your prospecting pipeline. Stop calling them immediately. That creates room for you to call fresh records that are more closely aligned with your bullseye best prospect profile.

You Want To JackHammer Into A Solid Vein Of Gold,
Not Thrash Around In The Manure Pile Looking For A Few Nuggets.

If you are working hard and not getting results, the most likely culprit is that you are calling a list that is weaker than it has to be. Reevaluate your profile. Tighten your target bullseye. Get more aggressive about letting go at the point of diminishing returns. Don’t try hard to rationalize a reason to keep investing time with a record. Let go.

Get to the point where you can say to yourself “I know this is the best list I can call with the time I have. I have done the research; I am using good list sources. I am highly confident that this is the very best place to be prospecting.”

In my day I wanted to feel very confident that 85% of my activity was being invested with records that I had confirmed or had a very high degree of confidence were the best records to call. As to the rest of the records, I would only spend so much time determining if they were worthy. If after a certain amount of effort I wasn’t sure of the potential value, buh-bye record, on to the next.

Records Being “Good Enough” To Call Isn’t Good Enough

It is not sufficient for the list you are actively calling to be “good enough.” If there are better records to call, higher value or higher probability, closer to your bullseye best prospect profile, you need to be calling them. Not the ones that are just okay.

Once you are confident that your list is the best it can be, look to the other 2 factors that may be dragging you down.

2. Your Process:

If you or your team are not getting decent results, it could also be that the call process you are working to earn a conversation with or reply from your decision-maker is lousy or non-existent.

You are trying to generate the most results by working a system of interaction — a system, pre-planned well thought series of interactions purposely chosen to provide you with the best chance to meet your business goals.

There is only one best call process for you to use to set the most discovery calls. There are not 4 best systems. The best way to achieve your goal does not change with every dial, the weather, or your mood and motivation. You don’t have to work the “3 cycles of 3” system I believe in, but you do need to work a system. Your “system” will be responsible for 80% or more of your results. If you don’t have a system, or you don’t work your system consistently, or are quick to abandon it, those are very good reasons why your results are poor.

There is an activity component to your system. If you are not making enough dials on the right schedule and leaving enough touches (voicemails or emails primarily) when you should, then your results will plummet. But be careful, increasing activity levels using a poor call process is not going to solve your problem. Keep in mind that the most productive appointment setters/discovery-call setters do not make the most dials. They don’t.

If you are not getting results and you are working in a reasonable range of activity, the problem is not your activity level, it is your process.

Sorting And Ranking

There is also a sorting and ranking component to your system. Your system should enable you to identify the highest value targets so that you can spend more time with them. Even more importantly, your system enables you to identify the lowest-value and no-value targets so that you will not spend any more time with them. Time spent rolling in the garbage pile looking for something good is time you can’t spend shooting fish in a barrel that has been drained.

If you are not getting results, be honest with yourself as to whether you have a decent system and whether you are working it properly. Time and time again I run into teams that retool and start generating a greatly increased number of discovery calls only to get a call a year later. “It doesn’t seem to be working anymore. We don’t know why?”

Often it turns out that the carefully thought out call process created and proven to provide the greatest chance of call success has been completely abandoned. Not enough calls are being made. They are not being made at the right times. The required number of touches are not being delivered. Qualification, sorting, ranking by value are not being done, so a tremendous amount of time is being wasted calling sludge.

If you or your team are not getting results, do you feel confident that you have documented an outreach process that gives you the very best chance of reaching your business prospecting goals? If not, tighten it up, massage it, upgrade it, then jump right back in.

If you have a process documented, is it being worked properly? Let’s face it. The good news about prospecting is that you can figure out what to do. The bad news is that then you have to do it, again and again, and again. Sales prospecting is repetitive work. Once you discover what works you must do it over and over.

80% of Results Are Generated By Working Your Process

There are exceptions to every rule. Crazy things happen. We deal with human beings that at times will act illogically and outside our expectations. There is a lunatic fringe element contained in any group of people we prospect and any system we use.

However, the vast majority of your results will be generated as a result of proper and consistent use of your call process. Eighty percent or more of results will spill out of the implementation of your core process. Less than 20% of results will be generated by exceptions to the rule, randomness, shit luck, serendipity, or the lunatic fringe.

There is a strong temptation to rationalize why on any individual call or with any individual record why you can vary from your core process. Fight this.

If you are not getting results, one of the main reasons is that your call/outreach process needs to be improved. Or, if you have a good process, a reason for lack of results is that you vary from your core process too frequently.

Even Variations From Your Process Are Part Of Your Process.

Even the variations in your system, the times you drive off the road and vary from your core process, is built into your process. When you choose to vary from your core process or cut it short, you do so for consistent objective reasons. You don’t vary from your process because you are bored, that you dread saying the same thing over and over, that you can’t bring yourself to leave one more voicemail that will not be answered. Your feelings of boredom and lack of motivation have nothing to do with what works. Nothing.

A Tale From The Cube

True story. I had a client who offered a unique environment service involving meters leaking mercury into natural gas fields. As a practical matter, only the top 50-100 oil companies were reasonable targets for this service. The contracts were worth millions if not tens of million dollars. Two good callers had tried yet failed to produce results. My calling days had long been over, but I offered to work the system to determine where the problem was.

So I was calling very top executives at very, very large companies. I worked the system and did the same thing over and over. I teach the stuff, and I was bored out of my mind. The same calls, the same corporate receptionists or phone trees, the same script routines, the same emails, the same roadblocks and rejections over and over. My tedium and boredom were occasionally rudely interrupted by a top dog that said “yes.” I ended up getting my client meetings within the top levels of major oil companies. The system worked.

The drudgery of doing the same thing over and over was brutal. The temptation to skip steps or rationalize why for this call, for this company, it was okay to cut the process short was very strong. But I would think back to my early calling days when I would keep saying to myself “just work the system.” When I was bored or began to doubt myself, I would “just work the system.” When the thought of leaving that same voicemail one more time would make me want to vomit, I would “just work the system.” Don’t think about the system; work the system. I would play all sorts of mental tricks to keep me focused and working the system as efficiently as possible.

There is a time to take a step back and think about what your process should be. Most of the time you should be working that system.

If you are not getting results, it could very well be that your process needs to be improved. Or more commonly, that you are not consistently working your system.

Once you conclude that you are hitting the right targets and that your process is solid and you are working your process well, there is only one other core reason why you are not booking enough discovery calls or first sales appointments.

3. Your Messaging

If you are confident you are reaching out to the right targets, confident that your process is solid and that you are working it consistently, there is only one other key reason why you are not generating results.

Your messaging is weak.
Your verbiage is watered down.
You sound like the other idiots who have called and wasted their time.
You are not giving them reasons to listen to you just a little bit longer.
You are not communicating value and credibility worth their time.

Your verbiage is not enabling those who recognize a need and will be writing a check to you or one of your competitors within 3-15 months, to conclude that you are worth their time.

Most commonly, you are pulling your punches. You have things you could be saying that would connote credibility, value, and representative results you deliver, but you are not saying those things.

It might be because of feeling that being direct is being “too salesy,” which is ridiculous.

It might be because you have some level of personal discomfort just laying your cards on the table and letting your prospect say “yes” or “no.”

You might be afraid to be rejected, so you do mental backflips and rationalize that if you are “nice” and “not pushy” that people will listen to you longer. Wrong.

If you are confident that you are calling the right targets and that your process for calling is solid, the only other core problem is that your message is not resonating.

So you have to punch up your messaging. Be more direct. Push more value and credibility to the beginning of your pitch. Eliminate every moment and every syllable that is not communicating credibility and value to someone who has a need you can fill.

You need to get over your mental crap about being pushy, being perceived as rude, or interrupting someone. Those are your issues, not your prospects.

By choosing to prospect by phone you have already decided to interrupt people, so you need to get over that. Having decided to interrupt busy people, how are you most respectful of their time?

Do you call them up and recite verbiage and let second after second slip by without providing them information sufficient to conclude that you are worth their time? Do you fill the time between “hello” and “ we are all set” with “I know you are busy,” ”won’t take much of your time,” “do you have a minute” and “I am not worthy?” If so, you deserve everything you get.

Or, are you most respectful of your suspect’s time, a suspect you have chosen to interrupt, with a clear, direct statement as to what you do, why you are credible, the benefits delivered, and what they would get if they spent more time with you?

It takes about 30 seconds to deliver such a statement. The 15%-18% of the people you speak to who have a need will “get it” and can conclude that you are worth more of their time. Maybe a bit longer on the phone, maybe at a face to face meeting, or on a discovery call.

Those who do not have a need can also “get it” and say goodbye. That is a successful call for you, and you have minimized the interruption of your suspects time with a clear, concise, direct statement of what you do, why you are credible, and what they might get if they spent more time with you.

Just lay your cards on the table crisply, clearly, and with impact using the verbiage that most impactfully communicates your message. Roll out the big guns.

You are always nice, you are always professional, but your messaging must communicate sufficient credibility and value to achieve your business objectives when you are speaking to a qualified prospect who recognizes a need on some level and will be writing a check to your or a competitor shortly.

Value Knocks Down Doors.

Punch up your scripts so that they are clear, concise, direct and powerfully communicate your credibility and value.

Focus On The Component Parts Of The Process That Lead To Results;
Don’t Focus On The Result.

Hang in here with me on this statement. When you wish to set more discovery calls and sales appointments, don’t focus on the result. Focus on improving specific parts of the process that lead to the result.

Your list.
Your process.
Your messaging.

If it is not working, do a deep dive into the component parts and each small step of your process. Focus on punching up the steps that will lead to the results you

Half Of Lead Generation Success Is 90% Mental

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Sales Prospecting. Appointment setting B2B. Trying to scale and get your sales team more productive? Thinking right gets you most of the way there before you make a call, write a script, or leave a voicemail.

An effective sales leader, or a top 10% sales rep, typically can conceptualize the big picture and understand the key drivers of what will get them the results they seek.

They can separate the few key issues that will most impact sales success. They prioritize them and know how they work. They tune out or deprioritize all the noise, interruptions, “good ideas,” and other principles that they know will not make the most contribution to sales success.

Not so easy to do when there is an endless stream of “better” ideas and strategies coming at you full throttle endlessly. It’s a stream of constant “busyness” which lulls people into thinking they are doing something meaningful, on the right path and all that they can.

“Busyness” has no rational relationship to sales success, and in fact, “busyness” is often what keeps you from seeing the forest from the trees. Without a true sense of what matters most, you default to reactionary mode and doing what most do, or is popular at the moment, which at best guarantees you short-lived mediocrity.

The Infinity Pool of Strategies, Most Of It Crap, Just Keeps Coming

As a leader or a rep, if you don’t have a solid grasp of the basic drivers of marketing and sales success the odds of you making the right decisions to move your sales team forward is minimal. You are feeling around in the dark for something you won’t recognize if you do happen to bump into it.

A proper mindset and understanding of what makes marketing and sales work is much more valuable to you than binders of details about what to do in every scenario. Bottom line is without an understanding of “why,” people don’t implement consistently, even if it is painfully obvious that it is the right thing to do. Lots of sales leaders and wanna-be top performing sales reps that never will be refuse to do things that anyone with even basic knowledge would see are “no-brainers” and absolutely must be done to reach the goal.

Deer In The Headlights Syndrome

It is important to “know what you don’t know.” Many times reps, sales management, and call teams find themselves with a non-performing or under-performing program and are unable to move it forward despite their best efforts. So they call in someone with the experience to evaluate, correctly diagnose the situation and offer advice. So far, so good. But there is a problem.

“Change” Is The Problem. Not What To Do.

Change is always a challenge. But without the proper mindset and knowledge, change is the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest.

When leaders have the right mindset and perspective, when faced with the right recommendations for change their response is “I get it,” “Of course” or “Now I understand why we were working so hard and getting nowhere.” With the right knowledge, the right things to do are recognized and acted upon.

But, what happens when the management of an underperforming team is presented with change recommendations, and they don’t have the right mindset or even a basic knowledge of what drives sales success, they freeze. Do nothing. Even when faced with a no-brainer, painfully obvious, only a knucklehead would not do these things types of decisions; they freeze because they are not familiar enough with the principles in play. So they freeze.

Giving Up Too Early Derails You Without The Proper Mindset

Even when you start to do the right things for sales and marketing success if your head is not in the right place, you are going to give up too early on behaviors that will lead to success. Why? Because you have unreasonable expectations and lack confidence in what you are doing. You are unsure you are on the right path, so you give up, even when you are doing the right things. I see this all the time. Teams that were so close to turning things around and then they just drive off the road. Or, they do the right things and win more often,  but drift away from those things over time as they don’t have firm enough convictions about what works.

Reach, Frequency, and Impact. Understand, And You Are On Your Way

Three basic cornerstones of effective marketing are “reach, frequency, and Impact.” These concepts are not even marketing 101; they are so basic they are marketing one hundred and a half. In this internet and digital age, such basic concepts may seem quaint and old-fashioned, and there certainly are many more concepts to be layered on top of these.

I can say this with a strong conviction. Those who have the mentality of grasping sales and marketing basics are the ones who also grasp all the other principles in play and are reaping increasing marketing share and revenue. Those whose mentality has skipped the basics and moved on the more fun stuff, they are doomed.

Half Of Lead Generation Success Is 90% Mental

You need to have the right mentality and mindset to even have a shot at success when today’s infinity pool of “better ideas” keeps coming at you.

You will be too focused on outcomes and not focusing on the behaviors and steps that lead to those outcomes.

You will overreact to what (mediocre) people and most others think.

You won’t learn from mistakes and efforts that don’t quite work and keep going in the right direction. You will find it easier to give up rather than modify something that would work if you gave it enough time. ( I always found it curious that people have plenty of time for rework, do-overs and to keep getting distracted by flavor-of-the-month ideas from the infinity pool of idiocy, rather than just do it right the first time or giving a better idea time to work.)

You will have unreasonable expectations and give up too early on the best ideas and behaviors.

Get your head in the right place, understand, truly understand and be able to identify the key drivers of sales and marketing success, and you will have the right mindset to make the right decisions on all the details and stick to a plan that will get where you want to go.

PS: My personal “Go To’s” to keep the right mindset are 1) Managing Major Sales by Neil Rackham and 2) Direct Marketing by Edward Nash. The Rackham book is the best “big picture” view I have seen on what factors most impact multi-step process sales results. And the Nash book is just a classic of understanding direct response. This book was pre-internet but don’t discount it. Once you understand what he is talking about you will know more about how to get results in todays digital age.

Want More B2B Discovery Calls To Morph Into Great Accounts? Prospect At The Right Level.

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Do You Start Prospecting At A level Lower Than Your Decision-maker and Work Up? Or Go Right To The Top Dog?

If your economic buyer is an Executive Vice President, what is the pro and con of targeting a Director or Manager and working up?

What if the CEO is the only one that can approve your check? Are you better off to get the ear of a VP and work your way up or go directly for the top dog?

Getting this strategic question right is often the difference between sales success and failure.

The danger to avoid: Being lulled by activity volume in the short term but seeing conversion rates, the average size of sale and renewal rates on the low side.

Particularly in a long sales cycle sales process. Those sales conversations and discovery calls with lower levels of authority give you warm fuzzies, but it could take you six or nine months of effort before you realize that those great opportunities are just not converting and your efforts have been mostly a waste of time and resources.

Let me share a rule of thumb for the relationship between sales prospecting authority level and relationship to closed deals.

If you start your sales process one level below your economic buyer, you will sell six times less than if you started your sales process with that ultimate decision-maker.

So if the CEO needs to make the decision and you start at the Executive VP level, you will six times less.

If a VP has to OK your check and you start at the Director level, it means six times the effort for the same level of sales.

And if your economic buyer is a VP and you start two levels below, at the manager level maybe, you are selling in lottery ticket land. If you sell anything, it is due more to randomness than solid strategy and skills.

You are six times less probable to make a sale if you start your sales process one level below your economic buyer. How can you be so sure Scott?

Many many years ago when I was starting out, I did a project for a national management consulting firm. The model was to book an appointment in the C-Suite and sell a first stage pilot project. One in six meetings converted to a $25,000 pilot project. One in three of those pilot projects converted to a much larger longer-term project worth between $500k to $1.5 million.

Over many years, thousands of meetings and hundreds of projects, this management consulting firm studied their sales process. The data proved that they were six times more likely to make a sale when they started at the CEO level. Drop down even one level, start the process at the executive VP level, and sales results were six times less.

So for the appointment setters, the rule was very simple. Book a meeting with the CEO (or the person with ultimate profit and loss responsibility of a distinct business unit with at least $500 million in sales) or don’t get paid. No exceptions.

Over the years that six times the sales rule continues to ring true

I have never had a company that studied this as thoroughly as that management consulting firm. But over the years and many many projects, that rule rings true to me.

When salespeople or companies start their sales process too low, conversion rates, the average size of the sale, renewal rates and lifetime customer value suffer.

Don’t let a lot of meetings with lower level people lull you into thinking you are in good shape

Over and over again I have seen companies “get meetings and have a lot of discovery calls,” yet sales closing percentages are awful. Many times the core of the issue is that they started their sales process at too low a level.

In my world, I deal mostly with clients that sell in the C-suite or with top VP’s. I would never, never, recommend or suggest to a client that they prospect Director level decision-makers.

The “Rule of six” continues to ring true

If CEO’s are your economic buyer, learn how to get to them.

If VP’s are your ultimate decision-maker, learn how to get a meeting or discovery call with them.

Ya, it’s not easy. But cracking that code is easier than starting one level below and selling six times less for the efforts made.

Your Economic Buyer Thinks Differently: Prospect Directly to Them

Your economic buyer thinks different than the rest. They are responsible for the strategic direction of the firm and overall profit and loss. They are thinking strategically, short-term and long-term. They are not working within budgets and doing what they are told. Economic buyers are setting the budgets and allocating funds for best results.

Even if you are perfect for a firm and introduced by a lower authority person, it is my personal opinion that in the majority of cases you get discounted. Why? Because the economic buyer “knows better” and will favor a vendor they know. I believe that.

If an economic buyer sneezes in your direction, lower levels of authority will fall over themselves to agree with what they think their boss favors. You are helped tremendously when top dogs even hint in your direction.

The messaging that wins over the economic buyer is not what moves lower authority levels. In fact, change is scary at lower levels. They are entrenched in current practices. If you are successful, they have to learn new things. Their relationships with current vendors and service providers would be at risk. They might “check you out” to justify their salaries, fill up their calendars and maybe learn something from you that benefits them,  but you never really have a shot at serious consideration. At lower levels, they are implementing the strategies, not setting them. They are more focused on the short-term. Plus, lower levels of authority fear rejection.

Is it ever advisable for you to prospect lower levels of authority?

Sometimes, it makes sense to start at lower levels. But they are true exceptions.

– You are learning. It’s OK to spend a little time practicing at a lower level.

– Sometimes, if you are selling major projects and your margins are sufficient, after your efforts to reach the top dog have failed,  you can go low knowing that your odds have lessened but the effort can still be very profitable.

Start your sales process with your economic buyer for best sales results

Work the system that will get you the best results over the long haul. Don’t let a lack of patience or lack of confidence in your system derail you.

You need to have the confidence and ability to stick with a winning process during the slow spots.

You might have fewer meetings or discovery calls, but your conversion rates, the size of the average sale and volume of net new business booked will be much higher with less effort.

Message to Management: Know What Converts

At times, callers will book lower level meetings to meet quota. It’s easier. Management has to set standards for what level of authority the sales process is to start and what meetings will be compensated.

If management lets the team call too low too often, a ton of prospecting money will be spent now with little or nothing to show for it.

Prospecting Words To Ban, Words to Demand

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Ya, but

You want your team to know and use the behaviors that are most likely to move them toward their goal in every situation. You need your team to work in the high-probability zone. Top performers are knowledgeable about and talk about behaviors, actions, words, scripts, which are the best to use in typical circumstances. That is what they think about — the best way to do things.

The mediocre and the wanna be’s that never will be’s are at a loss to articulate how to handle common sales scenarios yet are masters at knowing the exceptions to the rules. They are quick to express a “Ya, but” when the most successful behaviors are discussed. Ask them how they handle very common scenarios, and you will hear “Well, everything is so different, it depends on the situation, you never know….” Lower performers are experts on all the exceptions to the rules. Every time you mention a high probability behavior, a tried and true practice of the top sales high earning superstars, the first thing you hear from a never to be is “Ya, but….”

We are in sales, deal with people and crazy things happen around the edges. So what?
Keep your team focused on the highest probability sales behaviors, not the exceptions to the rules.

Interested

A more meaningless, nebulous, tell us nothing, divert from the real issues, ridiculous sales word has never been invented. “Let’s find out if they are interested.” “They are interested in the gizmo.” Does that tell us anything of substance that can be used to make better decisions to close a deal? NO!! It typically just masks ignorance of what is really going on and leads to wasted time.

As a manager, do those words do anything to help you determine whether a deal is real or fantasy or how to help your rep? No.

Do they fit your profile or not?
Did they express certain needs or not?
Did they describe a goal?
Did they relate specifics about what the status quo is costing them?
Were they specific about what they hoped to gain with a new vendor?
Did they share their buying criteria?
Did they relate their decision-making process?
Did they commit to moving to the next sales step?

There are a lot of things that give you clues as to whether a sale is on the right path. Whether they are “interested” tells you nothing of value.

As a manager, you need specifics. You need to know specifics to determine whether an opportunity is real and if your rep is prepared and doing the things that give you the best shot at realizing that opportunity.

You are doing your reps a favor when you ask specific questions as to matters that impact the sale. They know you will be inspecting, not assuming. Your reps will sharpen their questions and presentation skills knowing that you will be asking questions of substance and expecting real answers.

I’m different

We are different. This industry, this area, this side of the street are all different.

What they are really saying is “I don’t have to change, listen to facts, learn anything or be held accountable.”

Many with average talent and drive get/stay very congruent with the behaviors of the top producers and make a lot of money. Many others, with superior talent and drive shoot themselves in the foot immediately with the “I’m different” rationale for not having to listen or do what works. It is a very common self-sabotaging behavior.

Just step up to the plate and admit that you don’t want to change, you don’t want to learn, you’re lazy, or you don’t really care about making more money, but don’t let your team use the “I’m different” excuse.

Demand Knowledge

There might be 20, 30 or 50 reasons why someone might buy from you, yet most salespeople would be hard pressed to name five or six.

Are your reps fluent with the names of your top accounts in general? Your top accounts in each industry or vertical?

Do your reps have stories, examples or statistics as to how your service or offering has improved business conditions at other companies?

Are your reps prepared and fluent discussing specifics, before and after examples of how your solution has helped others?

Are your reps prepared with the depth of knowledge necessary to remove the last elements of doubt in the way of a buy decision?

The sad fact is the too often reps knowledge is not very deep. They might be great order-takers and able to skim the cream off the top and close what is easy, but not able to remove doubt, educate or demonstrate your offering to move those that would benefit greatly from your offering into the win column.

I believe strongly in what I call the “pile of words.” Very simply it is all the top verbiage, examples, names drops, specifics, stories, benefits, credibility factors that reps need to know to represent you in the marketplace. That document could be anywhere from seven to thirty pages long. I don’t care whether it is setting an appointment or discovery call, conducting the first meeting or managing an account deeper in the pipeline, there are facts, words, and phrases that best represent your offering and help prospective accounts fully appreciate how you might help them.

Without fluency in those basics, reps are left with superficial knowledge and the company is losing opportunities they otherwise could have had.

If it is not written down, it is far less likely to be used.

If it is not written down, I can guarantee you that only a small fraction of your credibility, experience and how you have helped others is being communicated to your prospects.

Write down all the top verbiage and specifics that best enable your reps to communicate your credibility, benefits, and proofs of what you can deliver.

Check under the covers. Ask them how they handle opening a meeting, their top questions, handle or cut off at the pass common objections, illustrate your strengths, on and on.

It is management’s responsibility to make sure that reps have all the top verbiage to properly represent your offering.

It is managements responsibility to make sure that reps are fluent and using that information to maximize sales.

Selling with House Money: Do You Make More Sales by Focusing on Overall Process or Individual Outcomes?

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Would you rather be the casino or the gambler?

Do you win more sales by focusing on the overall process? Or, the result of individual calls and pitches?

In poker, there is a theory that when you make a bet with the odds in your favor, you have won something regardless as to whether you win or lose that specific bet. And, when you make a bet with the odds against you, something is lost, regardless as to whether you win or lose with that specific choice.

Can you be using good sales techniques if someone says “no?” Yup. Big time. 

When you do the right things, you are going to be successful. It doesn’t matter whether, on an individual play your script works, people agree, or you close a deal. When you are working a true system, and you have the big picture in mind, your bottom line results will be multiples of trying to beat the odds pitch by pitch, proposal by proposal. You are not going to win every play, but you are guaranteed to win overall. You are the casino, you are selling with a system, and you are playing with house money.

On the flip side, if you are not selling with a system, you are much like a gambler. You think way too much about the outcome of each call, each meeting, each proposal. You are focused on the outcomes of individual plays rather than focusing on executing on an overall winning system. You tend to change direction and strategies frequently. Your plan has far more exceptions than rules.

If your sales methodology resembles a gambler, you don’t stand a chance. You are going to win some; you may even win some big ones, but overall you will never be better than mediocre.

You can break the rules of your system at times, but break them too often, and you don’t have a system.

Having a winning system doesn’t mean that you are a robot. At times, it is strategically wise to vary from your system. Let me relate an extreme example. In my early days, I was working for a client that sold employee relocation services. I called very big companies that moved employees all over the world. The white whale of the industry was GE at the time. They made more than 2,000 moves a year, and it was “impossible” to get a meeting with them I heard again and again. Bottom line, I booked that meeting with GE. I did it by varying significantly from my winning process. I actually, purposely said swear words on the phone. I made a bet, and I won.

However far more results have been earned by sticking with the system when times are tough. I could relate many more examples of reps getting consistent results by sticking with their system even though there were stretches of failure. For a personal example, I had a client a few years ago who targeted very large oil companies for a very specialized environmental service. The top 30-50 oil companies were by far the best targets. We had tried a few callers, and things weren’t working so, even though my calling days had long been over, I offered to jump in. Bottom line, Troy got about eight meetings within top levels of the largest oil companies in the US for projects worth many millions. In that case, what got results was sticking with the system. When I was bored, didn’t want to make the next call, heard “no” multiple times, believed it useless to keep going, I just kept saying to myself “Scott, work the system.” I did, and the results came in.

In the oil company example, it would not have been a winning system to swear at the decision-makers when they picked up the phone, as I did to get the GE meeting. And if I had succumbed to boredom, frustration or panic and varied my process I would not have booked eight meetings for Troy; I would have been lucky to book two or three.

In the GE example, I gambled and won taking a chance on strategies for that one target that would have been disastrous if used consistently on others.

Remember, if your “sales system” has too many exceptions, you don’t have a sales system.

Do what this guy says, or you can’t work here

Having your team working a system, having a company culture ingrained with the right way to prospect, handle a discovery call, move a prospect through a sales pipeline and ultimately close the deal means that your team is working in the high probability zone. It is your duty as a company owner, VP sales or manager to know the difference between a system that works best overall versus gambling, guessing and winging it.

I had a client that flew me into company headquarters every month for three years to train new hires. They went from $30 million to $100 million in sales during that period, not necessarily because I was so special, but because they were working a system.

Every month before I started the training session for the new hires, the VP of sales would start the meeting by giving a speech about how well the company was doing, how quickly they were growing and that there was a method to their success. It always made me uncomfortable, but he would end by saying “If you don’t do what Scott is going to teach you, you can’t work here. Do things your way, and you won’t be working here long.”

He didn’t say that because I was so special. They were growing rapidly long before I came into the picture. But their system, their beliefs about how to sell their products, their beliefs about what to do at each step of the sale to get the best results from their efforts, was remarkably similar to what I teach. What that VP of sales was saying is “we have a system and ways of doing things that are working for us.  If you are not willing to learn and work our system, you can’t work here.” They hired good people and paid them very well. They plugged their reps into a system and provided support for those that needed help in learning it. If the reps wanted to play outside the system, if they wanted to gamble, the company wasn’t going to let them gamble with their money.

How to tell if you are too focused on sales outcomes, and doomed to mediocrity as a result

You over-react to individual calls or meetings.

My favorite extreme examples: Trainee does all the prep work and is ready to start working the system first thing in the morning and promises to let me know how it goes. Get a call, and the trainee says “Scott, it just isn’t working, most people aren’t picking up and the two people I  spoke to cut me off. It just isn’t going to work.” Hmm, this call came in at 10 am on the first day. They had been calling for less than an hour and were ready to abandon all that they had prepared.

Another example which happens a lot when people try new things and exasperates me. “Scott, I had a call, and they shut me right down. It won’t work. It is _______________. “ Pick any of these to complete the statement. “Too long,” Too much info” “too salesy” “Isn’t conversational enough.”This one exasperates me as it is a pretty clear indicator that someone that takes the result of one call as indicative of what will work overall does not have things in perspective and is doomed to overreact to individual outcomes.

You focus on “one thing” that will turn everything around

It is human nature to want to hit the easy button. And often sales reps will believe that if only they had the right script, got better at objections, had a better story, could improve their elevator pitch (shoot me) or had a better list, all would be different. But the reality is that the answer is never “one thing.” Never. It is always a combination of things that create a system that delivers superior results over time.

If you are bopping from one new idea or strategy to another, thinking it will make the difference,  you are not tweaking a system; you are placing losing bets. You are selling like a gambler.

You believe the “everything has changed” crap 

Please excuse me if I go into rant mode for a moment. Whenever I hear someone say “Everything in sales has changed.” I sigh. I sigh because that person has stacked the odds against them. Those who believe that are typically shutting themselves off from learning something that will help them right now. Rather than learn from sales success, and that success might have occurred last year, last decade, they shut off opening their minds to examples that might help them by saying “everything has changed.”

Now certainly some things have changed; Technology, our prospects access to information, competitive environments, and more. But the drivers of sales success have not changed. You still have to target the right prospects, interact with them effectively, have good messaging, yada yada yada.

Don’t let someone sell you the wonder strategy of the month by trying to convince you that “everything has changed” and you can’t learn something from prior successful producers or even other industries. Be willing to learn from all sources and tweak the component parts of your system to win.

You think making more calls will save you

First, let me say this. If you are a salesperson and work for a sales manager whose direction and coaching starts and stops with “make more calls,” leave that job. You will never make any real money. If you or your manager are “activity focused” and really believe that more dials, more doors knocked on, more pitches or more proposals will turn things around, you are in denial and deluding yourselves. Assuming you are making a reasonable effort, “more” will never save you. You are not only selling like a gambler but you are making really poor bets.

Your results and income hasn’t changed much recently

This one is a tough one. Bottom line. You might think you are doing the right things and working hard enough in the right places, but if your results, your income hasn’t changed much recently, it is a big fat clue that you are not working a winning system. If you think you are working a system, it’s a pretty poor one.

Certainly, if you can look back two or three years and you are getting average results or less, you need to step up to the plate and acknowledge that what you have been doing isn’t working. If the needle isn’t moving, put aside your rationalizations and excuses as to why. Admit that you are not working a winning system and have been selling in the gamblers zone. Be willing, be determined, to change.

The probability and payoff of the wins delivered also matter

When you focus on implementing an overall effective process your probability of sales success goes way up.

But the success of a sales process is not just about the probability of wins and losses. It is also about the payoff of the wins delivered.

Everybody is familiar with the law of the vital few, aka the Pareto Principle. 80% of success comes from 20% of our effort. The 80/20 rule. 80% of outcomes come from 20% of the causes. 80% of the revenue & profit comes from 20% of the clients. 80% of sales are closed by the top 20% of the salespeople.

The 80/20 rule is a rough guide to the common distribution of cause and effect. Your number may not be “20” and “80.” Your number might be 90/10 or 95/5. The point is that for most things in life, and in sales, not all efforts and inputs affect results equally.

When you work a winning system, you put more emphasis on the things that matter most to outcomes as a matter of process and habit.

The 80/20 Rule Also Applies to Screwing Up

You should also be thinking about the 80/20 rule regarding what actions/mistakes have a disproportionate impact on achieving a bad sales result. What things can you stop doing or saying that is heavily contributing to your bad results? Rip those things out of your process.

If you stop doing stupid stuff, you can have an 80/20 impact on sales

Sometimes it is not what you do, but what you stop doing, that contributes disproportionately to achieving superior results. If 80% of sales come from a small segment of your list, stop calling the low-return no-return parts of the list to get a big boost. Ex: I do a lot of work in an industry where 50% of what is considered a “great” account comes from just 3% of target lists. If you don’t know the profile of that 3%, you spend the vast majority of your time in knucklehead land. Just stop doing that, and you will immediately see a big impact on results. Very common.

You greatly improve your sales process when you make a habit of identifying and not doing stupid stuff as a matter of habit and process.

Why does a casino – “the house” always make money over time? Probabilities.

If you are a casino, you are working a system with the odds stacked in your favor. Overall, a casino has created a process that delivers good outcomes for them again and again and again. They do the things that most impact results as a matter of habit and have ripped out the stupid stuff that drags down results.

If you are a casino, you will have some bad results. Gamblers are going to win some bets. Some gamblers will “beat” the superior casino process fighting against them on individual bets.

Individual decisions can be based upon bad thinking and wrong assumptions yet be successful.

Decisions based upon sound reasoning can be complete failures.

But over time actions based on more thorough and reasoned decision-making, a winning process, will lead to overall better results.

Sales leaders make a strategic mistake by assuming that a “good outcome” must be the result of solid thinking and doing the right things. Not even close to being true.

Those that rack up the most wins and do so consistently all emphasize implementation of a superior process over prioritizing outcomes.

Gamble, and you will win here and there.

Work an effective overall system and you will win consistently. Ka-ching, Ka-ching. You will be piling fat stacks.

Even basic sales systems can beat the competition soundly

Everybody wants the quantum leap in sales results. I have seen far more quantum leaps in sales productivity from companies or individuals that get their basics in order. Getting the basics organized and implemented consistently is far more likely to vault your sales productivity forward than embracing again the latest strategy of the month cure-all or new technical innovation. And once you get your basics in order, you have a strong foundation upon which to layer all the more advanced strategies that will help you.

Even basic systems, implemented consistently, are usually good enough to run circles around 90% of the competition. Not kidding.

If you are a sales leader would you rather be “the house,” working a system that will deliver a consistently superior result over time? Or would you rather be the gambler trying to win a bet?

When you are in sales, the only certainty is that there is no certainty. We deal in risk. We take a chance with every effort not knowing what the outcome will be. But when we are working a well thought out sales process, we can have a high degree of confidence in what the distribution of outcomes will be. We can have a high degree of confidence knowing what the overall probability of winning will be but also the payoff of those wins.

So if you are a company owner, VP of sales or account executive, are you playing with house money or are you a gambler?

Are You a Sales Prospecting Stop-Short?

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Is your team fully leveraging the information gathered during prospecting calls?

Or, is your organization a sales and marketing “stop-short?” You intend to gain maximum results for your lead generation investment, but after making a significant effort of time and money to make calls, generate leads, you fail to take that last small incremental step to realize the full return on your investment. If so, you are a stop-short.

In the setting discovery calls or first sales appointment world, the most common stop-short activity I see is this — the failure to launch a “touch” system. A consistent communication effort with the highest value, highest-probability suspects you uncover with your prospecting efforts.

Common Stop-Short Practice

So lets set the scene. You and your team work a call process among a group of targets you feel include a lot of great future accounts. During those calls, you should be picking up information on the potential worth of those accounts. You want to identify those with average potential value, higher than average potential value and lower than average value.

So let’s say you invest in calling 1,000 companies. Out of all that effort, you identify 50 companies that are the cream of the crop. These are companies in your bullseye. They look just like your current best clients. They currently use what you offer or have an urgent need you can fill. If they purchased, they would be a top tier grade “A” account.

Those companies are worth an extra effort

Those top tier grade “A” potential accounts that you identify with your prospecting efforts are worth an investment from you. To not make a small additional investment to touch these grade A targets on a consistent basis is to do all the work, spend a ton of time and money, but stop-short of that final small effort that could reap you major gains.

Why companies don’t make this extra effort

Many companies don’t make this extra effort because they might have tried direct mail before, or newsletters before and it didn’t work for them. A previous effort to a broader group didn’t work, so another effort is not on their radar.

Or, companies think that something has to be super fancy with high production value to send out to top suspects. Such is not the case at all.

As to the “we tried it, it didn’t work” argument, there is a huge difference between a touch mailing to a larger group containing targets with a wide range of potential worth and qualification, and a very targeted mailing only to a vetted, confirmed, high-value group. A touch sequence that would be considered a failure to a larger group can generate criminal returns on investment when used with a high-value group.

What might you send

As to what to send, I think you have to be careful not to over-think things. If you have identified such a group and had nothing prepared and no clue as to what to touch them with, I would send them a series of one or two-page letters. The simple letter is a greatly underestimated marketing tool.

The letter would not be a “we are great, are swell” type letter. It would be a letter that provides some tips or insights that show off your knowledge and capabilities.

It could be a simple Dear Ethel letter where you relate three suggestions that commonly help your clients, or three common mistakes to be avoided or three summaries of recent projects you have done with the results you produced. That’s all. Just three headlines with a couple of paragraphs underneath that provide genuinely helpful information to your targets and show off your capabilities and knowledge without you trying to convince them you are worthwhile.

If I were not touching those very few top tier grade A suspects at all right now, I would launch a simple letter sequence. Touching those with the highest potential with something is a lot better than touching them with nothing.

Plus, when someone does have a need, who are they most likely to reach out to? Those that have consistently touched them and interacted with them with genuinely helpful information. So they may call you when they are ready to change a vendor or take action. You are top of mind.

When you do call these top tier grade A prospects back, the fact that you have touched your decision-maker consistently over some time greatly increases your odds of getting that first sales meeting or conversation. With your top tier targets, you want to increase those odds.

Don’t be a stop-short

So if you are spending time and money to work through lists of suspects seeking to set discovery calls or sales appointments, make sure to identify and code those that have the highest potential value. At least as to those, implement some sort of consistent follow-up “touch” system.

That small additional effort will reap significant returns.