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.
