Dan called me yesterday to say that his new approach to prospecting and appointment setting got him three “highly qualified” appointments in the first week…. and four people responded to his voicemail message.
Before his new approach Dan told me he hardly ever got a voicemail reply, and with rare exceptions his meetings were with time-wasters and curiosity seekers.
I asked him what made the difference so quickly.
Here is a summary of what he told me.
Dan is a salesperson in a high-tech industry. He used my book and audio strategies to get very quick results.
This is what he said helped him the most. He told me that number 6 made the biggest difference for him.
1. New response to “send me some info.” Dan said that stating an immediate refusal to send general info coupled with an offer to send any specific information that would genuinely help them, enabled him to know who really had an interest and who was just blowing him off.
2. Digging in just a little bit harder when responding to objections. Dan said that the model responses to objections helped him to respond effectively to objections. Rather than hitting a brick wall he knew what to do to get value from the conversation.
3. Dan said that as soon as he heard “Hello,” that he imagined an hourglass turning over and when it ran out, he was done. He said my observation about “working against gravity” helped him. He said he now knew and understood that even if he had a good prospect on the phone that they will initially turn him down. He now understood what was happening and how to turn that around.
4. His biggest objection to overcome was “we have that already.” He said he learned how to get them to open up, rather than the call just ending.
5. The idea and samples of voicemails leaving his name, company name and phone number at the END of the message helped him a lot.
6. The biggest thing Dan told me that helped him. He said that previously he had equated using a script with telemarketers that would interrupt his dinner and an automatic hang-up. He didn’t want to sound like that. He told me he had previously thought his pleasant personality and obvious industry knowledge would be enough. It wasn’t. He said that he lacked a real strategy. That writing down the words to use really helped him. In particular it forced him to think really hard about the benefits he was mentioning and pushing them up to the beginning of the conversation made a big difference. He said it seemed to cut down on the knee jerk blow-offs he would get and identified some very qualified opportunities.
And that was in the first week.
Best wishes for great selling,
Scott Channell
