Recently, I had the opportunity to present a training program at DocuWorld in Isla de Mallorca, Spain. It was a great experience, not the least because I learned that selling is essentially the same game the world over. No part of the program illustrated this more than when we discussed prospecting and cold calling. (If you’re wondering, I trained the English speaking group – I don’t speak Spanish.)
“I have a question,” said one person at the back. “I read an article recently that said that cold call prospecting would be obsolete in five years, as something else would replace it.” “Did the article say what the ‘something else’ would be?” I asked. “No,” he replied with a smile. I didn’t think so. I’ve been reading that article for 25 years. And yet, one of the biggest problems in selling that I see is people who are spending most of their time looking for the ‘something’ rather than selling in today’s environment.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to know what that ‘something’ will be. Heck, I’d like to invent it. If I did, I’d be writing these articles from a cabana on a beach somewhere. And I’ve thought a lot about what that ‘something’ could be. The problem is that, to be effective in replacing cold-call prospecting, the new mechanism would have to offer these characteristics:
- First, it would have to be controllable and be able to be used proactively by a salesperson who is seeking out new people to sell to. In other words, it would have to be active, and not passive. This, in a single stroke, eliminates social media – at least as it currently exists. No current social media platform allows targeting of clients and real-time conversation to attempt to establish interest and sell the appointment.
- Second, it would have to generate predictable results for a given input of time, dollars, or other resources. I have yet to read any survey – or have personal experience, either on my own or with clients – that can tell me how many social media inputs generate a personal appointment. Even a stat like “number of followers” isn’t predictive of real business conversations; it’s too easy to click a “like” button. I can’t tell you how many tweets or likes generate an appointment (and neither can anyone else), but I can tell you how many dials a salesperson can make in an hour, I can tell you how many contacts (conversations) should result from those dials, and how many appointments should result from those contacts. We can all think of “internet celebrities” in our lives who have hundreds, or even thousands, of followers on Facebook who don’t have two nickels to rub together.
- Finally, it would have to be user-friendly enough to allow even rookie salespeople to be trained properly in it and use it to fill their calendars. This is a huge bugaboo; social media tends to be a moving target, impacted by other users, permissions, and even Google search algorithms that can vastly change the landscape from one moment to the next. If there’s any certainty in SEO, it’s that what worked last year won’t work this year.
The point is that no such mechanism exists other than teleprospecting – so, if you want to succeed in sales in 2016, teleprospecting should be part of your life. It should be a very good data-driven teleprospecting program with a well-done infomercial approach, but teleprospecting it shall be.
I use this as an example of the “I’m going to get ahead of the curve” phenomenon. I know that it’s tempting to want to be leading edge and advanced. I do it too. But when you’re searching for the NEXT thing, don’t forget to execute the CURRENT thing. We still have to sell in the current environment.
