Apparently, the old “How to overcome cold call reluctance” techniques are making their rounds again.  I’ve gotten three webinar solicitations in the last two weeks for webinars like these, and looking at the outlines, it’s the same old crap about managing rejection, stress handling techniques, and the like.  Those are great techniques for salespeople who are cold calling – in 1993.

What I’m about to say is a change in my own viewpoint, so if you attended one of my seminars on prospecting a year or more ago, don’t say, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s not what you said then!”  You’re right.  It’s not.  Sales is evolving, and we (I) have to evolve with it.  It’s time to redefine what cold-call prospecting really means – and along with that redefinition, we can realize that it might be even MORE important now.

There’s an old saying:  “If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success!”  Well – conventional cold-call prospecting still succeeds, but at a much lower numerical rate than in the past.  But maybe we can redefine it and modify it to help our numbers, and in so doing, help some of you overcome cold call reluctance.

30 years ago, the numbers looked like this.  If you were calling from a good database, not doing the “person who” call, and using a strong introduction, you would generally get a contact (speaking to the person you wanted to talk to) on about one of every three times you dialed the phone.  Then, if your introduction was strong, you’d get an appointment on one of every 2-3 contacts.  Hence, if you were doing it right, you’d get an appointment on one of every 6-9 dials.  That’s a pretty good number.  Most of the time, salespeople working from a good database could average 20 dials per hour, so an hour of focused cold calling got you 2-3 appointments.

Of course, there were other techniques like “schmoozing the secretary” that came into play for when you didn’t get a contact, or when you needed human help to get to your person.  Technology has pretty much made those techniques obsolete.

Now (in most B2B industries), you’re lucky if you get a contact on one of every ten dials.  From what I see, the contact to appointment ratio has dropped as well, but not as drastically – now it’s more like 4 contacts yield one appointment – most likely because one-size-fits-all messaging isn’t as effective.  What that means is that now, doing it the old way, it takes about two hours of focused cold calling to get one appointment.  That’s frustrating – and it feeds into cold call reluctance.  Nobody likes to fail – and these numbers mean that you’re failing 39 of 40 attempts, as opposed to 5 of 6 attempts 30 years ago.

HOWEVER – when I have done cold calling training with my clients, I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon.  When salespeople leave a strong voice mail (more on that in a minute), their LinkedIn profile views go up in the next couple of days.  Who’s viewing them?  You guessed it – some of the people that they tried to call.  That means that whatever they said to the prospect interested the prospect enough to check them out, even if they didn’t return the call (even 30 years ago, returned calls from voice mail ran about 10-20%, so that’s never been a strong lead generator).

That is a success.

The purpose of cold calling is simple.  We want to find people who could buy from us but don’t know we exist, and spark interest in them so that they might buy from us, now or in the future.  If prospects are interested enough in what you said that they type your name into LinkedIn and look you up, you have sparked at least some interest in them.  Next, of course, you should request a connection on LinkedIn (I outlined a LinkedIn strategy a couple of weeks ago).  The idea is to get on their radar screen, and stay there.  And, if you can pick up 3-4 new LinkedIn connections from an hour’s worth of prospecting, you’ve won.

In redefining prospecting, we need to think of creating awareness that you exist as someone who can solve problems for your customers.  The old cold calling strategy held that any call that didn’t result in an appointment was failure.  In fact, I used to teach that salespeople should make three attempts to reach a prospect by phone before leaving a voice mail.  That’s obsolete – the voice mail should now be considered a messaging medium, just like social media or LinkedIn, with the objective of creating awareness.

With that in mind, here’s my recommended new prospecting process:

1. Start with a good database. The data you begin with still matters.  You should have a database of targeted prospects using whatever demographics work for you.  I normally recommend searching by geography, type of business, and size of company.  If you know what they do, where they do it, and how many people they have to do it, you can usually get a good database.  This database should include contact names and titles.  Most quality databases do.
2. 3 minutes of research. Yes, I said research.  I used to recommend against this, because in the old “only an appointment is success” model, extensive research slowed down the process and cut into the number of quality dials.  Now?  Your message – whether delivered voice to voice in the case of a contact, or by voice mail if not – must be personalized.  It should speak directly to your prospect, his/her position, and the company’s anticipated needs.  2-3 minutes on their website and the person’s LinkedIn page should get you there.
3. Call. When you call, be prepared to deliver a great and short, impactful introduction about how you can help the prospect with a possible need that you spotted.  Remember – attention spans are short, and your introduction should be.  The numbers say that you might get a contact only 1/10 of the time, but you’d damn well better be prepared for that call.  Some industries will do much better than that 1/10, and if you’re there, that’s a good thing.
4. Leave a voice mail. Again, this is a departure from the past.  Leave a short, impactful voice mail about how you can help, with multiple ways of contact.  Invite your prospect to call, text, or look you up on LinkedIn.  Leaving an email address is fine IF it’s simple and comes across well in a message. Mine is troy@troyharrison.com, so that lends itself to a voice mail.  If yours has dots, dashes, and is complicated, you might want to skip this.  Remember, though, the first sentence must hit hard.  You want to capture interest before they hit the delete key.
5. Watch your LinkedIn views. As I said before, you’re likely to get LinkedIn views from those you prospect. When you do, reach out, connect, and take a long-play approach to messaging them.
6. If nothing happens, wait a couple of weeks and call again, varying your message.

Is it as immediately gratifying as the old, one appointment out of six dials, method?  Nope. But I don’t think those days are returning any time soon.  And this method still allows you to take control of your destiny, which is what cold-call prospecting is all about.

So, if you are experiencing cold call reluctance, think of it as spreading your message.  After all, that’s really what cold calling is all about, and always has been.  We just have a different path to motivating people into their Buyer’s Journey now.

When should you stop training your salespeople?

If you answered, “never,” you got the right answer. Training never stops.  Effective training for your salespeople should cover your products, your services, and sales technique, and it should be ongoing.  In fact, I recommend that you do at least a small training exercise at each weekly sales meeting (you ARE doing weekly sales meetings, aren’t you?).

That means that 52 times per year, your salespeople get some level of new knowledge and professional development.  Since “inadequate training” is cited as the reason about 70% of the time that salespeople change jobs, good training retains salespeople.  I think that the reason that sales managers don’t do much training is that the task seems daunting – to come up with new topics every week is seen as a significant demand on the manager’s time.

It doesn’t have to be.

Here’s an exercise that I have always found to be effective, and it’s simple.  For a given unit of time (say, 8-10 weeks at a time), each salesperson must come into the meeting with a NEW question that they have created.  This question should be one that customers and/or prospects can be asked on every sales call.  Notice that I said, “new.”  The point of this exercise is to get your salespeople to THINK about selling, and to think about new ways to get knowledge about your customers that could benefit them in making more sales and building better relationships.

In my opinion, about 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the questions you ask – so if you’re asking more and better questions than your competition, you give yourself a big edge on outselling your competition.  Challenging your salespeople to be the ones to come up with new questions also involves them and engages them in their own training.

Here’s how this works.  On week 1, tell them that for the next (however many) weeks, your focus is going to be on becoming better questioners.  In fact, you are going to become the best questioners in your market.  Tell them to take five minutes and come up with one potentially-great question that they have never asked a customer.  After five minutes, they present their question to the group.  They should explain why they think it’s a good question and what they think they will accomplish by asking it.

During this time, you should instruct your team to suspend judgement on the questions – this is a criticism-free zone to try things out.  Once everyone has presented theirs, then everyone on the team must ask each question the following week at least once (preferably more), and then report back at the following sales meeting how well the questions worked.  Take a vote – the good questions become part of your boilerplate questioning structure (again, you do have one of those, right?), and the ineffective ones get discarded.  Then repeat the exercise, except that this time, they should already have a new question when they arrive at the meeting.

Do this for at least eight weeks, and your team’s effectiveness at questioning and discovery will go up significantly.  How significantly depends on their openness to new knowledge and their creativity in creating questions.  You can also take a vote each week on which question worked the best, and whoever came up with it gets some sort of a prize – a restaurant gift card, perhaps.

There are a few things to remember about this program to make it a success.

First – no matter how badly you want to – don’t supply your own questions or criticize theirs before the team puts them into real-life action.  For this program to succeed, they have to be the stars of the show (not you), and they have to be the ones that are taking the risks.  If you supply your own questions, then it’s just the boss ramming things down their throats.  Besides, given room to work, you’ll be amazed at the quality of questions they come up with.  As my friend and fellow trainer Ed Tate likes to say, “Often, the answers are already in the room.”  This is one of those times.

Second – make the emphasis be on NEW question creation, not a regurgitation of what’s already being done.  As soon as a salesperson says, “Here’s one I like to ask,” thank them for the contribution but tell them that you want them to dig into their heads and come up with something new.  Your salespeople are smart; this respects their intelligence and creativity.

Third – you should be doing ride-alongs as the program progresses to see that the new questions are really being asked in live sales calls.  This program only works if it’s being put into action, and not just discussed in meetings.  The whole idea is to improve their SELLING skills, not their MEETING skills.  So, as they say, inspect what you expect.

Fourth – be prepared to discard some questions that your salespeople used to ask in favor of newer and better ones.  In fact, this might be a topic for weeks 6-8.  “Since we have these new and more effective questions, what ones can we, or should we, jettison?”

If you do this, by the end of eight weeks, your team’s questioning skills will have gone up exponentially, which means that their sales will go up.  You should repeat this exercise at least once per year, to continually refine the questions and skills.  Besides, market conditions may dictate that questions get modified or discarded over time.

“Troy, all these gosh-darned younger buyers want to do is text!”  That’s a complaint I hear quite frequently when I speak at conventions.  And it’s true. Sales communication methods have undergone a significant transformation. The rise of younger, tech-savvy buyers is one of the Four Key Trends in selling – and it has brought about a preference for text messaging over traditional communication channels like calling or emailing. While this trend might pose challenges for some seasoned salespeople, selling by text messaging is a powerful tool can help you win new customers – and keep the ones you have.

Here’s the key to remember:  this trend isn’t going away.  The people who are moving into positions of buying authority came of age when they were marinated in technology, and communications technology in particular.  The rotary phone isn’t coming back.  Will some of these buyers be open to more traditional means of communication, such as incoming phone calls or even walk-in cold calls?  Perhaps, but that’s probably not the way to bet.  Sales is about meeting customers where they are – and where they are is in a place where your texting skills aren’t just an asset, they are mandatory.

The Shift Towards Text Messaging

As technology continues to shape how we communicate, the preferences of buyers are shifting, and sales professionals must adapt accordingly. Younger generations, raised in an era of instant messaging and social media, have developed a strong affinity for texting as a means of communication. It offers them a level of convenience, efficiency, and informality that traditional methods often lack. Sure, there’s the old joke about two people sitting next to each other on a couch, texting each other instead of talking – but texting is our reality.

Embracing the Change

For many seasoned salespeople, selling by text might seem daunting. I’ll be honest – I’m not the biggest fan of thumb typing, either.  However, the benefits of integrating text messaging into your sales approach are undeniable. Texting allows you to meet buyers where they are, respecting their communication preferences and building rapport on their terms. By embracing this change, you position yourself as a modern sales professional who is not only willing to adapt but also committed to providing exceptional customer experiences.  That perception is going to wrap itself around every aspect of your customer interactions.

When I get the question referenced in the opener of this article, my response is, “So, how good are you at writing a persuasive text?”  Most of the time, I get blank looks.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Art of Selling by Text

Crafting a persuasive text message requires finesse and strategy. Unlike longer emails or phone calls, texts demand concise communication that captures attention and drives engagement. Your texts need more “power per word.”  Here’s a roadmap to writing compelling text messages:

1. Know Your Audience: Just as in any sales interaction, understanding your audience is crucial. Research your prospect’s needs, pain points, and preferences to tailor your message accordingly.
2. Personalization: Start with a personalized greeting to show you value the individual you’re reaching out to. Reference past interactions or shared interests to establish a connection – but again, do it CONCISELY.
3. Get to the Point: Text messages have limited space, so cut to the chase. State the purpose of your message upfront, whether it’s introducing a new product, requesting an appointment, addressing a customer need, or offering a solution.
4. Highlight Value: Clearly articulate the value proposition of your offer. Explain how it can solve a problem, enhance efficiency, or fulfill a need. Keep the benefits concise and compelling.
5. Engage with Questions: Engage the recipient by asking open-ended questions related to their needs. Encourage them to share their thoughts, challenges, or goals, fostering a two-way conversation.  Once you get a two-way conversation going, you can request an appointment.
6. Concise Language: Use concise and direct language, avoiding jargon or unnecessary filler words. Each word should contribute to the message’s impact.
7. Embrace the Informal Tone: Text messages are inherently more informal than emails or calls. While maintaining professionalism, feel free to adopt a slightly casual tone that resonates with modern buyers.  That said, don’t tell them how you ‘wnt 2 b’ in front of them.  “Informal language” still uses WORDS.

Overcoming the Challenges

For sales professionals accustomed to traditional methods, the transition to text messaging may present some challenges. Here are a few tips to help navigate those hurdles:

1. Training: Invest in training programs that teach the art of persuasive text messaging. Equip your sales team with the skills they need to excel in this new communication landscape.
2. Practice Makes Perfect: Encourage your team to practice crafting persuasive text messages. Provide feedback and offer guidance to refine their approach over time.
3. Feedback Loop: Foster a culture of learning and improvement. Encourage your team to share their experiences and insights from text messaging interactions, enabling everyone to learn from each other.
4. Measure and Adapt: Use analytics tools to track the effectiveness of your text messaging efforts. Analyze response rates, engagement levels, and conversion rates to refine your strategy.

The bottom line is this.

Mastering the art of persuasive text messaging is a critical skill for modern sales professionals. By adapting to buyers’ texting preferences, you can build stronger relationships with buyers and drive higher engagement. Embrace the change, refine your strategy, and equip your sales team with the tools they need to succeed in today’s dynamic sales landscape. As the saying goes, “Adapt or be left behind.” I don’t want to be left behind – do you?

Today, I want to address a pressing issue that’s been eating at me for far too long. It’s time to debunk the excuse of salespeople who claim they aren’t “tech-savvy” and turn up the heat on those who rely on this feeble justification for their lack of progress. Being “tech-savvy” is a choice.  Staying relevant in the sales profession is a choice.  And nowadays, if you’re choosing to not embrace technology, you’re choosing to see your relevance fade away.

Look, I get it. Change can be daunting, and technology is advancing at breakneck speed. Some of you are still fighting CRM (welcome to 25 years ago), and now we’re talking about AI.  But let’s be brutally honest here: being “tech-savvy” is not some condition you’re born with or an elusive talent only the chosen few possess. It’s a CHOICE. Yes, you heard me right. Being tech-savvy is a mindset you embrace, a journey you embark on, and a battle you fight every single day.  Your customers are embracing technology and information.  If you’re not, you’re putting your own expiration date on your career.

Now, let me address the managers out there who accept this excuse from their sales teams. It’s time to shake things up and demand better. Your role as a leader is to inspire and push your team to greatness, and get the most from their talents. When you accept artificial limitations, you are selling your salespeople, yourself, and your customers, short. It’s time to hold your salespeople accountable and challenge them to rise above their self-imposed limitations.

So, how can you break free from this technophobic trap? Let’s dive into some actionable steps that will help you shatter the glass ceiling of excuses and propel your sales success into the future (which, by the way, is happening NOW):

1. Embrace a Growth Mindset: Stop seeing technology as an obstacle and start viewing it as an opportunity. Every new tool or platform is a chance to enhance your sales skills and reach new heights. Embrace the mindset of continuous learning, experimentation, and adaptation.
2. Seek Out Learning Opportunities: Attend webinars, workshops, and conferences to stay abreast of the latest sales technologies and strategies. Dive into online courses, podcasts, and industry blogs that provide insights and practical tips. Make learning a habit, not an occasional afterthought.
3. Leverage Your Inner Circle: Surround yourself with tech-savvy individuals who can mentor and guide you. Build relationships with colleagues, attend networking events, and join sales communities where you can tap into the collective knowledge and experience of like-minded professionals.
4. Get Hands-On: Don’t just observe from the sidelines; immerse yourself in the digital realm. Experiment with new tools, apps, and software. Learn how to navigate social media platforms, harness data analytics, and leverage CRM systems. Embrace the power of automation, AI, and other emerging technologies that can assist your sales efforts.  You might even enjoy it!
5. Take Ownership: Own your personal growth and development. Don’t rely solely on your company’s training initiatives or your manager’s guidance. Take the reins and invest your time and resources in honing your technological skills. Remember, the onus is on YOU to stay relevant in this fast-paced world.

So, what tech tools are being used by the well-prepared salesperson these days?  I’m not going to attempt a comprehensive list, but here are a few basic categories:

1. CRM.  The most basic tool in the tech stack. CRM is great because even if you forget, it doesn’t.  Today’s CRM apps are much easier and user-friendly than the old ones (trust me – I had to use Goldmine in the 90s).  They have mobile apps and will do much of the work for you.
2. Social Media. Your customers are (depending on your business) on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and maybe even Threads.  Are you?  Good salespeople go where their customers go.  What are the preferred platforms of your customers, and are you interacting with them there?
3. Communication tools. More and more customers these days want to communicate by video – and if you sell nationwide, like I do, video is a definite upgrade from a phone call.  Being a salesperson today means understanding Zoom, Teams, maybe even Google Meet.  Can you jump on a video call at quick notice?  If you can’t, your competitors probably can.
4. Sales intelligence tools. One truth of business is that change begets change.  Sales intelligence tools let you know when change happens with your customers and prospects, so you can get in the middle of the change and perhaps use it to your advantage.  Google News Alerts are essential, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (catchy name) is a big help, too.  While you’re at it, do you have a Google News Alert for your own company?  Do you know what your company’s Google Reviews are, and when a new one is posted?  Your competitors might – your prospects probably do.
5. AI. How long does it take you to create a persuasive email, blog post, or article?  ChatGPT can do it in just a few minutes, if you know how to prompt it.  That gives you time for other, more important tasks.

Look, sales is about learning, and you’ve learned a lot.  You’ve learned your products, your services, your company’s value proposition, your customers, and other key issues.  Yes, the tech stack I posted above seems like a lot – but it’s really not.  Most of it is automated and will actually be a time-saver.  In fact, if you get good at the tech, the result will be more time for the thing about sales we all love.  Face time with your customers.  And that’s the big win here.  You can do this.

In conclusion, the excuse of not being “tech-savvy” is a cop-out, a self-imposed limitation that hinders your progress and undermines your potential. Let me be clear.  Anyone of average intelligence can learn these tools, no matter their age or experience level, if they choose to do so. The choice is yours—will you evolve with the sales profession or succumb to mediocrity?

If you’re a manager, it’s time to light a fire under your team’s collective behinds and eradicate this excuse once and for all. Challenge, support, and empower your salespeople to be the best versions of themselves. Technology is an intrinsic part of the future.  In fact, it’s an intrinsic part of the present.  Get on board.

Stay hungry.

Stay current.

Make the choice to stay relevant.

A few weeks ago, I attended a Webinar for speakers. The topic was on how to generate more customer inquiries and “back of the room” sales from presentations and Webinars.  Well, I had my Webinar coming up on “The Top Four Sales Trends That Could Double Your Bottom Line,” and I figure I can always learn something, so I signed up.  Unfortunately, that ended up being 33 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.

There’s a lesson here for every salesperson, and it’s a lesson that addresses a complaint that I hear about customers every time I speak.  Salespeople bemoan the customers who want “free consulting” and then take the salesperson’s ideas and get a cheaper price.  I’m going to give you my view on that situation and how to handle it – and hopefully the webinar story will be a bit entertaining as I give you those pointers.

I should note that I didn’t actually “sign up” on my own.  I was cold-called (through an auto-dialer, grrr…) by someone who was obviously in an overseas call center with a very limited ability to speak English. So, after a few moments of trying to understand what he was saying, I asked him to email information.  Instead, he signed me up for a Webinar.  It was tastefully called, “Get the Freaking Money!” I looked and I thought, what the hell, I’d go ahead and attend.

In the week and a half between the initial call and the Webinar, I was called three more times from various people involved with the presenter attempting me to sell something that they wouldn’t define.  I finally told them to leave me alone and I blocked two phone numbers.  Still, I was curious (morbid curiosity at this point), and I signed onto the Webinar.

The first 20 minutes – not kidding – were about how much money the presenter makes.  Yes, 20 minutes.  Nothing about how I could make money, just about how much he makes.  Some of that time was video of people rushing to his table after a presentation.  At this point, I was like the little boy who, given a pile of horse manure for Christmas, begins digging thinking that there has to be a pony inside all of that crap.

I should note that the whole time, he’s already pitching us on some undefined product or service.  I still don’t know.  Finally, at about 30 minutes, he gives us some of his “magic.”  His first point is that, in speeches, I should give “minimal content.”  You see, if I actually taught people something useful in my programs, they might decide that they could just work with that and not spend money with me.  NOW is this sounding familiar?  In other words, he’s telling me not to give “free consulting.”

Here’s the thing – that’s not me.  In fact, it’s never been me, even when I was in a sales territory years ago.  I’d give my customers lots of information.  Did some of them take my information and go buy at a cheaper price?  Sure they did.  But I always figured that those weren’t my customers.  Here’s the thing:  your good customers value you for what you bring to the table, not just numbers on a page.  Sure, it sucks to lose a deal on price when you have given someone a road map to solving their problem.

But I’m going to tell you another secret.  Customers are going to buy from who they want to buy from, regardless.  The only thing that you accomplish by being cagey with your expertise is that you reduce their desire to make you that “person they want to buy from.”

My philosophy is this.  I’ve always figured that, if I gave customers some good information for free, they would figure that there was great information to be had if they bought from me.  And they would be right in thinking so.  When I do a Webinar, or a speaking presentation, or my one-on-one Sales Strategy Review, I do give away good stuff that people can use to make money.  There’s better stuff available if they pay – but I always have made it worthwhile for customers to spend time with me, even back in the days when I was selling industrial components.  That made them want to spend more time, and eventually, spend money.

If you don’t give at least some value for time, customers are going to assume that there’s no value to be had – and move on.  That’s what I did in that Webinar.  I realized that the rest of my time on this Webinar would be wasted time – and worse, he had not fulfilled his promise of telling me how to “Get the Freaking Money.”

The truth about this guy was that he was scared.  For all of his bravado and braggadocio, e was absolutely petrified that if he told me a little bit of useful information, I wouldn’t need him.  And he might have been right.  But by not telling me anything useful, he made me think that there wouldn’t be much useful knowledge – even if I paid for it.  So, 33 minutes in, I detached from his Webinar and I will not entertain any more calls from his people.

What’s funny is that, over the years, there have been many occasions where I have given what looked like “free consulting” at the time that ended up being very lucrative to me.  Once, when I was in the industrial sales business, I gave “free consulting” to someone who then bought at a cheaper price.  Six months later, he referred someone to me because he was appreciative of what I did, and that referral became my #2 customer.  Other times, people have come back, even years later, and did business – because I helped them in a meaningful way.

So here’s my advice to you when you are wondering if you’re giving out “free consulting.”  Do it.  Remember – customers will buy from who they want to buy from, regardless.  Helping your customer increases the chances that that person will be you.  And, honestly, it’s just the right thing to do.

OK, the title is a bit of a fib.  Unless your sales are pretty lackluster now, I probably can’t tell you how to double your sales in two weeks, and neither can anyone else.  But I got your attention, didn’t I?  What I CAN tell you is a great way to maximize your sales ability and time in 2023, and that’s the topic of this article.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.  Your biggest asset as a salesperson is TIME.  More specifically, it is the time you spend, face to face (or voice to voice, in the case of inside phone-based salespeople) with a decision making contact at a customer or prospect.  And when it comes to sales activity, the basic equation is this:  (Quantity of activity) x (Quality of activity) = RESULTS.  So let’s talk about the best way to maximize the quality of your face-time.

It’s not hard.  To maximize your effectiveness, you must have an objective for each and every sales call.  Period.  Every sales interaction with a customer or prospect should have a real reason for being.  The biggest reason that salespeople underachieve is the agenda-free sales call.  I used to hear these called “stop-ins,” or “P.R. calls.”  If you’re making sales calls “just to see how things are going,” you’re wasting your time and that of your contacts. If you focus and think about it, it is possible to have a reason to make every sales call, and make yourself and your relationships a bit better each time.  Here are some excellent objectives:

1. Gain information. This is a simple objective, and it’s one that can (and probably should) be employed on each and every sales call, no matter how long you have been calling on someone.  You never know everything about a customer – and sometimes what you do know can become obsolete.  If you go into each sales call with at least 2-3 good questions to ask, you’re always going to come away with something you didn’t know – and that both advances a relationship and can move you toward a new sale.
2. Give information. Sometimes, the information you give will be a result of the information you gained above – for instance, you’ve identified a previously unknown need and you can help solve it.  Other times, there’s a new development.  Maybe your company is rolling out a new product or service, or maybe there’s a product or service that you’ve not shown them before.  Regardless, this is a great way to give your customer value for the time spent with you.
3. Internal referrals. Are there other people in the organization whose work is affected by the products or services you sell?  Who are they?  “High, wide, and deep” isn’t just a catch phrase.  It’s how you should be living.  Your objective in B2B selling should be to have relationships as HIGH on the corporate ladder as possible, to get as WIDE within the company as possible by having as many people know about you and what you do as you can, and as DEEP as possible by making sure that not only do people recognize your face but that they have an understanding of the value you bring and create.  On the average, people change jobs every 3-5 years, and if you only have one contact at an organization, you’re back to cold calling if they leave.  Make sure that you are always working to get high, wide, and deep in the organization by occasionally asking your contact (in a non-threatening way) to connect you with others in the organization.
4. External referrals. We all know what these are, right?  Your contacts likely know other people in similar positions at other companies; if you’ve done a good job for your contact, they should be willing to introduce you to their counterparts (as long as it doesn’t create a competitive situation).
5. Testimonials. If you’ve really helped your customer, they may be willing to say, for the record, how you have helped them and how you might be able to help others.  With today’s technology, getting a testimonial on video is easier than it’s ever been.  Don’t be afraid to ask.
6. Moving a sales process forward. Ideally, you should always have your customers in some sort of a sales process, whether it’s a new prospect or an existing customer that you are trying to upsell or cross-sell. In this case, the key is to keep conscious of where you are in the process, where you want to go next, and how to get there.  One caution – just as bad as the “see how things are going” trap is the “see if they have any questions” trap.  Both are lame and do nothing to move a sales process.  Instead of that, have specific questions ready about time frame, purchasing processes, etc., so that you don’t fall flat.

If you have a reason for every sales call you make, you might not double your sales in two weeks, but you definitely WILL sell more, be more successful, and have better customer relationships.  Make that your New Year’s Commitment (resolutions are usually broken within weeks) for 2023.

A short time back, I attended a dinner meeting at a local restaurant in Kansas City.  The meeting was for a business club of which I’m a member, and the dinner meeting drew about 25 people.  25 hungry and thirsty people, in fact.  I arrived at the restaurant, got a drink from the bar, and headed into the meeting room.  Menus were on the table.  Some of the members had arrived earlier and had already ordered.  I, and the three people seated adjacent to me, waited for one of the three servers taking care of us to take our dinner order.

And we waited.  Finally, after about 20 minutes, the guy next to me stopped the waitress walking by and said that we’d like to order food. She assured us that she’d be right back.  She never returned. I finished my drink.  15 minutes later, another waitress walked by and I stopped her, explaining that several of us hadn’t ordered food and that I could use another drink.  She told me she’d be right back.  I was there an hour and a half.  You guessed it.  No food order and no drink refill offered. By the time the meeting was over, I was decidedly hangry (as you probably know, that’s when you’re so hungry you’re mad about it).  I started out of the restaurant.

The manager stopped me, smiling, and asked how “everything” was.  I told him that I had no idea, because there was no ‘everything,’ and instead of having the steak that I’d had my mouth set for and that the restaurant was known for, that I’d be getting a drive-through burger because I just needed food in my stomach. I left him stammering.

A few weeks later, this very same restaurant made a tearful post on Facebook that they were being forced to close forever “due to Covid.”  Well, when I was there, our meeting room was packed, as was the dining room.  You will excuse me for thinking that their problem might be more due to the lack of business fundamentals (there are few things more fundamental to a restaurant than taking orders and serving customers) than the “effects of Covid.”

Don’t get me wrong.  There are many very strong businesses that have had severe hardships due to the restrictions imposed on us during the last two years, and some of those businesses have unfortunately failed.  But – one thing that the last two years should have done is to emphasize the importance of fundamentals in your sales program.  There are still companies out there succeeding and making sales in nearly every industry, and they are doing so because they had the fundamentals of sales covered.  Here are some of the fundamentals you should have in place:

1. Good sales KPI’s. Far too many companies only manage by looking at their overall sales in a given period.  The problem with this approach is that sales is a historical measure, not a forward-looking one.  Good sales managers are looking forward and forecasting from predictable norms and ratios, not looking backward and guessing.  At a minimum, you should know your ratios from Proposal to Sale, from Presentation to Proposal, from Discovery to Presentation, and from Prospecting to Discovery. You should know your year-to-year customer retention rates, and you should have product/service matrixes to spot opportunities for cross-selling to current customers.  That’s the minimum, and many companies don’t have it; in fact, when I do a Sales Audit for a client, it’s rare that they have it.
2. CRM. Yes, I’m going to hammer on this again. You MUST have a functional CRM system – and by “functional,” I mean one that is constantly fed with sales data that you can use to market and to manage your team.  The primary purpose of CRM is to get data out of individual heads and into a format where it can be accessed and used to greater benefit and grow the company.  At a minimum, you should have contact information, activity recording, and opportunity management.  Good CRM is not expensive these days – in fact, some platforms are free in the Cloud.  If you don’t have one, get one.  And using CRM can be made much easier; watch this video to see how.
3. Prospecting. You must always prospect.  Period.  The reasons are numerous, but the biggest one is that you will lose customers from year to year, sometimes through no fault of your own – and if you aren’t constantly working to fill your customer base, you just have a shrinking company.  Individual salespeople should have a prospecting target and be managed to it.  For a salesperson, prospecting is like a muscle.  If you don’t keep using it, it atrophies quickly, and it’s  much harder to regenerate than to simply keep using.
4. A Meaningful Sales Process. This should be obvious – and it ties to all three of the above – but many sales teams don’t have one.  A sale of any type goes through five distinct phases.  First you must find a Prospect to sell to (sometimes this can be an existing customer, of course, but someone has to be identified); then you must Discover their needs through good questioning; next you must Present your recommendations for solving their needs; then you must Propose a specific product/service for a specific price; and finally, you must gain a Decision.  Too often, the Discovery step is skipped – and that’s where winnable sales go to die.  Once you have a process, you must constantly train your salespeople to use it.
5. Homework. With the information available at our fingertips, there’s no excuse for walking into a sales call uninformed.  Sure, everyone knows to look at the prospect’s web page – but have you looked at their online reviews (Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, etc.)? Don’t think that if it’s not a Yelp type business that there aren’t reviews – Google Reviews has reviews on every type of business, and some of those reviews might shed light on your program.  You should also research your contact on LinkedIn.  We can’t walk into a sales meeting anymore fat, dumb, and happy – and trying to do so will quickly end the sales call.

2020 and 2021 were difficult years, no question, but don’t allow yourself to get caught in the trap of thinking that the fundamentals don’t matter anyway – they do.  If your sales program is right, you CAN win sales and succeed in most instances.  Even now.

You might be familiar with the scientific paradox called “Schrodinger’s Cat.”  If you’re not, here’s an extremely simplified version.  In 1935, Erwin Schrodinger suggested that, if you were to place a cat into some sort of a box with a potentially (but not necessarily – it could activate at a random time) lethal device in it, that the cat could be thought of as both dead and alive at the same time, as long as you didn’t open the box.  Unless and until you opened the box, you would never know which it was.  Obviously, there’s a lot more to it than this, but that’s the basic idea and that will work for our purposes.

What does this have to do with sales?  There are a lot of deals out there that I like to think of as “Schrodinger’s Proposals.”  Those are customers with whom deals have been proposed, but no answer has been received.  And to the salesperson, those deals may be very much alive – but to the customer, they are dead.  The salesperson doesn’t know because he hasn’t “opened the box” by getting a firm decision from the customer.

Look at your CRM system (you DO have one of those and it’s working and maintained, right?).  How many proposals do you have in it that have past-due closing dates?  If you’re like most salespeople, probably quite a few.  Those are Schrodinger’s Proposals.  When you look at them, those deals are alive and in the back of your head, you are counting on those as part of your upcoming sales performance.  The question is – are they alive in the mind of your customers?  There’s only one way to find out.

Open the box.

The older the proposal, of course, the more likely that it’s dead.  And the older the proposal, the harder it is to follow up.  So how do you follow up?  First, let’s look at a couple of ways to NOT follow up on a proposal:

“Hi.  I’m just calling to see if you have any questions about the proposal.”  This is plain dumb on many levels.  First of all, you’re saying that if they have questions, they aren’t smart enough to get ahold of you and ask them.  Hence, you insult their intelligence. Worse is the word “just.”  When you use the word “just,” you diminish the importance of any other words that accompany it.  Never say “just calling,” or words like that – you make yourself unimportant.  You have importance.

“Buy now for a special deal!”  This is the worst thing you can do.  “Buy now for a cheap price” approaches are low-end sales tactics and are usually a lie. The customer usually responds, “So, if I buy later, I can’t get that deal?”  And you stammer and stutter.  Don’t invest yourself in false and cheap sales techniques.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about the correct approaches, all of which I teach in my training.  Keep in mind that your proposal is designed to solve a problem for your customer (and if it doesn’t, no wonder it’s sitting there).  We’re also assuming that you’re talking to the right person – if not, that’s a completely different problem, which we will address in an upcoming column.  If your situation meets these criteria, here’s how to open the box:

The assumptive approach: My favorite close is the assumptive close.  That’s a close that assumes that they have already decided to buy, and you are just confirming the details.  It works like this.  “Hi, Mr. Customer.  I’m calling to find out when you would like to start service on that proposal I gave you last month.”  Yes, it’s aggressive and assertive, and that’s perfectly okay.  You’re calling to do business and you are being respectful of your customer’s time and your own by doing this.  And it works – I’ve personally used this approach to rescue a stalled proposal.

The process approach:  Sometimes, by depersonalizing the conversation, you can uncover information to get the proposal moving again.  “Hi, Mr. Customer.  I’m calling to follow up on the proposal. What’s the next step in the process for getting started?  I’m looking forward to working with you.”  You’re assuming that there is a process and that the problem is that the next step needs some input from you to make it happen.

Put the burden back on yourself.  Sometimes, acting like you have missed something is a great approach.  “Hello, Mr. Customer.  I’ve been reviewing the proposal I gave you and I have to think that I’ve missed communicating something to you.  This unquestionably solves these problems that you were facing, and I’m wondering where I’ve fallen down in my obligation to you.  What can I provide you so that we can get going on this process?”  Putting the burden back on yourself eases into the conversation and makes it better, psychologically, for the customer to have an open discussion.

Ask for the “no.”  Sometimes a proposal is stalled and the customer has gone silent.  You’ve called, emailed, texted, and heard nothing.  Let’s be honest.  There is a 90% chance that this one is dead when you open the box.  Still, you need to close out the sales process and get a decision.  This is the opposite of the assumptive close – you are assuming that the answer is “no,” and you are just confirming.  The communication goes like this:  “Hello, Mr. Customer.  I appreciate the time we spent together in crafting the proposal for these services.  Since I’ve not heard back from you, I assume that the answer is ‘no,’ and you are simply too nice a person to tell me.  I assure you that my feelings will not be hurt by hearing ‘no,’ as hearing that word is part of any salesperson’s job.  So, if it’s ‘no,’ please don’t hesitate to tell me.  We can circle back up again in the future.  If, on the other hand, you are still interested in pursuing this solution, I’d welcome a chance to reconnect.”  In my experience, this has about a 10-20% chance of restarting a dead sales process.  Either way, you are closing the process.  Send this communication, wait a week, and if you have heard nothing, close the proposal out and get on with your life.

Schrodinger’s Proposals take up head space for salespeople and sales managers, and clog up a pipeline.  Open the box – and focus on real proposals.