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SalesOpShop Idea Exchange

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Jonathan London said 2 months ago

You Decide if You Want the Appointment or Your Call Could Be the Most Important a Prospect Takes.

In working with a client this last week, it wasn't surprising to see how dispirited they were. It was an inside sales team of 20 people who had to make 125 calls a day (puuhleeese) and were finding it difficult to make appointments for their outside sales specialists. In fact when a customer said yes to them they would jump for joy. Not an easy job.

While teaching them new techniques (which I will delineate in a second) I told them two things that completely changed their perspective for the better:

1. Since they were selling enterprise voice solutions that leverage a prospect's strategic investments, taking an appointment with them could be the most important thing that prospect could do

2. Therefore, they should be confident and assertive when calling, not apologetic, shy or feel like they were bothering people, NO MATTER how many times they had to call, email, text, use smoke signals or carrier pigeons to get the appointment

So what did we discuss and change so they would get more appointments:

using our 3 stage process (credibility - benefits - close) we shortened each phone call from 3 minutes to 20-30 seconds.
we taught them how to leave a voicemail that was intriguing and would capture somebody's interest AND how to get out of voicemail to see if they could get them live
using the "no scroll rule" they can now send emails that are tight, succinct, relevant and easy to read and decide upon
we increased the number of attempts to get somebody using a mix and match of techniques that would increase the odds of getting to someone
how to use social media, blogs, LinkedIn, FB, Phinkit, Twitter, databases and more to get to people more easily
how to anticipate and handle objections more effectively to get more appointments
finally, their job was to get the appointment AND THEN DECIDE if it was a good one, or they should delay the meeting. Kind of like catching a fish and deciding if it was big enough to keep vs. begging the fish to go on the hook.

Before I got home or in less than 12 hours I received two emails saying how the techniques we discussed got people appointments they otherwise couldn't get.

What do you do? What questions do you have?

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Gerhard Gschwandtner said 5 months ago

How do you create and sustain motivation in sales? Join the conversation with S. Anthony Iannarino, the top award winning sales blogger and keynote speaker. Click on any image below to start this 6 min video.

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Mike Kunkle:

I lost over 90 pounds in 2012. I worked out between 4-7 days a week and checked-in to Life Time Fitness on Facebook almost every time. Facebook friends kept saying to me, "Mike, I wish I had your motivation."

Finally, I replied with something like, "No, you don't. My motivation sucks. I'm often tired after a long day, and I don't want to get up off the couch and go to the gym. You don't want my motivation. You want my commitment, and there's a difference."

Even when motivation lags, and it does from time to time, your commitment makes the difference. I wish we'd stop talking about motivating (especially other people), and start focusing on fostering commitment.

This is also more in line with Daniel Pink's (watch his incredible TED video) research in Drive... he cites the great "motivators" as purpose, autonomy, and mastery. If you hire the right people, guide them to a greater purpose, give them the trust and autonomy (not abdicating your role in their management, coaching and development, just giving them some breathing room and recognizing their brain and abilities), and create a culture of development and mastery, people will feel committed and seem "motivated." But I still think the better term is committed. Just like culture eats strategy for lunch (ala the Drucker quote), commitment eats motivation for breakfast. ;-)

I think you're right on the rejection thing, as well. You stop calling when you let yourself feel "rejected."

At the same time, I do believe sales reps, and everyone else, need to take a hard look at how they spend their time and where they are most likely to get a return for their investment. I would probably only employ the "they die, or I die" mantra, if I felt absolutely certain that both of us could benefit from the mutual relationship and doing business together... or, I would at least put that prospect on the slow-drip plan, with a less rigorous follow-up plan. And I would try to find ways to add value over time with ideas, articles, networking contacts, to keep the relationship fresh, without every contact being a prospecting attempt. That approach certainly has helped me gain a few "hard to obtain" clients in my day. But not at the expense of making other sales that had a higher likelihood to close or more compelling value prop. Just my opinion.

Keep the great stuff coming.

Replied 5 months ago

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Gerhard Gschwandtner:

Thank you Mike for sharing. There is an amazing insight in Dan Pink's TED talk where he makes business people painfully aware of how business keeps ignoring the discoveries made by science. This video is a must see for sales leaders and comp management experts.

Replied 5 months ago

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Gerhard Gschwandtner said 5 months ago

Join the conversation with S. Anthony Iannarino, the Gold Medal Winner of the Top Sales and Marketing Blog. In this five-minute video he talks about Sales Training and what B2B needs to learn from B2C sales

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Mike Kunkle:

Thanks for including my question, guys! Here's some response/commentary from me.

I couldn't agree more with creating a culture of ongoing training and coaching. The quote Gerhard cites about doing what others won't today, to do what others can't tomorrow, is so insightful and true. When I started in sales, I was thrown to the wolves with little training and no coaching. So, I read and listened to everything I could get my hands on. Because of my background in music, I audio and video-recorded myself several times a week, practicing like crazy, rehearsing the things I read and heard. It made a world of difference. That year, I personally outsold an office of 5 other people. When I finally became a manager, I trained and coached constantly. Our office grew by over 600%, year over year. It works.

I do, however, understand why sales leaders hesitate to take reps away from sales activity to train and coach. Most sales training does NOT produce the desired results (see below for why), so just committing to do it more often, may not matter. In fact, it could make things worse, contributing to the false belief that "sales training doesn't work." Argh! That drives me nuts. Poor sales training doesn't work (or even good sales training poorly executed). Good sales training, done well, produces great results.

It needs to be the RIGHT training, preferably culled from top producers in that industry, company, using that product set, with their target customer-base. It has to produce results, if used in the real-world. If you pick even a great program off the shelf (without customizing) and implement it poorly, don't be disappointed when results don't improve.
The training needs to be well designed for learning to occur. It should separate knowledge and skill, and treat each appropriately. For skill, there must be PRACTICE (just like the quote) and FEEDBACK, with a chance to re-do, after feedback. (Role play, baby. It's what's for dinner. Stop whining and eat your spinach. ;-) Your comment about squeezing training in on another agenda or creating a massive content dump… so true. Neither of those is "good, well-designed training." Let's all get real with each other in 2013, and stop this insanity.
Management must understand what is being trained, and know how to diagnose how well it is being used and how to coach to close skill and performance gaps. Management must understand what is being trained, and know how to diagnose how well it is being used and how to coach to close skill and performance gaps. (Yes, I am aware that I wrote that twice ;-).
The behaviors must then be further reinforced and coached *over time*, so the rep adds the skills to their long-term tool belt, and use them appropriately.

So, having said all that, let's go back to my original question. I think sales training does need to change. If buyers are doing so much research on their own, engaging sales reps later and later in their decision-making process, and buying through growing leverls of consensus, reps had better be prepared with new mindsets, dialogue and diagnosis skills, engagement capability, value-creation behaviors, and be able present solutions in new ways rather (if I hear the word "pitch" one more time, I might scream). They need to understand how to create partnerships, at the appropriate levels (meaning with the appropriate roles/levels in the prospect organization and at the right depth, based on the match between the prospect organization and their own). If we think the same ol' set of sales behaviors of the past are going to differentiate us for the future, well, let's just say we're in for a rough ride in 2013 and beyond.

Lastly for today, I couldn't agree more with your take on Product vs. Sales Training. They must be combined. Product training is facts and figures. It's head stuff, and a little skill in talking about it. The real value lies in creating realistic scenarios, where the rep must USE what they learned in sales training and match and discuss products appropriately, solving problems in real-world, complex cases. Simulations. That's how you prepare people for the real-world, and hone the skills that matter to buyers.

Well, thanks again for the great content and for addressing part of my question. I have to run for now and hope this has added some value to the discussion. I look forward to future videos and any thoughts in return.

Mike

Replied 5 months ago

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