#9 – Respect your prospect’s time!

When you reach someone live it is important to be conscious of their time.  Why?  Well your initial goal by targeting the organization is to locate the appropriate person to speak with and after that it is to gain some of their “time” to qualify first and, if appropriate, move the sales process forward. 

What I mean is that the role of the teleprospector is to penetrate an organization and qualify them as an opportunity for the sales team (uncover pain/need, etc).  A critical step in this qualification process is to set the appropriate next step expectation with the prospect and advance the sales process.  So the “close”, if you will, of a teleprospector is to book some time on the prospect’s calendar for the next step in the sales process.

As a result of this we all must remember to be respectful of the prospect’s time, as this will break down some of the traditional barriers that exist in moving the sales process forward.

“My 2 Cents”

So here goes…..

#8 – Always target multiple contacts inside an organization

Regardless of the organization size (unless it is a 1 or 2 person shop) you are targeting it is critical when inititially trying to penetrate a given organization that you attempt to reach multiple contacts.  When you pick-up the phone to call cold an organization and do not know exactly who you are supposed to speaking with, you must make sure you are reaching out to a contact at every level of the organization (perhaps a C-level contact, a business decision maker, and a technical decision maker – or 3 contact titles that fall into your target market.)

By reaching out to at least three contacts you will accomplish two things – you will find a quicker path to the most appropriate person as it relates to your call and number two you will be generating awareness inside the organization at different levels that can help you gain insight into the organization and where the  pain/need you are looking for may be festering.

Check back tomorrow for #9!

“My 2 Cents”

http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2009/02/seven-tips-for-improving-cold-calling.html

Please take a minute to read this posting by Brian Carroll.

He is providing a series of tips that I agree with across the board……number 4 for example (respect the executive assistants)………I could not agree more with this statement.  They are the window into the organization and have exactly what you need at there fingertips, a map to the target organization.

Please come back next week as I add to the this list of seven. 

“My 2 Cents”

What does this question refer to?

Well on the surface I think we probably all understand it.  In the world of teleprospecting for qualified opportunities, I am using the analogy to refer to making sure that if you have someone on the phone you are using every tactic you have to keep them on the phone.  This idea is not just relevant to conversations with contacts you have identified as the person you want to talk with, but also, and maybe even more importantly, to conversations you are having with folks as you navigate an organization.

What do I mean?

Let’s say I make a phone call into an organization for which I have one contact on my list and it turns out that contact is no longer with the organization – I could take a few paths:

• I could hang-up and do some research to find another contact (in my book this is the last resort)
• I could ask the operator who replaced the contact
• I could explain to the operator the reason for my call and attempt to get passed to the appropriate contact (the organization may have a policy in place that makes this choice not work)
• I could ask for the IT help desk and leverage them as an avenue to the correct contact 

All reasonable choices.

So my question is why would you not try them all while navigating this organization when you have a person live on the phone. 

And finally my advice – when you are in the trenches of teleprospecting why not use every avenue you have learned to further you in the in the process of uncovering a qualified sales opportunity – or simply put don’t leave any arrows in your quiver!

“My 2 Cents”

Creating opportunities that generate forcastable revenue is no different.

An organization must have a process for creating opportunities in place that creates a framework for success.

I have found that the most successful organizations that I work with are ones that take a look at the entire process and evaluate each piece of the puzzle.  Below are a few of the steps in the process of creating opportunities that generate forcastable revenue.

• Messaging
• Marketplace Awareness
• Lists of Prospects
• Marketing to the lists
• Tracking and Nurturing of MQL’s (marketing qualified leads)
• Following-up on MQL’s (teleprospecting)
• Determining when the MQL is ready for transition to sales
• Transitioning MQL’s to sales as SQL’s (sales qualified leads)
• Feedback on SQL’s
• Conversion %’s of SQL’s to forcastable revenue
• Sales Process/Cycle

Again this is a list of items off the top of my head, each one of these has a number of moving pieces that need to be planned for and evaluated as well.

I believe the bottom line is this, if you want to employ a successful process around opportunity generation you need to look at every piece of the puzzle and make sure they are all lined up to support and drive the success of the process.

In this case producing forcastable revenue!

“My 2 Cents”

Okay, so I think most folks are familiar with the idea that every person is an individual and that we all have personalities that are unique.  This is what makes the world great, but this also raises a number of things that we can clash over or miscommunicate on.

What I am saying is that we must keep this in mind when we are managing a team.  Each team member is an individual, each team member has their own personality, each team member has their communication style, each team member has strengths and weaknesses, each team member may learn differently – I think you probably get the picture.

An item that I find critical is that regardless of personality or trait – if we struggle to communicate and we meet resistance due to these differences – we as managers must take an approach that works for the individual we are addressing (remember each team member is unique).

I know that folks may read this and say “well that is common sense” – well it may be but in many cases we do not practice this and therefore we need to be reminded of this – so here is my reminder for us both .

“My 2 Cents”

The posting  I read was focused on  a recent poll that Brian conducted of Marketing professionals asking  what causes them the most frustrations when it comes to B2B Lead Generation.  

I recently wrote on one of the topics that the poll results highlighted – the importance of a closed loop feedback process while running an opportunity generation program.  I could not agree more with how critical a feedback process is for both the constant improvement of the quality of opportunities delivered to sales and ultimately the conversion of the opportunities to pipeline revenue

“My 2 Cents”

It seems odd to say this – how can you have autonomy (??) inside a process that is expected to be followed without deviation?

Well I believe that it is quite simple – trust.  Huh?

If you trust in the individuals you are managing and their ability to think outside of the box in an attempt to be better, then giving them a level of “autonomy” on a daily basis is something that can not only lead to better performance and higher job satisfaction, but it could ultimately lead to a more efficient and effective process.

For example – we work with a call plan, or to elaborate, a call approach that we teach our reps and look for them to follow.  This call plan is not something that we just put together because it looks nice, but rather, it is a philosophy on cold calling and how to effectively and efficiently penetrate an account. 

A couple of years ago a rep on my team approached me with something that he had been working on – it was a definite deviation from the call plan he was taught.  My first knee jerk reaction was that he was trying to get out of making phone calls and perhaps was not aggressive enough to be successful – without divulging to much – this idea is something that we have adopted company wide and has lead to a dramatic increase in opportunities produced.

Just a quick snapshot of the value of affording a person some “autonomy” inside a rigid process.

“My 2 Cents”

That being said, a critical piece of my job is training a new employee on what my clients are looking for in a qualified sales opportunity and what we need to do to achieve this deliverable, while at the same time, make the opportunity extremely appealing to the client’s sales rep.  A concept  I have deleveloped, perhaps concept is not the right word, but approach that I take and find extremely valuable is to relate the process of uncovering that opportunity to the creation of a painting.

What do I mean?

Well frame it like this – my clients look for us to deliver qualified sales opportunities – what is a qualified sales opportunity?  This includes all the information that we think about that is relevant to any sales process – pain/need, current environment, budget, decision making process, and timeframe.

When I describe to a rep what I would like them to uncover while qualifying a prospect, I use my “painting” analogy:  imagine if I showed you a painting of a beach, a nice white sandy beach, with rolling waves, a bright clear blue sky, and warm sunshine – this is probably pretty appealing !  But I then ask the question – what if I showed you that same painting of the beach with a chair and umbrella, perhaps a cooler next to the chair, a surfboard, and a seagull flying.  How much more appealing is this painting – the answer is “much more.”

How does this tie to opportunity generation – the more details around an opportunity the more appealing it is to a client’s sales rep, the more excited they are to follow-up on it, and most importantly, the more likely that opportunity is going to become a piece of forcastable revenue.

“My 2 Cents”

Sometimes it seems like the most simple interactions are the most valuable.   I sat at my desk this morning and sent over an opportunity that had been uncovered for a client.  Before I continue let me take a quick step back and explain part of the process I use:

In all of my client engagements I connect the teleprospector that uncovered the opportunity with the sales rep that is responsible for the corresponding account to have a brief discussion on the opportunity and help answer any questions the sales rep may have.

Back to my story, I included this step this morning while delivering the opportunity.  A few email replies followed and I watched the connection for a brief chat occur.  I always ask my team members to come and debrief with me after they have chatted with a client’s sales rep.  During these conversation there are a few comments made about the call itself, did they have any questions on the opportunity, were they happy about the opportunity, etc. (first piece of value – name and voice have been associated with the “magical” opportunity that appeared in the sales rep’s inbox).

Inevitably, and this is the second piece of value that comes from the interaction, the conversation between the two heads to a discussion about a number of things, such as other qualification information that may be of value or a recent call the sales rep had that would be an example of why they “won” the deal, etc.  From this portion of the conversation comes valuable anacdotal information that the teleprospector can use moving forward in there messaging.  After the debrief I ask the teleprospector to recap the anacdotal information in an email and send it out to other members of the team. 

I conclude my debrief with a simple question – “was the call valuable for you?” – the answer is always a strong – “definitely.”

So what happened next is what made me smile……..

45 minutes later a teleprospector walks into my office with a new opportunity they uncovered and they state – “I’m fired-up!  That email that was sent?  I read it and then jumped on this call, leveraged some of the information, and things just fell into place and the conversation took off!”………..and this is the third piece of value!

“My 2 Cents”