#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”

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”

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”

I have found that when we remove the “peel” and take a look at the process that a marketing organization uses as it approaches opportunity generation, we find very good content with a number of things that work well, but a finished product that does not appeal to the sales organization and ultimately feed the success goals of the organization as a whole. 

Sorry for the analogy, but I find it easier to put it into this framework.

A number of my clients find that they are very adept at creating messaging, product awareness, interest levels, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), etc. (the potassium/fiber/taste of the banana) but the process that these are transitioned to sales (further qualification to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)) or the timing of that transition is something that causes a breakdown. (Lack of a peel to hold it all together into a nice appealing form) – does the analogy make sense now?

What I have discussed and worked closely with my clients on in a number of these cases, which has proven critical, is not only a clear definition of what Sales is looking for in a Sales Qualified Lead from Marketing but a feedback process that allows for the continued improvement of the quality of that MQL and transition of an MQL to SQL.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss specific examples of different feedback processes that I have found effective.

 “My Two Cents”