#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”

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”

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”

Where am I going with this one?  Well I have been thinking about how to motivate a few of my team members as they struggle with the day to day hurdles of teleprospecting.  

As a manager I believe it is one of my jobs to remove as many of the hurdles they face day to day as I can.  Some examples of these hurdles that I can remove either on my own or with the help of a client, are the lack of a targeted list, or perhaps the absence of a targeted message to overcome a specific objection they face, or if they are not comfortable with a technology they are representing.

In attempting to remove these hurdles I have discovered that there are a number of hurdles that people face that they put in front of themselves. 

What do I mean?

Well in the world of teleprospecting we can be bogged down by a wide range of things, from discouragement to the feeling of frustration at lack of success.

From my perspective as a manager I must work to get them to focus on the fundamentals of teleprospecting.  For example, it is critical for them to understand that not every call is going to develop into an opportunity (or success in terms of a qualified opportunity).   But if they focus on gathering a piece of information regarding an account or prospect with every attempt and view these as a “success” then the self-imposed hurdle of discouragment/frustration will quickly go away.   And most importantly the fundamental of  gathering information is one of the quickest paths to uncovering the targeted “tiger with no stripes” – the sales qualified leads!

“My 2 Cents”

That said I am a firm believer that in order to “sell” or “mine” for an opportunity an individual must be comfortable with the product or material he/she is speaking about.

However, in my experience what is more critical then understanding every nut and bolt of a solution is the ability to have a business conversation with a target prospect.

I have to step back and define what I mean by “business conversation”.  This is a conversation that has set goals a BDR/Teleprospector is looking to accomplish:

1. Uncover what is going on today? (company, technology in place, etc.)
2. What are the problems that they face today or foresee in the future? (budget shrink, technology specific gaps – e.g. ERP is not robust enough for future growth, etc.)
3. How do they envision fixing the problems and when?

If the goals of this “business conversation” are met a BDR/Teleprospector should be able to disposition the target prospect “in” or “out” as an opportunity.

Now product knowledge is important but there are pieces that fall higher on the list. 

Being able to understand what areas a product can help, who the target is, what concerns the target has in their role (CIO versus Systems Administrator), objections a BDR/Teleprospector will face and how to overcome them, and finally (perhaps most importantly) is a high level understanding of the space the solution fits in (e.g. Virtualization – what is it, why people are deploying it, etc).

Armed with this type of background, the skill set to listen and digest what you are hearing and think on your feet,  and not every minute detail of a solution/service a BDR/Teleprospector is ready to generate opportunities that will lead to forecastable revenue.

“My 2 Cents”

While this concept is valuable, it has been my experience that each problem or process is unique and that trying to “fit a round peg in a square hole” can lead to a number of pitfalls.  Most importantly the assumption that the problem or process is taken care of by just this simple application of past experience.

I do not want to come across as saying that past experience is not valuable, in fact quite the opposite, I believe that it is not only critical but required to be successful.

One area where this resonates with me is in managing my team of “BDR’s” or Teleprospectors” depending on who you ask.  As many of us are aware “problems” arise constantly when managing a team.  They can be problems that the entire team faces or an individual on the team is faced with.

An approach that works for me is as follows:

• First identify the problem (who, what, why) – this includes the very important step of having a dialogue with either the entire team or the individual faced with the problem. 
• Next is to draw on past experiences with the specific team or individual or experiences that are similar outside of the current team.
• Next step is to create a unique solution plan for the problem or process in question.
• Execute on this solution or process
• Finally, and most importantly is to follow-up on the solution and measure the outcome.

One note, during and after this follow-up it is critical that you have the ability to objectively look at the outcome and evaluate if it has worked to solve the problem or created a process that is efficient.

“My 2 Cents”