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Written by Jeff Hardesty
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Thursday, 14 September 2006 |
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Word Count: 1630 How to Double Your Sales Appointments in Half the Time; Part 3
In Part 2 we discussed how to determine if a sales action is a critical sales performance competency, and we determined the following:
· It is an Action that is tied directly to the end result (Good or Bad)
· It can be individually isolated and trained to for Improvement
· It can be objectively ‘Benchmarked’ and Measured
Next, we identified that the act of communicating one-on-one to a ‘Targeted’
prospect with the objective of setting an appointment as a KEY Core Sales
Competency, because nothing happens until you get in front of someone.
And the measurement of that competency was determined to be your
‘Conversation-to-Appointment’ ratio which nationally averages out to
somewhere between 4%-18%.
And if we choose to build a ‘Prospecting System’ to support a sales
performance training objective to improve that ratio it would enable us to set
more targeted ‘Top-down’ appointments in less time. And achieving that would
allow us to obtain additional results and make us more money.
Not an unworthy mission for sure.
Additionally, we listed (6) sales prospecting reasons why the national
‘Conversation-to-Appointment’ ratio is only 4%-18%.
Our mission for Part 3 is to isolate each of these reasons, understand why the
majority of the sales population lives by the ‘Definition of Insanity’
(Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result) and
then develop alternative strategies to raise our Conversation-to-appointment
ratio.
Sales Prospecting Error #1
We don’t seek to first (Before we pick up the telephone) understand the
Prospect’s internal business challenges parallel to our solutions offering,
and then model our appointment communication approach around it.
How many times have you received a solicitation call and listened to a stranger
communicate nonspecifically about who they are and what they want. Let me say
that again…”Who THEY are and what THEY want.”
Just the other day I received a telephone call (I accept them ALL because they
provide a great X2 training ‘Lead source’) and the nice lady on the other
end of the line started to tell me all about who she was and what her company
did.
I let her go on for a while and then asked her a specific, closed-ended
question:
“Do you understand who I am and what I’m trying to accomplish as it relates
to what you are selling?”
Well, she did not. So I kindly left the door open to her if she decided to check
out my website and find out (first) “Who I am and what I want.”
Don’t you think that’s fair? After all, aren’t most business people
(Business levels tied to fiscal responsibility) open to learning about ways to
recover costs, improve productivity, decrease risk, increase profits or provide
a measurable Return on investment as long as it gets to the point and in line
with one’s own ‘Internal language’… not in a nonspecific marketing
language of product/service and feature-benefit.
Instead of “Who you are and what you want,” try switching to “What you
know specifically about ‘Me, Myself and I’; MY responsibilities, MY business
objectives and how you think you can help ME meet them.
The web is a great resource tool for investigating general business objectives
of a company; items like business web sites, 10K reports, annual reports,
investor sections, Press releases and published articles. Scanning those items
prior to picking about the telephone is your first winning step in the process;
“Who they are”.
Now for the second part; “What they want.” Think of this in terms of title
of responsibility and how your offering (if the shoe fits) can help them meet
their personal business objectives or what I like to phrase ‘Marching
Orders’. If you don’t know, go get some Business Acumen training around the
title of responsibilities you choose to call on. Because you want to be able to
discuss specific business challenges as it relates to their title of
responsibility.
Or if you are a self-directed person, do what I’ve done for years. Interview
each new client and ask them what type of communication would make them sit up
and take notice coming from a stranger’s initial business contact. Develop a
stock series of questions to allow you to document what is important to them as
it pertains to accepting business appointments and outsourcing solution
providers.
You’d be amazed at the amount of valuable data you can collect just by asking
for 5 additional minutes after closing a new sale. ‘Go to school’ on your
new clients and earn a Masters degree in ‘Business Title Insight’.
Sales Prospecting Error #2
We settle for a business level of contact that has no direct fiscal authority.
Your ‘Playing Field’ is who you decide to call on and why. And there are
basically (2) strategies in picking your ‘Playing Field’; a ‘Bottom-up’
approach or a ‘Top-down’ approach.
The following is an example of a Bottom-up approach. A Telecommunications rep
initiates a telephone call into a company and asks the question “Who handles
your telecommunications needs?” Guess where they are sent? If you said
‘office manager’ you guessed right. If you said ‘Head Janitor’ you
weren’t far off. Is there anything ‘wrong’ with that? Not really; it’s
legal and a lot of folks out there do it.
But let’s think through this option as a ‘Business person’ would.
Historically, a bottom-up approach promotes a:
· Lower 1st appointment to Proposal ratio
· Lower Closing ratio
· Higher Sales cycle
· Lower Average revenue per sale
That being said, from a Business person view, if we had our choice, we would
choose a ‘Top-down’ approach; meeting with the highest appropriate level of
contact for our product/service.
And this is important. If our product/service is tied to a measurable Return on
Investment, in soft or hard dollars over time, we need to be initially engaged
with the correct title in our Prospect company. And that’s the fiscal
authority that can make a business decision in line with our business solution.
Sales Prospecting Error #3
We sell our ‘product/service’ instead of selling the diagnostic steps in our
‘Evaluation’ Process
So far we have decided to call on the highest appropriate level of contact for
our service offering, someone that is tied to the P&L; simply, they have
some ‘Skin in the Xbox And Xbox 360 games You Want">Game’. And we know with a ‘Top-down’ strategy we need
to understand who our target Prospect is and what they’re trying to accomplish
as it relates to what we are selling. And that’s BEFORE we pick up the
telephone, right?
Imagine now we make that prospecting call and start to talk about our
‘Widget’; meaning our Product’s features and benefits, our excellent
customer service, how many years we’ve been in business and our fantastic
customer retention rate.
Are you beginning to understand now why the average
‘Conversation-to-appointment’ ratio is 4-18%? You might as well read off
your Marketing Department’s latest brochure. This is a major sales prospecting
mistake because it doesn’t speak first to the correlation between what your
Prospects general business challenges are (By industry and title of
responsibility) and how your service has helped other business people with the
same titles and internal challenges.
The $100,000 question is how one goes about transitioning from a Product/service
specific conversation to a ‘Business Reason to Meet’ conversation.
My answer to this question is to communicate your company’s service solution
as a ‘System’. One definition of a ‘system’ is a series of Components
and Elements that when working in unison affects a required result. It makes
things better. It lowers that ‘Business Challenge’ wall.
Those ultimate business results could be cost recovery, lower overhead, higher
employee production, increase profit margin, more return on investment, faster
time to market, etc. That depends on your particular system’s solutions and
what business challenges they are tied to.
The ‘Components’ of your system are sub-systems comprising a series of
elements that deal with particular business issues. As an example, if you were a
Security Solution Provider your components might be themed Loss Prevention,
Business Operations and Risk Management, each again dealing with a relevant
business challenge.
The ‘elements’ of your ‘System’ are the individual products/services
that you provide your clients depending on their unique business challenges and
where they may have some ‘leaks in the ship’. Communicating to individual
elements specifically during a prospecting sales call will take you down the
‘Slippery slope’ of low sales appointment conversion ratios and low sales
commissions.
In-between your Components and elements you have internal Business issues. In
the same Security Solution Provider example, your prospect’s business issues
could be Fire/Life Safety, Theft, Sweet-hearting, Vandalism, Sabotage, Robbery,
and Harassment just to name a few.
It’s your responsibility for an ‘effective’ prospecting sales call to sell
the ‘Diagnostic steps’ in your evaluation process; to appraise if your
‘System’, with its series of Components and elements can facilitate lowering
your prospect’s ‘Business Challenge’ Wall; effectively gaining a Return on
investment in a measurable way; because ‘Business people’ are accountable to
ROI.
In Part 4; How to Double Your Sales Appointments in Half the Time, we will
discuss the final 3 Sales Prospecting Errors and outline some proven solutions
that will head us toward our worthy goal of spending Less time to achieve more
targeted ‘Top-down’ sales appointments.
Jeff Hardesty is President of JDH Group, Inc. and the Developer of the X2 Sales
System®, a blended training system that teaches sales professionals the
competency of setting C-level business appointments. Jeff can be reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Calculate your sales team’s ‘Sales Performance Competencies’ here:
http://convertmoresales.com/marketing_blitz.php
Submit your numbers for a complimentary 30-minute performance consultation with
Jeff Hardesty:
http://convertmoresales.com/roi_survey.php
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