Sales Prospecting Perspectives

One of the KPIs I look at when analyzing inside sales effectiveness is the percentage of leads that don’t show up for the initial sales call. Common theory places the blame on the inside rep for not doing their job properly and, while I have written blogs about how inside reps can negatively effect your no show rate, I feel that the inside reps sometimes take too much of the heat.  In fact, I would argue that a good amount of the time the sales rep is just as much to blame for no shows. Here are 3 things sales reps do that lead to a good prospect blowing off the discovery call.

One of our company mantras is that, if done correctly, calling campaigns are a great way to bring in predictable amounts of forecast quarter after quarter. Unfortunately, a lot of teams out there just haven’t mastered the whole “done correctly” part. We try to be delicate when asked to critique our client’s internal efforts. “Well, telling the prospect to buy from you or else they’re stupid may work, but maybe you could try (this) instead”.  Since you don’t sign a check to me, I will come right out and give you some of the more common mistakes I see (no sugar coating).

People that haven’t done it have no idea. Unless you have sat at a phone all day and pounded out dial after dial taking beatings all day long, you do not know how mentally taxing it can be to cold call. You get sworn at, hung up on, chastised and some people even have the nerve to tell you how you should have cold called them in order to get them to talk to you…which they won’t… and then they hang up on you. I have often likened it to walking into a mall and asking people what color their undergarments are. If you do it 100 times you’ll get slapped, punched and screamed at, but maybe ONE person out of the 100 will tell you to call them tomorrow to discuss why you need to know about their undergarments. That one person is your win for the day.

Over the years I have seen a lot of different marketing tools come out that will lessen the need for cold calling. They are usually brought to market as being more effective than dialing for dollars. The truth is, we want to think that these tools are more effective than calling because running a good inside process can be a pain in the ----.

VP Marketing – hey man, just a reminder that you’re up for a blog today.
ME – seriously? You really think I have time to write a blog?
VP Marketing – Oh shoot you’re right…its end of quarter….never mind.
ME – Wait…oh yeah its quarter close. I was talking about the sales team golf outing!

Short Answer: Yes

Longer Answer: I talk to a lot of people that don’t “waste” their money running teleprospecting programs because their prospects aren’t buying until (insert absurdly small timeframe here). This is an extremely risky move. It’s like trying to pick someone up after ignoring them at a bar all night and then hitting on them after last call when they are getting into a cab with someone else. By that time someone has already bought the drinks, made the small talk and laid the ground work in order to get into that cab.

About a year ago I competed in one of those 10-13 mile obstacle course geared towards testing the participants’ physical and mental limits. A buddy of mine had asked me to do it with him and I thought, “Hey I’m in good shape. I run, cross train, lift weights …. no problem.” I was fairly confident that I was going to finish pretty easily and then I’d probably hang out and drink beers while the out of shape slobs struggled to get through the course, crying until they eventually quit. Pansies.

No show sales calls are like let down movies. (Hangover 2) You get all fired up when you see the preview (lead write up) only to be completely let down because you wasted time on nothing. I use an hour and a half for a sales call, 30 minutes of prep, 45 minutes of talk time and 15 minutes of note taking. When someone doesn’t show we not only lose the potential of sale, we lose the other calls that we put off to take the current one.  Going back to the movie analogy, it’s like seeing Hangover 2 when Shawshank  Redemption was playing at the same time. If you’re the person running the teleprospecting team, you have to worry about not only the lack of forecast that is to come, but also the risk that you will lose the sales team’s confidence. A couple of bad leads in a row and studies show that sales follow up efforts drop quickly.

I’ve been catching a lot of blogs and LinkedIn questions recently about sales process. What is the best process to use, should there be a corporate wide sales process, what’s the best method to close a deal, etc… While I think a sales process can be useful in guiding you along a certain path, I feel that too many sales people rely on their process to close the deal for them and in my opinion it simply isn’t the most effective way to do things.

Who dictates the value of the social media, the market or the social media?

I continue to read about the growing importance of a social media strategy within your company’s overall marketing plans. It has come to the point of if you’re not, Linking In, Digging, Stumbling spacebooking, myfaceing and OrangeCupping, you are seen as a dinosaur. (I made up OrangeCupping - you know you were about to look it up.)