Successful Qualification Transitioning
It's your 20th call of the day. You just left 10 voicemails, you've been screened by 7 admins, and had 2 prospects dismiss your cold call immediately. FINALLY, a prospect picks up the phone, ready to talk to you. After introducing yourself and your business, you have the green light to proceed. The problem is, you have a surplus amount of information as to why your product is better than the rest, but have approximately 30 seconds to peak interest. Where do you go from here?
In previous blogs, I stress the importance of a clear purpose of your call. More importantly, this needs to be followed by a compelling transition question. Peaking interest and getting the prospect to become involved in an interactive business conversation can be the hardest part of a cold call. Too often, the rep will transition straight to product information or product "dumping." The trick to a successful transition is to probe your prospect to start talking about what is causing them a headache on a day to day basis. It is important to stay in control of the conversation while keeping the ball in your court. The goal is to have your prospect tell you about the major issues they face before relaying the right information that will resonate with their needs.
A compelling transition question should simply always reference the most common industry pain that your product/service alleviates.
Another popular, yet crash and burn transition is going straight to, "do you have any projects in place?" This conversation opener still makes me cringe. A successful transition question should be vague, never leaving the opportunity for a no answer. This makes it way to easy for the prospect to push you off the phone. That being said, the objective of a successful transition is to prompt your prospect to engage in a business conversation surrounding their pains. Now learning about how your solution will solve these problems really sounds like a no brainer!