How to Reach the Correct Prospect You Want to Sell to Fast
Last week I joined a colleague of mine on a trip to Bryant University to interview soon to be grads to fill the Business Development Representative role at our company. Although I was impressed with all the candidates, one woman really stood out to me. Not only was she incredibly excited about the position and clearly did her homework on the company, but she said something that really showed her understanding of one of the most important rules of cold calling. When I asked her to tell me about her internships and what she learned about inside sales while partaking in them, she said “The most important thing I discovered while making phone calls was that you need to find the right person you need to speak with and you need to find them quickly to make the best use of your time.” This has to be one of the most important training topics we teach new hires, and the fact that she knew this already really impressed me. After meeting with this candidate, it made me think about all the different methods you can use to get to the right person fast when making cold calls. Here are some of the ways to do this so you make the best use of every phone call:
- Always talk to administrative assistants and other gatekeepers. The management team drilled this into my head the first day I started: Do not hang up the phone when prospecting a company until you have spoken to someone live. Remember, the best way to ensure this happens is to use 0#. A real life example would be if you had a prospect’s name, for instance, the CIO of a large healthcare company. I suggest you call into the company and ask to be forwarded to them. Once his or her voicemail picks up, leave a voicemail and then immediately dial “0#”. This sends you directly to the CIO’s admin. Once you reach the admin, politely ask if the CIO would be the most appropriate person to speak with, or if there is someone else on the team that could assist you. In most cases, there will be a direct report of the CIO that you can be forwarded to from the admin. Here you have made the best use of your time and have made your way to an influencer quickly. Many inside sales reps dial their lists of prospects all day without making any live connects, therefore, they are missing out on a lot of opportunities to talk to someone else within the company that could be the right person to sell to.
- Mass email your call list. I recently received a massive list of 65,000 contacts from one of my clients. Each company had between 20-100 contacts associated with them. You can imagine how overwhelming that was for the BDR on the project. In order to reach the most appropriate contact quickly, the BDR sent out a mass email with the subject line “Referral Help.” Whether you have a list in the 1000s, or if your list is smaller, this is a great, quick way to get pointed in the right direction fast. You will be surprised how quickly your inbox fills up with emails from prospects that point you to their appropriate colleague you need to be speaking with.
- Be resourceful with tools like Jigsaw to compliment your existing call list. As we all know, a lot of times lists have inaccurate contact information. A great way to find alternative names within a target company that is given to you is to use Jigsaw to search for new names and titles that you may not have already. Odds are, the original contact name that is given to you is not the right contact you should be speaking with. As a result, you want to filter in new contacts as a method to get to that right person fast. When in doubt, search for the CIO or CEO of a company within jigsaw, dial their number, and talk to their admin so he or she can point you to the right person on their team instantly.
Realizing that the key component of cold calling is to get to the right person fast is extremely important in the inside sales world. What is it that you do to accomplish this??