Let me get this straight. I’m not talking about mass market business to consumer calling, which is prehistoric and will die out. I am talking about professional, business to business calling. Or as I prefer to call it:

“Identifying  people who potentially might have challenges you could solve, or goals you can help them achieve,  and seeing  if you can help them. If you both decide it warrants you meeting or further action then you can agree to do so”

 I do think the Sales Training Industry, bloggers and commentators, have been guilty of for too long is a basic ‘school boy error’ that we tell all of our clients not to do. We have got caught up on the process and the tool and not the outcome. Let me explain. The debate rages over the effectiveness, and legitimacy of cold calling which is fundamentally wrong. What we should be focusing on is the desired outcome i.e  A business meeting, or appointment, rather than just one of at least 20 ways of achieving that. This is a failing perpetuated by the Training Industry who still hold ‘cold calling courses’ rather than courses aimed at getting an appointment. I could go even further to say a more relevant desired outcome in today’s modern, tech savvy world could be to get a sales presentation. This might not even need a physical appointment due to the ease of use of online ‘webinar’ programs such as www.gotomeeting.com.

If I wanted to learn about gardening I wouldn’t go on a course about grass cutting, I would go on a course designed to show me how to develop a low maintenance, well planted and decorative garden. Grass cutting is just a small part of that. Does that make sense?

What about social media?

Again, social media is one element of an integrated sales strategy that includes using the telephone. Recently, I was working with a large IT company. One of their sales team has 300 named accounts from which he is targeted to make around £10 million in sales. When we first spoke, he was down to his ‘tough nuts’. These were the last 42 contacts that he could not get in touch with. When I listened to his approach it was an exact replica of the ‘canned’ spiel popularized by Stephen Schifman in the 1970′s. He was stalled at the ‘Gatekeeper’ who he had given the same spiel to at least 3 times previously. With no success. When we discussed where he would go from here it was plain that the next step was to diarise a call back in a few weeks.

I was shocked! I thought the world had moved on from that. There a complete lack of, what I term, ‘sales guile’. Being tech savvy sales professional I could immediately think of at least 10 different ways of getting in touch. The first thing we tried was a simple Google listing on the person’s name by using “person’s name”. Within 5 minutes we had a whole goody bag of information to work with.

The IT Director in question had:

• Recently spoke at a conference on emerging technology. Areas of his topic were actually in line with the solutions provided by my client.
• He was listed on a social networking directory – Zoominfo.com with an email address and an indication he was happy to be contacted for professional reasons.

Within 5 minutes we had the means of contact and the reason. We spent a few minutes drafting an email and then sent it off. It obviously referenced the conference he spoke at. Within 3 hours we had a reply and within two weeks a meeting.

The moral of that story is if your desired outcome is to get a meeting then focus on that. Don’t get too caught up on the mechanism. Ensure you have enough ‘sales guile’ and flexibility to find a way. On my training workshops we always stay focused on how to achieve the outcome and we cover at least 30 ways of getting there.

Would You Like To Know Your Prospects Industry As Well or better than They do?

The second essential element of ‘sales guile’ is leveraging technology to understand your prospects Industry almost as well or even better than they do. How much would you pay for an information agency to email you every time there is a change in your prospects industry, or if they submit a press release, or if they win a big contract, or if they are mentioned in a blog, or if there was a legislation change in their industry, or if there was a change in their clients industries and if there are whitepapers or reports being issued relevant to your Industry and those of your prospects and customers?

Would you pay me £1,000 per month for that?

Google will give you all of this, and more for FREE! Simply enter all of your existing and prospective customers names, products, competitors (and yours for that matter) and key individuals names into a simple tool called Google alerts and you will be emailed every time they are mentioned anywhere on the internet. That is amazingly powerful!

Once you have done that you should also head over to Google Insights (just google it!) where you will find one of the most valuable research tools money could buy. The beauty is, it’s free. Google insights will allow you to enter a few key search phrases and search on these to see the internet activity on those terms.

Diagram 2,  shows a simple search on sales jobs, sales recruitment and job sites. These might be extremely useful areas to know about if you sold into the recruitment marketplace, for instance. Within 2 minutes you can tap into the following valuable information:

sales research

Area 1: This shows the search trends over time for those key terms. Interestingly sales jobs has double the search term of its nearest competitor, sales recruitment. Also there are clear areas of seasonality on search terms with the summer being the highest and Nov – February being the lowest. This is all powerful information if this is your market place.

Area 2: Again great UK specific information which shows you where the majority of searchers are coming from. You can go down to a city or town level with this. Where do you think the highest density of searches for ‘Management Consultancy’ is. I will give you a clue. It’s two UK places that compete in a boat race. Can you draw the significance?

Area 3 and 4: These show the most frequent search terms related to the phrases originally searched on as well as the ‘what’s hot’ section. This is the latest, high rising search terms. Do you think they might have significance in your industry? Look out for brand names, competitors names and new ‘buzz words’ to be aware of.

I have only demonstrated about 10% of what you can do with Google insights. When you are playing with it could you tell me why most UK searches for ‘ice cream’ come from Farnborough and what the hell is an ‘ice cream bike’?

The 80′s and 90′s were the ages of the ‘opening lines’ and slick telephone tricks. Today’s modern selling environment is about Sales Guile, sales creativity and being able to master at least 10 different ways of getting an appointment – not just cold calling.

Amongst the many things that really stood out for me last night night was the sales meeting of the female team and the hotel manager. I have seen some bad meetings in my time (and have to admit to running some of them), but this was a great example of how not to do it.

The challenge entailed setting up an overnight laundry and winning and completing as much business as possible in less than one day. ‘SrrrrAlan’ had arranged for the team to meet with two potential clients; firstly a hotel and secondly a fish mongers.

The female team made a complete hash of their meetings as I have disected below:

• Lack Of Research — Both teams had little or no prior knowledge of the Industry. Whilst the male team did some research and rang around some existing providers on the way to the meeting, the female team picked a price from thin air without doing any research. This lack of preparation showed when they quoted a figure of £4900 to do the job. The Hotel manager was obviously taken aback as his existing contractor charges around £200. I know this is an extreme example but the moral of the story is – do your research and understand the market pricing and the value you offer. The female team clearly did not understand this. I am forever encouraging my clients to increase their prices based on the value they bring but I don’t think I could have trained anyone to sell at over 20 times the market rate in a highly competetive, commodatised marketplace – without adding any value!

• Sell on Value to the potential Client — Having lost all credibility from the outset the female team then tryed to substantiate their offering with their added value services. “We will provide you with 2 Account Managers, and you will have our direct dial mobile numbers”. Perhaps if you were setting up a business bank account this would be something of value (although i would argue not as service should be a standard – not an option!). However when dealing with washing and ironing hotel sheets with a turn around of a few hours this had no value whatsover. How many sales meetings do you hold where you are offering your prospect something that has no value to him whatsoever? Unless you understand and professionally question the prospect, never assume that you know what will be of value to them.

• Inability to Say “We were wrong” — With so much at stake for the teams the hotel client was critical. The female team selling at the meeting had no fall back options, nothing to negotiate with and not enough courage to say “We are sorry, we made a mistake. Lets start again”. Everyone in the room knew it was a set up meeting for the Apprentice so they could easily have been allowed this slip if they had the courage to own up and start again. In reality they had very little to bargain with but at least they could have made the decision as to wether they wanted the business on the terms of the hotelier

• Over Reacting to the Outcome — Having made a mess of one meeting they failed to stop, asess where they had gone wrong and learn their lessons. They went to the next meeting without doing any research and ended up quoting around 20% of the usual price the job was done at. The client was obviously stunned and had to ask about 5 times to make sure he had heard correctly. Even then the team stuck to their guns and kept to the price. Silly mistake.

These lessons are easy to learn and will ensure your sales meetings don’t go the way of the female team who lost profitable work and gained akward, unprofitable work.

In coming sales training blog posts I will be having a look at how you can build value and demonstrate that at face to face meetings.

Speak with you soon

Peter