inside sales - Artful Thinkers

Call reluctance is experienced by all business professionals, no matter their role. Executives returning messages from upset customers, accounting personnel calling on past due notices and technology team members shopping for service providers. Imagine if your entire day’s success was measured by the number of calls you made to convince strangers to buy your goods and services.

No. Not right now. No, thanks. Not interested. Maybe. Not in our budget. Hang up. Send me information. Yes. That is the typical day of a sales person who is building their pipeline, repeated over and over again. And we wonder why it is hard to find and retain great sales people. There are not many of us who would put at the top of our career ambitions to be rejected several times a day.

Cold calling is rarely listed as a favorite work activity; however, for millions it is what pays the bills. Selling is fundamental to our economy. There is no business until something is sold. Embracing the fact we all need to make cold calls, how can we take the chill out of one of the most important activities in business? Here are a few tips to prepare for a day of cold calling:

1. Know your target market. Every buyer is unique; however, they will have similar demographics, sociographics and psychographics. Spend time understanding the common data characteristics, along with behaviors and motivators. For example, if you are targeting a small business owner, know what drives them to change. What fears do they face in making buying decisions? What would benefit them the most personally and professionally when they say yes? The more you know about them, the easier it will be for you to make a “warm call” into a known, targeted buyer.

2. Feel the buyer’s pain. There is a natural tendency for inexperienced cold callers to talk about their reason for calling more than finding out why the buyer would benefit from their products or services. Stop. Listen. If you are doing the most of the talking, you are losing. You will never hear the buying signals when you are spewing facts, features, and generic benefits. The best technique is to understand and relate to your buyer so they have confidence you are doing what is best for them, not you.

3. Quantity matters. It is far easier to deal with rejection if you can get a “win” during your calling spree. Plan with enough time in a single day to make calls in blocks of several hours. One, right after the other. Hang up, dial the next. If you stagger your calls throughout the day or over longer periods, you are simply prolonging the pain. Dial until you get to yes and then dial more. Target how many yes calls you need in a day to hit your weekly and monthly goal.

4. Needs analysis pays off. Do your research on your buyer. You will be expected to speak to their individual business needs. There is no excuse to cold call blindly. “Google them”. It takes seconds now to find valuable data online about buyers. You have access to profiles in LinkedIn, you have company websites with executive profiles, products and company information, public reports and news. Do your homework.

5. Call with intent. What is your goal in cold calling? What qualifies as a “yes”? As with any business function, have a goal and objective with every call. The only way to get to the yes is to ask – ask for the sale. Get agreement along the way of your presentation and make sure you are aligned in your mutual objectives. You are solving a problem for the buyer. Countless deals are lost because people think making the call is the goal. That is not the win. The win is getting the deal. Ask for their business. It only counts when they say yes. When they say no, ask again.

A sales person has to remain calm in the chaos of measurable rejection. They have to keep their eye on the “prize”. One more call to a yes. One more opportunity to use their real skills and talents of negotiation and the power of persuasion to fulfill a need.

Respect and reward those that you depend on to make the calls to grow your business. If you are the cold caller, prepare to win. Know your target, be diligent in your process and never forget to ask. It is the glimpse of hope, the possibility of acceptance and the incredible satisfaction of closing a deal that keeps a cold caller motivated. Commissions aside, most sales people will say they get the greatest reward from winning. Winning when a customer says yes!

“For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.” – Zig Ziglar

Jamie Glass, Founder, President and CMO of Artful Thinkers

Additional Sales Related Posts by Artful Thinkers

https://artfulthinkers.com/prepare-to-hire-a-sales-person

https://artfulthinkers.com/questions-sales-candidates-ask-that-should-stop-the-interview

https://artfulthinkers.com/a-bad-sales-hire-can-crush-a-small-business

https://artfulthinkers.com/5-essential-topics-for-a-winning-sales-proposal

The decision to bring a sales person into your business is the most important decision you make as a business owner. Financially, it can be very rewarding or it can be devastating to your bottom-line. The reality is that your hiring decision can propel you to mega-success, crush your business or land you somewhere in the middle.

There is no absolute science in making good hiring decisions. Know your associated real and opportunity costs of making a bad hire. Calculate the risks of the person not working out before you sign the offer letter. Will your business survive making a bad hire? How soon will you need to pivot if performance is substandard?

Based on the financial risk assessment, you can qualify whether you should invest in a professional resource or hiring profile tool to reduce the risk. In other words, decide if you will pay now or potentially pay later.

What else can you do to protect your long-term financial security as a business owner and make an informed decision about hiring a sales person?

Ask candidates questions related to sales activities. Don’t focus on their industry knowledge. Industry knowledge is trainable. You don’t need a nurturer or relationships person. You need a sales person that will ask for money! It is the secret skill that will bring revenue in the door. There are two types of sales people: hunters and closers. In the beginning, you will need someone who is good at both. They will cold call, with or without leads, and they will ask for the close. These are “rare birds”. Ask questions about the candidates history with sales cycles, average size of deal, average daily cold calls, number of customers sold each year, and presentation-to-close ratios. These are all indicators of past performance and predictors of future success. When a resume lists awards for exceeding quota, that does not tell you what they sold in the past is going to translate. You want to know what they did to exceed quota. What activities made them successful?

Invest in training and sales support materials. Basic training materials should be product feature and benefit lists, industry keyword definitions, product overviews, competitive analysis, market positioning statements and scripts of common objections and how to overcome them. Utilize your team of in-house experts to train your sales people. Set up daily Q&A sessions with product engineers, marketers, customer service personnel and anyone else that touches the customer. Share all the secrets, good and bad. The more knowledge and access to experts the sales person has the better prepared they will be to overcome objections. The first two weeks of any new sales hire should include at least two hours a day training and practice calls.

Set sales quotes and activities quotas. An experienced sales person may only close 1-2 deals per year, with an average deal size of $2 million. You need to clearly outline your expectations and what you will inspect regarding number of calls, meetings, presentations, proposals and closes. Assigning the closing numbers without understanding how many calls that might take will cost you severely. You must know, for example, 500 calls or 20 face-to-face meetings may result in five closed deals at an average sale of $10,000. If this doesn’t meet your expectations, adjust accordingly. Then measure the number of calls to see if you are on pace each week. Early indicators will provide you the opportunity to pivot quickly.

Know your exit strategy. What is the maximum time you can invest in a bad hire? The answer can not be zero, because every hire has inherent risk. If it is 90 days, then have a very specific plan with measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can inspect every week. You only have 13 weeks to determine if you will terminate employment or keep on staff. Sales people are used to 90-day probationary periods. You should have inspection points with planned exit strategies at 6 weeks, 90 days and 180 days. Cut sooner and learn from your mistakes. A year-long bad hire could close down your business if you are not well capitalized and depend on this new hire’s revenue to sustain your business.

Identify the characteristics that could be a threat or high risk to your business. Character matters as much as sales skills. You need to adequately assess the “fit” of this person in your business. You are handing over the keys to your future. Can you trust this person? Is this a person you would take with you to all your important meetings? Does this person dream big? Are they kind, friendly and positive? Will your customers like this person? If you can afford a hiring assessment by a professional, with tools that can define their character and skills, it will be worth the investment and potentially save you from making a big mistake.

Do your homework. Never, ever skip reference checking. Dig deep! Ask community and business people that might know the person, look at their LinkedIn connections and recommendations. Reference and background checks are as important as due diligence when buying a business. You will be writing substantial checks to this person on a promise. They will be creating your business first impression. Reduce the risk by learning from other’s experience. Again, it may be in your best interest to hire someone to do your reference checking to get a complete picture.

Finally, use your gut. Do they represent you? Your professional and personal instincts will serve you well. A bad hire can scar you and make you timid in making a future decision. Know that it can take four or five hires to find a rock star. An early success in hiring a sales person is rare, so have a backup plan.

Sales people can make or break a business. Know your upside and downside when hiring a sales person to promote your business.

Jamie Glass, CMO and President of Artful Thinkers. Creative. Strategic. Results.

Tag: inside sales

Take the Chill Out of Cold Calling

A Bad Sales Hire Can Crush a Small Business