The “Well you knows…” is a concept I named about fifteen years ago, and it continues to serve me well today. But as usual – for me, that is – it differs from conventional prospecting ideology.
In a traditional world, those who consider themselves prospecting experts generally subscribe to a number of common principles. The least understood is the one about “qualifying”.
If you subscribe to the accepted dogma of prospecting and cold calling, then you also believe that any B2B sales professional must streamline the business development process, and that starts with not wasting time with unqualified prospects. Sales people in this group employ numerous processes to ensure that those they reach out to are likely to have an imminent need. They look at data-bases, predictive models, outsourced lead generation, and many other datum to warrant a “just in time “call.
There are, of course, many other tactics that traditional sales people utilize to create that perfect list of prospects, but in the end, the results are strikingly similar.
No matter how well a prospect list has been qualified, scrubbed, and put through the wringer, it is inevitable that many of those first contacts will result in someone on the other end of the phone disengaging with many common – and not so common – justifications as to why it would be a waste of their time (or yours) to meet.
While I don’t profess that I’ve heard them all, here are some of my favorites.
• We have no budget.
• We’re happy with our current supplier.
• We won’t be re-evaluating that need until next year.
• I’m about to go on vacation.
• I just got back from vacation.
• We just committed to another vendor.
• We had a bad experience with your organization.
• I’m not the right person anymore.
As I said, these are just a few but I’m sure you’ve experienced others. In each case, these are the predictable responses, and they usually lead to you, the sales person, saying thank you very much and good-bye, or I’ll try you in another six months.
The problem with this is that by doing so, you deny yourself the opportunity to experience the “Well you knows…
The experience in it self won’t be foreign to you, but rather you’ve experienced it before and just haven’t realized the sequence of events leading up to it.
What is the experience? It’s the one where the same client that on the phone protested that they had no need, no budget, or no time, in-stead in person, after maybe ten or fifteen minutes of conversation leans back in their chair, crosses their arms while looking quizzically into the air and has a miraculous epiphany.
It’s the one that usually sounds like, “you know, now that we’re talking” or “I wasn’t aware that was viable” etc. etc. The “now that we’re talking” response can branch off in to many different directions. One could be, “maybe you should talk to my colleague” or “I’d like to have another meeting and invite ….” or whatever. The point is that clients rarely tell the same story in person that they tell on the phone.
People are different in person. On the phone, there is little real communication. Prospects see anyone on the other end of the phone that they don’t already know, in the same shade of grey, maybe black, as every other time waster they encounter. Prospects initial reaction, especially in today’s day and age, is to automatically assume that you will be a waste of time, someone who will offer no value, and will most probably become a pugnacious pain in the “culo”. (that’s bum bum for those who aren’t up on their Italian.)
It’s in person, where there is face to face contact that prospects more often than not engage more readily. In person, prospects can’t hide behind the veil of the faceless phone. In person, prospects are on a significantly more even playing field, where their emotions, expressions, and personal exposure are in the open and exposed, and from that, far less likely to be dismissive or standoffish.
In my business, if every time I had heard “no budget” or “not interested”, and had not pushed for a meeting anyway, I wouldn’t have the business I have today. In fact, one of the largest assignments I’ve ever won was with a client who on the first phone call told me that they already had someone who did the exact same thing as I did and they were very happy.
I met with them anyway, and the rest is history.