dis·dain
disˈdān/
noun
the feeling that someone or something is unworthy of one’s consideration or respect; contempt.
“Her upper lip curled in disdain”
The above dictionary definition says it all. If you are a sales person in the business to business space, then likely, at some point, you have to pick up the phone and make a call to a new prospect .
As I’ve talked about in previous posts, there’s no shortage of supposed experts or methodologies available from those who profess to have the silver bullet; the perfect solution for getting people you don’t know to answer their phone, and talk on the phone.
Of course, we all know it isn’t easy, and anyone who has endured this most detestable part of a sales person’s existence will tell you that it eventually sucks the life out of you.
The purpose of this post isn’t to mimic the path of all the other self pro-claimed “experts”, but rather to approach this dilemma from the opposite side, the side of the person on the other end of the phone, the target prospect. The problem with just about all “cold calling” methodologies is that they focus on what to say, what to offer, and how to close. While these are all necessary skills, they are completely ineffective if you fail to secure the prospect’s ears and attention in the first place. And to do that, you need to start with understanding what makes them so resistant to cold calls in the first place.
The essential mistake that most people who prospect make, is that they don’t consider the true environment or circumstance in which their call is being received. The target prospect of today is a completely different animal than the prospect of years past. This is important to recognize, because cold calling products or curriculums you’re likely employing today were created many years ago, in a time that was very different, in a time that these tactics worked. They most definitely don’t work now.
So, in no particular order, I ask you to consider this:
1) Email
Today’s prospect is busy, I mean really busy, and exponentially busier than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago. Consider the fact that AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe all showed up around 1995. Popular webmail services (such as Hotmail) started popping up in 1996/97. In those days, business and prospecting were conducted through mail, memos, phone calls, or meetings. What this means of course is that there was no email, and we all know how much time catering to email requires today. Email makes for substantially longer work days, starting much sooner, and ending much later than the work days of the past. So know, the target prospect is being asked to respond to mail, memos, phone calls, meetings, and email.
2) Voice Mail
While it’s difficult to pin down an exact date that calls started going to direct lines or extensions, it wasn’t until the mid to late 90’s that it became the ubiquitous technology that it is today. Before that, calls were received and forwarded through switchboards and receptionists. Why is this relevant to better understanding a prospects life in 2015? Because before direct lines, it was generally impossible to reach a prospect on the phone outside of traditional office hours, 9 to 5.
Additionally, the only way a prospect got a message in those days, or a request to return a call, was because an actual human being (receptionist, secretary) wrote the message down in long hand writing. As a result, there were no long winded diatribes. There were no sales people etc. waxing on poetic for minute after minute, to the point where a really high value target prospect could spend the better part of a day just listening to voicemail messages.
So know, the target prospect is being asked to respond to mail, memos, phone calls, meetings, email, and voicemail.
3) Mobile technology
Cell phones didn’t really start to proliferate until the mid 90’s. Although the technology had been evolving for many years prior, early iterations were large, cumbersome, and expensive. These were clumsy and expensive devices, and were mostly used by people with very deep pockets. Consequently, few actually possessed a mobile device, and therefore few ever attempted to reach someone on a mobile device. Now of course, it is considered acceptable to call a prospect on their mobile device, almost any time, or any day.
So where are we now? Target prospects are being asked to respond to mail, memos, phone calls, meetings, email, voicemail, and mobile technology.
If this is starting to sound like the 12 days of Christmas, so be it, because that is the point. I could go on and on, but the moral of story is this, when using the phone to prospect, what you’ve probably been taught – have a compelling offer, or make a value claim etc. etc. – isn’t nearly as important than how you approach someone on the phone.
It is your posture and tone that is most important because if you project posture and tone correctly, you will communicate that you appreciate the prospect’s circumstance and work-load. In short, you will position yourself not as the know it all sales person, but instead as an empathetic human being who understands that the last thing a target prospects wants in today’s day and age is yet another cold call.
If you embrace the burden that today’s prospects bear, then you will stop making cheesy and likely disingenuous claims about “how you can save them money” or, “we have an offer that we know you’ll be interested in”, and instead, start by asking if they would be willing to talk with you, and really mean it.
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