SalesSquawk

Sales Is A Performance Game!

Solomon Says: Sales is NOT a numbers game, sales is a performance game.  We use the numbers to measure our performance and improve!

Right after I wrote the last article, I began seeing a thread through the blogosphere about sales and sales prospecting.  Specifically the good and evil of cold calls as a marketing tool.  Frank Rumbauskas, who wrote Never Cold Call Again discusses cold calling as a way of looking desperate, Jill Konrath, My favorite blogger and one of the "smart guys" in sales, (gender non-specific reference) writes about how a callers true intentions shows and Nigel Edelshain who bless his heart, thinks a lot like I do, starts by saying "Sales is a profession rife with cliches."  Only a gentleman speaks like that.  He then goes on to point out the foolishness of old school management that suggests it doesn't matter whether or not someone is good, only active.

One would think the other side of that coin is represented by my friend and soon to be blogger, Connie Kadansky who is an international presenter on "Overcoming Cold Call Reluctance."  In fact, I have watched Frank and Connie discuss this quite publicly on the Yahoo Group for professional sales people AzSalesPros.  The reality here like most arguments is that when you look at what everyone is saying, there really is no conflict.  There are perspective differences that are put in place by simply understanding the dynamics from a higher viewpoint.

As Sales Professionals, our job is to find new people to express the value of our product or service to on a fairly regular basis.  Even if we have an established account base, very few sales professionals survive or thrive without finding new opportunities.  Every sales organization has a different mindset for what that looks like and while rarely true, one would hope that mindset has been validated as to the efficiency of cost and time per customer acquisition.

Our problem in whether or not cold calls make sense is exacerbated by a lot of emotional baggage about selling as a profession both for the caller and the callee.  It is impacted by issues of voice mail and gate-keeping (See Jill's link above) and it is just beaten to smithereens by management who knows neither how to train nor execute a cold call campaign.  It is absolutely no wonder in our supply and demand society that Frank gets tons of demand for ways of building business without cold calling.  In fact I salute you Frank for finding a niche with a monstrous demand.

This does not however mean that cold calling is a bad idea.

The purpose of cold calling, like all Opportunity Discovery effort is to find someone who can choose a product/service, and is interested in what I offer.  Period.  The value of cold calling to any campaign is specifically determined by whether or not the time and cost to find that person and help them become a customer is within the windows of a companies budget and time-line.  Period.  These are performance issues.

Pardon me if I am getting long winded (fingered?) here, I am about to launch into what is important to understand in ANY Opportunity Discovery campaign.

1. People have an inherent distrust of sales people due to a mistaken notion that ALL sales people are singularly focused on their own agenda and the customer be damned.  As professionals, we know that is not true.  Our job is to help our prospective customers recognize we will support their agenda and earn a living doing it.
2. No decision to make a change in life comes before a mental calculation of "what's in it for me(wiifm)" and "what is it going to cost me."  When wiifm is greater than cost in my mind, than I will move forward.  Until then forget about it.

If we have chosen a cold call campaign then we must speak to people recognizing their distrust, and craft our message so that the value is clear to the buyer.  It is really that simple.  (OK, not necessarily easy... but simple.)

Why would we even want to do this?

• From a sales and marketing perspective, cold calls allow us to cover a lot of real estate in a very short amount of time.
• Cold calls are one of the least expensive means of developing buyers.
• Presuming you have done your homework in targeting the list and building your campaign, it is a very quick way to find customers.
• There is no faster "live fire" feedback method to develop skills as a sales professional then getting on the phone and talking to someone, or even a voice-mail system.  Voice mail will absolutely provide you feedback on whether or not your message provides a clear value proposition.
• Almost all sales positions require telephone work of some kind or another.  As mentioned earlier, cold calling builds proficiency at all phone work and in fact in all sales interactions.

Does all this suggest I believe cold calling is the end all be all of sales and marketing?  Far from it.  It all simply means that when we remove the hype and myth from this activity, it is easy to see why it is a staple in the world of sales and more importantly that it has a place.

I also understand Jill's preference for finding other ways and clearly appreciate Franks notion of improving your effort through more effective "Opportunity Discovery" methods.  I do have to strongly disagree with you here though Frank, Cold Calling done well doesn't make you look desperate.  (Done poorly, OK, it can ruin your day)

One last thought, whatever Opportunity Discovery route you choose, no one ever complained about making the message briefer.  Hopefully the value in this message was worth the long windedness.

Respectfully submitted

Michael D. Goodman

Prospecting Efficiency

I have been on a tear trying to discover something that has proven more elusive than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  I mean come on, with so many smart people in sales you would have thought someone would have come up with a good list of the most efficient way to prospect for any given situation.  Sounds simple doesn't it?

When I say the most efficient way to prospect, I mean a way of understanding that if I have about this much money, and this much time, than using means X will yield about this kind of result.  Solve for X?  My contention, (moving rapidly to contentiousness) is that every prospecting method has a general yield of buyers and a general expense in time or money to achieve.  It seems also that we wouldn't automatically go out and use the fastest method because it could easily cost more than we have available.  Nor would we necessarily use the least expensive method because it may take a very long time to get the results we need and we likely don't have that much time for success.

But if we had a list of all of the means available and knew historically what it would take in time and money to achieve results, than we could easily pick a method we were comfortable with, could afford and would bring us the results we choose.  I am still in a fairly simple frame of mind aren't I?

Unfortunately there is another variable in the mix.  As Pogo once said, "We have seen the enemy and he is us."  You see any method I choose is impacted by me, not just an observer but a participant in the outcome.  If I am not as skilled, or gasp, if I am more skilled in the effort, than what ever the results are that are standardized are no longer connected to the standard.  Heisenberg grows more uncertain every day!

So not only do we need a standard number to use for determining the most effective means of prospecting for our own purpose, we need to measure our own use of the method.  Remind me in another blog to talk about methods for measuring personal performance.

Meantime, I asked over 600 of my closest sales friends to help me build a list of all the prospecting methods out there.  The list is certainly not complete and has only been active on the list for a 36 hours as of this publishing.  I expect it will grow over time.  In fact if you have any thoughts on what to add to the list, please send me a note.  I typically don't bite.   Author@USSalesGroup.com

To see what we have come up with so far, click here.  Download prospecting_methods_data.xls 

As this project goes forward I will keep the list updated.  From time to time I will upload the newer versions of it and whatever help you choose to be would be much appreciated.  If this notion makes any sense to you Then after your examination, I would recommend you click the delicious link below and save this post.

Warmest regards,

Michael Goodman

USSalesForce Corp.   

Pick up a phone.

I am always amazed at how difficult we make a simple effort of finding someone interested in what we have to sell.  Sometimes I get to watch folks get so waxed up about picking up a phone and asking someone if they want to know more about the offering that they get all hivey and dance around like lunatics on a full moon.  Gotta wonder what that is all about but frankly I suppose it is unfair because I am not one of them.  Can't hardly walk a mile in that pair of moccasins when talking to strangers is something that came natural when I was a wee lad.

For those who don't see it that way however, it almost seems like getting hit by a truck would be more fun.  I have been fascinated by this thing for sometime and I think I have come up with the answer.  Anytime we are in a position to judge ourselves "not good enough." we are pretty persistent in bailing out of that environment.

Pick up a phone?  Ask a stranger for money? What am I, some kind of nut-case?  Well OK, the truth of that not withstanding, really that is what a salesperson is asked to do kind of regularly, ya know.  So I have this vision of the me who I am not (you) getting ready to pick up a phone with mini-me on my shoulder screaming what a horrible person I am for the audacity to bother someone at their home or place of work and (sigh) ask for money.  And there I am believing the voice of mini-me which puts me smack dab in the middle of my own little judgment gate unable to do my job because all the 10,000 voices mini-me represents is pretty much how I felt before I picked up the phone in the first place.

The thing is, if you can't see how you are bringing value to your prospect you can't make it in the business. Stop.  If you can, than you really would be at an advantage when you recognize that NOT calling is the real disservice.  If you bring a service people need, and you are dignified and integral on the phone than the thing to do is recognize how many people will be lost without your service.

These days, I spend a lot of time with a company that provides remote, on-line, data back-up automatically to small business.  Now I don't know about you, but if my computer died and I couldn't get the info back, I would be out of business and broke pretty quickly.  So having this kind of service is not really a disruption but a huge value to me once I recognize it.  A year or so ago though, one of the guys on the team was having a terrible time prospecting.  My job? pump him up.  We had a long discussion on how many people would be hurt if he didn't connect with them to save their data and essentially their businesses.  Really kind of broke it down to families having to file for bankruptcy if he didn't do his job.  OK, so maybe I overdid it a bit.  At the end of the day the guy recognized how much value he brought to his community and lived to fight another day.

That is my hope for all the "call reluctant" folks out there.  Remember how important what you do is to the people you serve. Then god love you, pick up a phone.

Very truly yours.

Michael Goodman