Look at any day’s worth of emails or cruise through any group in LinkedIn and you’ll find a hundred different opinions on cold calling. “Cold calls are dead!” “Five new ways not to make cold calls!” “Cold calling best practices!” For over 30 years in most marketplaces, sales reps have been driving through their territories doing face-to-face calls trying to find their next deal and if you weren’t good at face-to-face calls you probably didn’t make it.
Having that face-to-face skillset was foundational for selling copiers to the many targets that purchase copiers; however, the times are a changing! Recently, I’ve heard many reps claim that phone calling doesn’t work and like those opinions above, calling for appointments by phone is simply a waste of their time. Is it? The facts are most reps spend less than 15% of their time executing phone prospecting, so it’s not surprising that they may not be great at it.
There is an amazing amount of transition happening in our industry requiring a significant change in one’s market approach. Some will make it, some won’t. Failing to identify the necessary changes to keep your company relevant will just put you in a slow downward spiral. How your sales organization finds new business has got to be a priority and measured. One thing for sure, walking into a building and asking for the CEO/CFO certainly isn’t a successful process overall. Sure, you may get in a time or two, but the amount of time wasted in trying to talk with your next decision maker doesn’t offer an appropriate ROI for the cost. If you get in at all, you typically don’t make it to the C-suite and with the deliverables we sell like managed services, that’s who you’ll have to engage.
As companies demand more from their technology providers you must realize that the managed services and software solutions are strategic deliverables and as such, require an approach skillset that can reach the C-suite. Simply put, it is harder to get to the C-suite but if you don’t develop those processes, you will hear sales reps say your competitor just got another one.
It’s not impossible to drive a significant number of C-Level appointments; it’s just hard. But most of our sales teams are not built to set appointments; they’re built to run all over town looking for an open door to walk into. Managed print and managed I.T. services are very beneficial if you share their values with the right target. So how do you do it?
In basketball the term “full court press” is a process that applies maximum man-to-man pressure on the opposing team. No one gets down court without being fully covered and this often creates success in preventing the other team from scoring. Setting C-Level appointments is equally successful if you apply a process that’s focused on setting appointments where your team is trained and competent in its execution.
On a recent conference call I heard intense frustration from a junior sales rep that had been making phone calls for appointments and had zero success for quite a long time. The anger in his voice depicted a rep that had given up and probably wouldn’t be around much longer. After the call the owner asked me, “What can you do to help him be successful?” and I asked to see the job description that was used to hire him. NOWHERE did it request or require that this job would require a skillset for setting C-Level appointments. It described territory management, must have a technology aptitude, hard worker, must I go on? The facts are, as your market changes and as competition gets stronger, you have to redefine each step of your sales team profile. Come to find out that junior rep had never EVER had success in setting appointments.
Secondly, while he was describing his experience in trying to set appointments, he verbalized the words and phrases he uses on the phone. When I asked the owner, “Did you provide him the value statements and scripts for his calling?” I was told that the reps make that up themselves! How sad! Sales reps don’t get to make up your company and product’s value, you do! You owe it to them to provide them with a rock solid understanding of who will buy the values you deliver and how to articulate those values. Then they owe you practice and perfection on delivering those values.
I don’t believe everyone is built to be an appointment setter. I believe that is a position that some are GREAT at and some are not. It’s not your cousin who has some time to spare or a technician’s wife. You need a professional sales appointment team!
It amazes me when dealer after dealer will tell me one of their biggest challenges is acquiring new business and when I look at the design of their sales team, no one has the responsibility for capturing new prospects. Yeah, you can tell me, “That’s what every rep is supposed to do,” and I’ll show you a thousand reps that fail at setting new business appointments.
You want C-Level appointments? Build an appointment setting team, hire for that position and build processes and compensation to drive their success. Please don’t tell me you can’t afford it. Ninety percent of the dealerships I work with could easily create this team and these processes by simply shifting dollars around. This team is the most important team in your company. So put your money where the future is.
They’ll need tools that move as fast as they do. A CRM, click to dial capabilities, auto transcript, call recording and simple clicks to assign an appointment to your killer presenter. Get them fresh, current, validated leads and not some eight-year-old list that mandates six months of recon before they know who is dead, out of business or new in their position. Making them a detective vs. an appointment setter slows everything down drastically. This team needs to be motivated, energized and excited. Pay them and watch your company grow.
There are professional appointment setters out there, so shift your strategy and build a comp plan (I have a great plan) to attract them! After all, how many would you need to significantly change things? Two or three, imagine how exciting coming to work would be if you had a C-Level appointment generation team setting a couple solid C-Level appointments each day! WOW! Do you feel that?
Getting C-Level appointments is hard! But please don’t tell me it can’t be done. The way we set up our sales team has to change. It’s like a lumberjack trying to cut down a tree with a dinner knife; no it’s not impossible but it won’t happen for a long time and you won’t make a lot of progress either.
What’s the phrase from that movie? “If you build it they will come!” So build it, but build it right—take any failing dollars you have in your budget and shift them to attracting and building your C-Level appointment setting team and watch amazing happen.
Yes you’ll still need to develop a solid value proposition, collateral, a process, a presentation, share calendars, a comp program, accurate data and tools. But if you do build it, I promise you from what I see out there, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.
C-Level appointments are not impossible to set, but you have to WANT to get them. You can’t put in your 3rd string players in when facing the 1st string (C-Level) at a prospect’s company. Do you remember what it felt like in those power years where your company was growing like crazy? Remember that? There’s no feeling like it!
