MYTH: Cold calling is a good idea

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MYTH: Cold calling is a good idea

July 2, 2007 in Prospecting, Sales Skills

In the “olden days” when I first started my business, over 95% of my sales came about through cold calling, which I had learnt to do really well when I worked as a sales recruitment specialist with Morgan & Banks.

At M&B – and in my business – it was very clear that if I didn’t bill anything I didn’t earn anything. So I got on the phones and I prospected to people I didn’t know – that is, cold calling.

This was well and truly before the internet was in mainstream use and I had the privilege of learning how to cold call really well.

But it is a FACT that in an essentially crowded market place of the 21st century, businesses require a series of “push” and “pull” prospecting strategies rather than one simplistic “push” approach to selling such as cold calling.

Cold calling is simply calling on someone who fits into your target market that you do not know and do not have a warm referral to give you an introduction.

However in today’s market, as I and others have found, focusing all your sales efforts on a cold calling campaign puts you at risk of missing many other prospecting opportunities.

I have had to adapt to all the other prospecting methods now available to us. I am not advocating the abolishment of cold calling from your repertoire, not at all. If done effectively cold calling can work, but it is only a small part of a now much wider prospecting strategy available to us.

The very act of prospecting is tactical marketing. In this networked society there are a number of avenues you can call upon to build up your list of referrals and leads to give you access to viable business opportunities.

The average person in the street knows about 800 other people in their network, and for those of us in sales jobs we should have 1000s of people in our network. How big and how warm is your network? Remember six degrees of separation?

Let’s just take banks and other financial businesses for instance. In reality they should hardly ever need to make a cold call. Just look at all the referrals, networking and sponsorship opportunities they already have available to them.

However the question is, are they using them effectively?

Whether you are a small niche player or a large corporate, businesses now need to have a far more integrated approach to generate and build sales leads for their businesses and their sales teams – “Push” and “Pull” prospecting strategies.

This is even more important for SMEs who do not have the big marketing and advertising spend many larger businesses can rely upon. Thanks to the internet, SMEs can really start to build a presence without the big price tag. However it still takes effort.

But first you need to know the answer to the following questions:

WHO is my target market?
HOW do I need to make contact with them?

Once you have identified who your target market is, think about all the ways you can reach them and how you can help them reach you. However, make sure all your prospecting efforts have a consistent message, because precisely how sales people position themselves needs to match the positioning of the business and how it chooses to position its solutions.

You could even position your sales people as advocates, business experts, industry supports or niche industry gurus to whom interested parties turn for solutions or sources.

So what push and pull prospecting strategies are available to you?

Let’s define “push” and “pull” first. Pull prospecting strategies are ways your business pulls people (ideally your target market) to your business for your sales people to then follow up on to identify viable sales deals. Push prospecting strategies are ways your sales people go out into the market and make contact with prospective customers — cold calling

Examples of push and pull lead generation modes are:

Branding and public relations.
Website and e-mail.
Events.
Phone calls and face-to-face meetings.
Referrals.
Direct mail.
Online marketing.
Blogging.
Public speaking.

Your pull and push prospecting strategies should ensure that your sales people invest valuable face-to-face or phone selling time with the right people on a consistent daily basis. Going out willy-nilly calling on anyone hoping for the best won’t cut it any more.

You need a clear strategy supported by some market research that gives you the necessary information you need to make informed decisions about how you invest your time and money in positioning yourself with prospective customers, especially if you do not have a big marketing budget.

So now you can also see why I am such a big advocate for an integrated team based approach with marketing, sales and service.

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Exceeding customers’ expectations?

June 18, 2007 in Sales Skills

If I hear “Oh let’s exceed our customers’ expectations” one more time I will scream.

Usually my response is: ‘Why don’t we just meet their expectations in the first place?’ Too many times the marketing hype (the promise) does not always connect with the sales expectation set up by the sales team, which doesn’t always translate into a service experience we were promised in the first place.

We are often left disappointed, jaded and, if it happens more than once, cynical.

Too many of us have stories of where we have been let down by businesses not fulfilling our expectations. We see broken promises, exaggerated claims, hollow offerings, no real value!

William T. Brooks talks about the promise-expectation-experience chain in his book The New Science of Selling and Persuasion. He says, and I agree, that everyone in the organisation should know what the connection is between promise, expectation and experience. Everyone who sees, talks with or comes in contact with a prospect or customer must be able to understand and execute this in all their actions. This is your competitive edge.

The marketing and sales tools you give sales people, customer service teams, service technicians, and anyone else in contact with a customer must support your integrated promise-expectation-experience chain. Otherwise, it will be seen as insincere and fake.

Brooks also says: “An inconsistent poorly defined marketing, sales and service strategy for the entire organisation results in an organisation fraught with finger pointing, blame, denial, backbiting, slippery revenues and reduced cash flow.”

Regardless of the marketing position you chose to take, it’s important to effectively communicate that position to all the internal teams who work with prospects and customers.

Sales, marketing and service departments must never operate in isolation! However this happens too often.

Sales people setting false expectations

Even if you get your promise-expectation-experience chain right, there are some scenarios that can also damage customer expectations and experiences:

Sales people who don’t know how to correctly analyse a customer’s situation and prescribe the right solutions. They give the wrong advice on how to proceed with your company.
Sales people who make all sorts of promises to prospects just to get a sale knowing that the business will never deliver but they will still get their commissions.
Sales people who can’t say NO and so promise unrealistic prices, or throw in “freebies” that aren’t free at all. Customers think these pricing deals are the norm and when a new sales person comes on board and informs them they were getting something at greatly reduced rates and now need to pay higher prices then of course the customer is ticked off. You can hear it, can’t you? “Why didn’t they tell me what the real price was in the first place?”
Some sales people sell deals they know the delivery team will find near impossible to deliver because of too tight timelines, extra staffing or product needed, all to make a sale and get rewarded (often at the expense of someone else).

Some questions for your consideration:

What do your sales rewards systems actually reward?
Is your business made up of competing cultures where each area is vying for leadership?
If you were a customer of your business would you get what you expected and paid for from your marketing literature, your sales team, or your products/services?

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Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus.

May 21, 2007 in Sales Relationships, Sales Research, Sales Skills

Last week I explained that my blog is called Sell Like A Woman because there is an increasing body of research overseas showing that woman are often outperforming men in achieving sustainable results in sales and client relationships. And I promised you I would start to highlight, from my research, what successful sales women do especially well. So here is your first snippet.

Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus.

I asked 50 highly successful sales women across a wide variety of industries about the differences between male and female sales people.

There was a uniform feeling among all the women interviewed for my project that female sales people are better at establishing a long-term relationship with a customer, are better listeners and find it easier to identify emotions and respond with empathy. Here are a couple of quotes from some of the women in the research project.

“I strongly believe that female sales people start from a very different place to our male counterparts. We start with the relationship. Rather than darting in and offering quick fix solutions, we take a longer term and ultimately more strategic view of the potential value of each client to our company.

“We are willing to be more patient in bringing a client on board, if it will generate better results. I think it also fair to say that, from my observations, women do more of the detail/paper/leg work themselves (rather than delegating it to others), are much better time managers, and less caught up in ‘appearances’ – less ego driven. If I were a client, I would rather have a female rep looking after my interests.”

Another had this to say: “Big generalisation: women tend to be better listeners, and men are better at asking for the business. Women are more patient and men are more direct. Women like to build the relationship, when men like to ‘consummate’ the relationship with the sale.”

All of women interviewed responded in unison, believing saleswomen have certain advantages over men. This surprised me, given that up to date, still, a vast majority of salespeople are male, and sales as a profession is still considered a male profession.

The results of my research are consistent with other extensive studies done. Rosenbaum (1999) found that women have a real edge over men when it comes to complex selling, and in particular they surpass men with respect to the following competencies:

Aligning customer/company strategic objectives.
Listening beyond product needs.
Orchestrating organisational resources.
Consultative problem solving.
Engaging in self-appraisal and continuous learning.

To help us come to grips with these and other competencies that make for good sales success, I will focus on a specific competency each week in my blog and this will give you the opportunity to explore how you use each competency in your work and sales careers – and how it affects your sales performance. Think about it like fitness training – bit by bit over time.

I welcome your feedback and findings.

Sell Like A Woman is purely about raising the level of consciousness of what qualities really make for great sales people (men and women alike) in the 21st century. So maybe we can begin to help managers clearly identify and articulate what they are looking for.

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Get me a woman

May 14, 2007 in Sales Research, Sales Skills

Some of you may be wondering why my blog is called “Sell like a woman”. First, Sell like a woman is not a feminist manifesto nor is it a male bashing exercise.

The creation of the title was inspired by an increasing body of research overseas showing that woman are often outperforming men when it comes to achieving real and sustainable results in sales and effective sustainable client relationships.

This led me to begin my research project and the book I am now writing, also called “Sell Like A Woman”. I have always been curious about women and their success in sales and wanted to explore the concept here in Australia and develop some Australian-based research as well.

So late in 2006 I found 50 highly successful sales women across a wide variety of industries. The information, stories and insights I received from these women were inspiring and fascinating.

In the beginning, I didn’t realise how profound the process would be for me and for many of the women on the project. It allowed us all the opportunity to connect with and learn from each other, to bring to the fore the real qualities that make for good selling and healthy relationships.

The ideas, experience and stories told by these women give great insights into what makes them and others like them successful, resilient, inspirational and most of all “real” when it comes to realising a sustainable fulfilling career in sales.

I cannot pre-empt how you may feel after reading this and subsequent posts, however many of the people, especially women, I have begun to share the research and findings with have felt vindicated, liberated and relieved.

Finally there was some evidence that gave legitimacy to how they chose to work and sell. They said the findings felt right and aligned with their experiences and results. The findings spoke to them in a truthful way that finally aligned with how they felt selling should be, and was for them.

You see for many of them, they were selling well, achieving excellent sales results and had excellent customer relationships, however, the prevailing paradigms for selling and the messages they were getting from management, training and the so called “sales gurus” were not matching how they felt they should sell.

Many of the qualities that distinguish these high performing sales women were often put down to nothing more than luck – ‘she was just lucky to get that sale’ or at worst ‘she slept her way to the sale’ etc.

Let me tell you there is no luck, tricks, secrets or having to sell your body when it comes to having successful legitimate careers in sales as a woman. Many managers now specifically want women in their sales teams. They are recognising the power of women in sales, yet many remain oblivious as to why sales women are often their star performers.

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What is good selling?

May 7, 2007 in Sales Research, Sales Skills

Like many people, I have always been curious about what makes “great sales performance”. This is a perplexing question that has been asked and attempted to be answered by many people over the years.

Also, are great sales people born? (most people believe this to be true – but it’s not). What does it take to be an elite sales performer, and can anyone learn how to sell well?

Many people have looked for one magic quality, one key ingredient that distinguished top performing sales people from all others – a magic ingredient with which only the special are anointed.

Here are some of those qualities that have been espoused as the one and only magic ingredient:

Not call-reluctant.
Resilient.
Extroverted.
Persuasive.
A good talker.

The trouble with taking a singular approach to defining high level sales performance is that it assumes there is a one-size-fits-all approach to sales, and only those people with that ‘special” quality can sell. This is certainly not the case.

This singular approach minimises and trivialises the complexity that is inherent in effective selling and disregards the constant adjustment needed to meet changing industry standards, market conditions, competition, corporate strategy and culture, personalities involved and so on.

Just think about how the role of “sales” has changed in your industry over the years.

If we wanted to try and isolate one quality above all others I would have to highlight trust.

Great sales people have always known that their success lies in being able to sell based on trust, transparency and doing what they say they will do.

But how do you build trust? That involves many qualities working in an integrated fashion. Effective selling is an integrated system that uses a variety of skills, behaviours and knowledge. Based on study findings from here and overseas, our research into sales competencies has revealed some interesting findings.

While traditional competencies such as basic selling skills and account management are required, they do not differentiate top sales performers from poor or average sales performers.

A US longitudinal study released in 2001 by Bernard Rosenbaum, “Seven Emerging Sales Competencies” revealed nine sales competencies: seven emerging and two traditional. The findings cut across all industries, contradicting the assumption that successful sales practices vary among different industries.

Highest performing sales people develop and use the seven emerging competencies despite the fact they may not have been modeled by their managers – many managers still do not fully recognise these competencies.

Although essential to performance, the two traditional competencies showed little differentiation between high and low sales performers. Successful sales people are not constrained by traditional practices, but work instead in ways they have found best.

The seven emerging competencies are:

Engaging in self-appraisal and continuous learning.
Listening beyond product needs.
Orchestrating internal resources.
Aligning customer/supplier strategic objectives.
Establishing a vision of a committed customer/supplier relationship.
Understanding the financial impacts of decisions.
Consultative problem solving.

The most interesting finding was that gender differences in sales competencies were found, with women rated significantly more highly than men on five of the emerging competencies. The author suggests this is reason to have a gender-balanced sales team.

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