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Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Edition Mr. Cold Call's Weekly Tips!
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A Green Light to Get Past Gatekeepers
by Pop Icon Mr. Cold Call™
All of us would like to be able to pick up the telephone and speak directly with our sales prospect, right? The mechanics of this whole process sounds so easy and simple. However, there's more to this story, the reality of the whole process gets thrown off-track as soon as you speak with your prospect's assistant.
"Hi, is (First name of prospect) available?" You then hear your prospect's assistant take a deep breath and guess what they say next? "May I ask whose calling?" Right then and there they know the reason for your call. They know that you're a salesperson. They know exactly why you're calling and of course, you know the purpose of your call. Your goal is to speak with their boss and their goal is protect their boss's time. So what you want is what is in direct conflict with what they don't want you to have. When these contracting forces unite the outcome is not always in your favor.
At this point, once they figure out who you are they politely ask for your name and then conveniently put you on hold. Will you get through? To answer this question, let's go behind the scenes. While you're on hold there's a whole another exchange of dialogue taking place. As you wait, your prospect picks up their telephone and says, "Who's calling?" The assistant then says, "There's this guy on the phone from (Insert the name of your company here)?" Your prospect responds, "Go ahead and take a message."
Within a minute, the assistant gets off the phone with their boss and offers to take a message. Will you get a return call? If it's your first attempt the answer is probably not. How about your second attempt? Again, the answer is probably not. What about the third attempt? What about your fourth attempt? Only the top salespeople know the answer. Why is this true? Because they never give up and they don't let the passiveness of "I'm not interested" get in the way of their success. Their secret key is called persistence. Persistence combined with a positive attitude makes each and every call that you make memorable!
So how can you turn the light from red to green? That's easy just incorporate this persistence ideology into your cold calls. Successful people admire persistence and these are the types of prospects you should really be calling---top prospects. The top 20% should be on your target lists, you need to focus on the Crème de la Crème of sales prospects. So after you have called you have called your sales prospects four or five times, try the following scripting and see if your odds improve?
Let's set up the scene again, but this time we're going to incorporate elements of what successful salespeople do and what your sales prospect will respect. You pick up your telephone with this new sense of knowledge and say, "Hi, is (First name of prospect) available?" Once again, you hear your prospect's assistant take a deep breath and responds with the following: "May I ask who's calling?" Right then and there they know the reason for your call. They know that you're a salesperson. They know exactly why you're calling and of course, you know the purpose of your call. The chemistry, however, is a bit different this time around. Here's what I mean, keep reading.
After a bit of a pause you then hear the assistant say, "May I ask who's calling?" You then respond, (Insert the name of the assistant here), I hope that you admire my persistence, I've actually been trying to reach (Insert the name of the prospect here) for the past (Insert the number of months or years here)? The assistant responds, "I'll see if you (Insert the name of your prospect here) is available? You then respond, "If you don't mind, can you please also mention to (Insert the first name of your prospect) that I've been trying to reach them for (Insert the number of months or years here)? Perhaps (he or she) will respect my persistence or be curious as to the nature of my call?
You will be amazed how much more effective your cold calls will be with this approach. Since most salespeople give up after several attempts you will STAND OUT. The ones that give up actually help the ones that understand the importance of being persistent. If you're getting frustrated with your response rates with gatekeepers then maybe it's time to give this approach the green light?
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