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Strategic Guidance to Build Your Business
Volume 6, Issue 4, March 2012

"The Business Builder" is brought to you by VSA, Inc. in collaboration with Rink Consulting. VSA, Inc., founded by Valerie Schlitt, builds and implements B2B prospecting programs for businesses and professional service firms. VSA has a team of professional telephone callers who open doors to new business opportunities for VSA clients. Linda Rink, president of Rink Consulting, specializes in B2B and consumer marketing and research. Both Wharton MBA graduates, Valerie and Linda often team together to help clients identify and reach new customers. In this newsletter, they share some of their business development insights.

The Great Sales Divide
by Valerie Schlitt, President of VSA, Inc.
Valerie picture

There is a divide in our nation, and it's not about politics, religion or money!

It's about those who do the cold calling vs. the sales people who go on the appointments created by the cold calling team.

In some excellent circumstances, these two groups respect each other and realize they need each other in order to survive--in order to make sales, grow their business, stay employed and earn an income. I do hope you belong to a company where there is alignment between the cold calling team and the sales team. Because, really, they are both two parts of one big selling machine.

In most cases, however, there is a large misunderstanding between the cold calling and sales teams.

Here are some of the symptoms:

Example #1: Cold callers provide a "great" lead for the sales team and the lead turns out to be less qualified than the sales person wants it to be. If this happens repeatedly, the sales team can become quite frustrated and lose total respect for the cold calling team. They won't even recognize when a truly excellent lead really does arrive.

You can easily imagine a sales force denigrating the very hand that feeds it. You can imagine a sales force thinking that cold callers don't have a clue of how sales really works, and how they are just making up appointments without trying very hard.

Example #2: Cold callers are elated to find what they consider a very warm lead and they pass it to the sales team, where it sits and sits. No sales person follows up and the lead goes dry. This had been a lead where the decision maker expressed keen interest and was on the verge of making a buying decision. When this happens repeatedly, the cold calling team feels under-appreciated and believes the sales force wants to take the easy way out.

You can easily imagine a cold calling team feeling they're doing all the heavy lifting and the sales team is out going to lunches and dinners--laughing and joking--and not taking the leads they identify seriously.

I could continue on, and perhaps you've experienced this from one side or the other.

I have.

As president of VSA, I see how hard our cold callers work to find opportunities for our clients. Most of our clients let us know what happens to these leads and which end up becoming clients and which do not. But sometimes a client does not see value in some of our leads. Or, maybe they're too busy working on a big sale. They don't follow-up. The lead becomes dead, and the cold callers feel quite frustrated.

But, as chief sales person for VSA, my team has also made calls for me. They have set sales appointments for me--mainly telephone appointments. Telephone appointments are very difficult because they do not "stick" as much as face to face appointments unless you also send a calendar invite. Occasionally, the prospective client was not at his desk at the appointed time, or she wasn't as interested as the caller had implied. That was very frustrating to me. Sometimes if the caller had set an appointment for me, and a competing appointment came along, I disregarded the cold calling appointment altogether.

But, I was lucky. I know my callers are good. I sit right here with them. I hear them on the phone making my appointments and I know they are qualifying the appointments and extremely excited to deliver the good ones to me.

Building trust is critical. That's why we at VSA like to have debriefs with our clients periodically. We want to know what's working and what's not working. Where can we make changes? How can we help our clients follow-up to our leads before the great, warm opportunities dry up?

In your own businesses, I recommend straightforward talks and regular updates to avoid the emotional turmoil that can eat away at success. I recommend that cold callers and sales people sit at the same table and each reports on progress and process improvement ideas.

Read the VSA blog for more cold calling tips:
VSAprospectingblog.com. Photos of our calling team are now posted.

Direct Mail Prospects
by Linda Rink, President of RINK Consulting
Linda Rink Photo

Contrary to the old saying "the good things in life are free," the best mailing lists usually are not. Whether you work with a list broker, or purchase a list yourself from an on-line source, expect to pay more for lists that are up-to-date and meet the promised specifications.

Before you spend money on a prospecting list, make sure it's truly a list of your best prospects. This means having a well-defined target prospect profile before you start list-shopping.

Think about it. With an average response rate of less than 2%, your direct mail had better deliver quality responses. Otherwise, if that return turns out to be off the mark (for example, companies who inquire about your services, but are too small to be worth your while), you've wasted your time, money and effort.

A "shot gun" prospecting effort--canvassing a broad market--is usually not an efficient use of marketing dollars.
The more you can narrow down your target prospect profile, the more efficient your marketing outreach will be. Your response rate should improve as well, assuming your marketing message is on target.

Where to go

There are several well-known sources for B2B mailing lists: Dun & Bradstreet, Harris Info, InfoUSA, and others. All of these suppliers will ask you for a well-defined target prospect profile before they sell you a B2B mailing list.

Here are 5 parameters you should define upfront:

  1. Industry: Primary (and secondary) industry by SIC code (take the time to look it up to the most well-defined value possible--you can always broaden it)

  2. Geography:
    • State, county, metro area, zip code (you can combine zip codes), or by area code
    • You can often do a radius around a zip code.

  3. Size of company: By sales volume and/ or by employee size; headquarters only or branches

  4. Type of company: Public versus private, number of years in business

  5. Job Title: If you are only interested in a particular functional area
If these definitions still seem too broad for your purposes, try approaching the situation from another angle:
  • Perhaps your prospects are likely to belong to one or more trade associations related to their industry - or to their job function or profession. Associations sometimes sell their membership lists. Or see if you can obtain lists of attendees at trade shows.

  • Similarly, local Chambers of Commerce make member lists available--often for free, even for nonmembers. Sort by type of business, and you've got your target list.

  • If you're prospecting locally, the trusty Yellow Pages (which is searchable online) can also deliver results--but not comprehensive ones. Again, you get what you pay for.

  • Finally, if you are not looking for a large list and need to limit it geographically (i.e., a local search), you can compile one yourself through an online keyword search (make sure you add the geographic area to your search query). Filtering through the results may be time-consuming, but it's a good start at an unbeatable price (free).
So instead of falling for an online ad or spam e-mail that promises to deliver new prospects for a low price, take the time to think through exactly who you're after. Then find a list supplier who allows you to define your prospects the way you want to, or get creative and do some digging for alternate prospect sources. Either way, doing your homework upfront will save you money in the long run by delivering your message to the right target.

RINK Consulting
1420 Locust Street, Suite 31N
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-546-5863
[email protected]
www.lindarink.com