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One of the primary drivers of business growth is cold calling. As a salesperson, you cannot count on your current customer base to maintain the growth rates expected in today’s environment. Even the best customer retention programs can’t completely protect you from customer churn. Therefore, you must develop and implement an effective strategy for identifying and signing new customers if you want to maintain your current status, much less growing your business to higher levels of success. To this end, cold calling is a proven, accepted, and very powerful way to build your customer base, IF you do your homework and prepare a solid presentation that is adapted to the needs of your prospect.
Qualifying Prospects
According to Anthony J. Urbaniak, a prospect is a person or institution that can both benefit from buying a product or service and can afford to buy it. If the product or service doesn’t meet a customer’s perceived or felt need, they are not qualified prospects. Also, no matter how badly a prospect may want the product or how much they can benefit from it, if they cannot afford it, they are not qualified prospects.
Even though you may have identified a list of promising prospects or leads, you may still not know if they are qualified. Even though you may have done a lot of research on this prospect, and even though you may have developed a great presentation to help position your offer with this prospect, even then you may not be certain they are truly qualified. In the end, you can’t be 100% certain the prospect is qualified until you begin to interact with contacts within the account. The art and science of cold calling relies heavily on strategies for making this initial call. However, sales reps often fail to understand that in order to fully assess the value of the opportunity within a prospective account, they may need to climb the "contact tree."
Developing a Contact Tree
Sometimes sales reps overlook the fact that developing an effective contact list plays out in stages. The goal, of course, is to get in front of the decision maker – that person who can pull the trigger and say yes to the deal -- but in many cases that person may be shielded from calls like yours. In all likelihood, you will need to identify and cultivate relationships with a sequence of contacts within the organization that will allow you to identify and explore all the opportunities within that organization while you are working your way up to the decision maker. This sequence of contacts is known as the contact tree, and it will contain several types of contacts. Your contact tree should include spots for:
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Informational Contacts – These are contacts who can explain to you the organizational and decision-making layout of the organization. For instance, if you are selling advertising space on a website, it would be very helpful to know who in the organization is responsible for making those buys. It would also be helpful to know the nature of the team members who surround and support that Decision Maker, so you can make contact with them and get some quick background regarding how they view the advertising needs of the organization. Usually, Information Contacts have all or most of that information at their fingertips, and if you are personable and professional, they will be happy to provide you with all the information you need. These are also the easiest contacts to make, and can range from the frontline receptionist who answers the phone to administrative assistants of mid and upper level managers.?
Influencer Contacts – As mentioned above, Influencers are those team members who surround and support the Decision Maker you would like to reach. While they are also likely to be busy people, they may be more ready to speak with you for a few minutes than would be the Decision Maker, especially if you make it clear that you are only seeking to understand the needs of the organization and help them to understand your products and services a little better. These contacts are likely to provide you the most direct insights to help you qualify the prospect, since they will have direct, first hand knowledge of the organization’ processes, needs and goals that can help you determine if what you are offering is a fit for them. If it is, these contacts may become allies for your cause as you seek to gain a hearing with the Decision Maker, thus the designation, Influencer Contact.?
Decision Maker Contact – Of course, the ultimate goal of cold calling is to get in front of the Decision Maker and hold their attention long enough to gain their interest long enough to set that important follow up appointment. However, keep in mind that as you climb the Contact Tree you are also uncovering important information that can help make your a conversation with the Decision Maker more productive.
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August Quick Tip – Give Your Customer What He Wants
Of course, we would all like to believe that our customers buy from us because of our irresistible charm and brilliant sales techniques. You may be charming and brilliant, but in spite of that, customers usually only buy from you for one simple reason: they have a need they want to fill (or a problem they want to solve). Most of the time, these needs involve wanting to save money, needing to make an important improvement or wanting to catch the next trendy wave. Your job is to ask good questions and listen carefully until you discover which one of these needs or problems your customer has, and then find gracious, thoughtful ways to show him how the benefits you have to offer will meet those needs. Charming, brilliant sales reps will starve to death if they don’t learn how to take advantage of this simple, powerful tip.
