Finding Answers

How Old School for the 21st Century

Recently I was approached over the phone by a company that wanted me to purchase keyword advertisement for life.  The idea being that my company would have preferred ad placement when someone searches for specific keywords like business coaching, corporate coaching, etc.  That a few grand up front would have a longer ROI than the horror of pay-per-click when one gets the bill from Google. (I learned to quickly control the content portion of ads after my first bill.)  A pretty straightforward proposition from this company, which is using cold calling as a sales technique to get the business.  Great proposition; bad sales approach!

Being a former “sales guy” I am always eager to be sold to.

There are mountains of papers, books, pamphlets, newsletters, and blog posts about how horrible cold calling is.  It sucks.  Cold calling is not the preferred methodology when it comes to sales.  People hate it when they have to do it and when it is done to them.  Yet, at some point in every business, it happens.   So it happened to me.

“Give him money and watch it burn a hole in his pocket.”

Person To Person Sales In The Andes

Being a former “sales guy” I am always eager to be sold to.  I am looking for a reason to part with my cash.  As my father said, “Give him money and watch it burn a hole in his pocket.”  So very true at times.  The real reason I like to be sold to is that I get a chance to learn from someone else.  I get to listen to their probing techniques; I learn how they handle my objections, and how they swoop in for the close. It is a great chance to receive a sales education.

The sales person did not to build a relationship, which is hard to do over the phone, yet they did not even try.

So that is why I was heart-broken when I told this particular sales person my objection to buying their products/services that they just hung upon me.  This sales person did not try to clarify why I objected (price was the biggest issue), nor did they try to find a way to make me a better offer, and the left me felt feeling… inadequate.  That I was not worthy of being a customer, which my money is not “good enough” to be fought for.  The latter really ticks me off.

For this company I was not the ideal customer most likely, yet when they got their target list for their cold calls I fell on it somehow.  The sales person did not to build a relationship, which is hard to do over the phone, yet they did not even try.  There was no effort to understand what it is my business does and how their services could be of value to me.  All of these are fatal flaws of the cold call.

The result for this company has been to insult a person, who may not be an ideal customer, but who is now motivated to blog “negatively” about the experience.

How can your business avoid this fatal mistake?

• Train your sales team to be ready for push back. Objections are part of every sales call.  There are millions of them.  In fact if you do not get an objection it really means that your customer is not listening or you are not selling.  Why?  Objections mean the customer is engaged with what it is the salesperson is presenting.  It means that the customer is looking for a reason of value to purchase the goods and services you are offering.  It means that – shhh, don’t tell anyone the secret of sales – a conversation is taking place (perish the thought!)
• Cleanse your call file. Just because you have a territory, call list, or computer generated targets does not mean that you have the right customers to call on.  You just have the right names that met the criteria used to find these “clients”, that is all.  You have to make sure that they meet your ideal customer that your business wishes to obtain.  If they do then you pre-call plan how to engage in conversation, visualize how the call will go, and what you expect to happen.  You provide the four steps to ideal customer service during the call and afterwards.  This little bit of effort before the call will result in a tremendous amount of success and long-term sales.
• Train your sales staff to be human. Most people will say that they are “not a sales person” or cannot “be pushy” to be in sales.  That is not what sales is about.  Sales is a conversation between two or more representatives from different businesses or between a business and consumers.  That is sales.  Unless you cannot carry a conversation, most people engage in some of sales whenever they ask for something, then you can perform sales.  While much money has been spent testing scripts, phrases, charts, benefit statements, and pretty pictures by the marketing team, it is up to the salesperson to communicate that information.   Please do it as a human! I beg you! We all beg you!  Which means put the script down, be true yourself and have a conversation!
• Avoid cold calling at all costs. It is a horrible way to do business and its long-term effect is negative perception for short-term gain.  If, heaven forbid, you are forced to go this route, then train your staff to research their targets and build business rapport before even thinking about asking for the business.  Or you’ll get blogs like this.

This most likely was not the intended outcome the company that called me wanted.  Yet this is what they get in return when they do not train their sales team effectively.  You get to learn from their mistakes.

What cold calling stories do you know that have left you freezing?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army.  He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079.  You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small.  The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.