Sell the Meeting Read online

  Whether it is core to your “close new business” efforts or just part of a larger plan, you need to do it right.

  Without a system to get shoulder to shoulder with top dogs within “A” type prospect opportunities, you spend a lot of time with mid-level “Seymours.” Managers who don’t drive decision-making and can’t cut checks.

  Many invest time booking discovery calls or face-to-face first meetings and fail. You can invest time with drastically different results if you have a system that works.

  That is what this book is all about. Giving you the core strategies and walking you through a step by step process of creating a workable system to book first sales conversations.

  What You Can Do With This System

  Meet with more of those referred to you.

  Meet with more people who could make referrals to you.

  Meet with more current accounts to renew them, sell them more, generate referrals.

  Meet with dormant accounts to reactivate them.

  Close more strategically valuable accounts.

  Gain entry into new verticals.

  Gain access and close more “whales.” Accounts that buy volume and generate a a disproportionate share of profits.

  And oh yeah, almost forget, this system will help you get more appointments with “strangers.” People/companies that have never heard of you don’t know you and have not referred.

  Strangers that will write checks to you and be grateful to have found a capable service provider that delivers value.

  Strangers That Are Clones Of Your Best Accounts

  You want to work a process that enables you to meet buyers within accounts that look just like your best accounts.

  This same system can be used to meet with dormant accounts, referrals and those that could refer. The same set of skills, call process, script structures, touch system and follow-up that works with strangers is what you will use to resell, cross-sell, reactivate, close those referred and generate more referrals.

  Some of you will use this system in start-up situations looking for those very important first clients. Some of you will have in-house teams and feel a need to lift results.

  Some of you used to be able to depend upon personal networks and referral sources for new accounts, but those sources don’t generate what they used to. Now you need to reach out to strangers.

  The system is the same in all these circumstances. Different circumstances might mean more or less emphasis on steps within the system. But it is the same system.

  The Elephant In The Room

  Calling stinks. Cold outreach stinks.

  The good news is that a lot of people do it successfully, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

  The bad news is that once you discover what works, you have to do it. Over and over again.

  It’s boring. Repetitive. When you mix repetitive tasks with really smart people, you have a recipe for disaster.

  To consistently set sales appointments, you are going to have to make phone calls, leave messages and send emails. You won’t want to, and any activity other than dialing the phone will be more important than making calls. That is a reality.

  I teach the process but do not love making calls. Even after all these years I still don’t. But if you take a deep breath, if you just follow the process for 60-90 minutes at a time, good stuff results. You have conversations with top people. Some agree to meet now or tell you when to be back in touch. Some return your calls, emails, and touches. You get “recon” info on the needs and plans of those you call. You start to fill your pipeline and close deals.

  The best advice I can give you is to acknowledge the beast. Calling stinks.

  If You Have Other Marketing Tools, Use Them.

  If you have other options that will deliver the meetings you need, I recommend you put them in play. If you don’t have options, or if your options won’t deliver what you need then you will have to make calls.

  No calls. No opportunities. No closed deals.

  Aside from the fear of consequences if you don’t sell enough, there is something else that should provide an incentive for you to set appointments. There are a lot of buyers out there. There are a lot of companies and individuals that are right now buying what you offer from others. There is no good reason why they wouldn’t buy from you.

  Right now there are active qualified prospects of what you offer looking for the right provider. They are gathering information, meeting with competitors, evaluating their options. Right now.

  It is the most normal and natural thing in the world for these future buyers to meet with you. It is the most normal and natural thing in the world for you to ask them to do so.

  You Are Doing Them A Favor By Reaching Out

  Assuming that you have a quality offering, you are doing them a favor by doing so. Many of these buyers will make the wrong decision. They will choose to work with a company not as good as yours, select a product or service not equal to yours. They will get less value for their time and money, and they will suffer the consequences of not being fully informed on all their options and factors relevant to their buy decision.

  Why? Why will they select a less worthy competitor or offering? They didn’t meet you. That’s why. You didn’t call at all. You didn’t reach out. If you did try, your effort was partial, haphazard, and your value message fell short.

  Fear of the consequences of no sales or few sales should drive you partially, but the biggest motivator should be that there are buyers out there. They are buying from someone else right now because they never met you.

  Lots of people set sales appointments and discovery calls effectively. That wheel has been invented.

  Take it step by step. Get comfortable with a few steps at a time before you move on to the next. Within 4-6 weeks you will be coordinating a total process of touching top-level decision-makers that will lead to more meetings, better meetings, more closed deals.

  Shortly, when you ask, “Would you have some time in the next week or two?” you will hear... “sure.”

  B2B vs. B2C. Companies vs. Individuals

  Common misnomers of high-level prospecting are that what works B2B won’t work B2C, that what works for companies won’t work for individuals, that what works for big companies won’t work for smaller companies, what works in one industry won’t work in another. What works in the South won’t work in the North. That companies on the left side of the street are different from those on the right side of the street.

  All 100% wrong.

  I set more than 2,000 C-Level sales appointments with pure cold calling, just smiling, and dialing. B2B. B2C. All sorts of industries, big and small companies. The process to gain access to top-level decision-makers is remarkably the same.

  There are nuances to every project, but what drives success are the core strategies and behaviors acted upon consistently.

  Get your core engine up and running powerfully first. Get experience and comfortable with foundation practices and behaviors before you even start to think about exceptions to the rules.

  The “Cold Call” Has Been Slurred.

  “Cold call” is not a four-letter word. It is two four-letter words.

  It is a tool. A step in a process. Neither good or bad.

  Like any marketing tool, it is right to use in some spots, not others.

  Like other marketing tools, mail, email, PPC, TV, radio, postcards, dancing hotdogs and clowns holding signs on street corners, it works when used in the right places and is a disaster when used in the wrong places.

  No marketing tool is right for everyone. If you use a marketing tool, use it right.

  If you ignore the lessons learned and science of direct mail and send out lousy letters to the wrong people, you are not entitled to conclude that mail is dead. If you send out lousy emails, it is not correct for you to conclude that email is dead. And if you make phone calls as part of a prospecting process and suck at it, as many do, you are not entitled to state that “cold call
ing is dead.”

  A “cold call” is part of the appointment setting process. It is not THE process. Using this resource, when you reach out you will be doing it right.

  What Has Changed In The World Of Appointment Setting

  When I started to set sales appointments in 1994, it truly was “cold calling.” The decision-maker either picked up the phone or didn’t. I pitched them. They agreed to meet with a representative of my client or they didn’t.

  That was about it.

  That was how it started, but that is not how it ended. Over the years as I made tens of thousands of calls the core process that worked was improved. Yes, it started with a “cold call” but also came to include “recon” questions, call back strategies, follow-up methods, plan “B” strategies, and much more. By the time I wrote the book “Setting Sales Appointments” in 2004, it was a total system of interaction and follow-up. To say it was merely cold calling would be a misnomer.

  But, A Few Things Have Changed

  It has become in vogue to declare that there are “new” rules of selling. “What used to work doesn’t matter,” say many. The great unwashed are quick to conclude that you can throw out everything that used to work. “Today it is a brand new ballgame with new methods, techniques, and strategies.” What crap and a disservice to sales professionals.

  Can you tell I feel strongly that selling is a craft? You learn it. You practice, practice, practice it. You try, you test, you fail, you try again, you learn. You don’t make the same mistakes two, three, or four times. That experience gives you a decided advantage when new technologies come along or the selling environment changes.

  Realize something about top producers with today’s “new” rules. Most of them were the top producers under the old rules — skill and experience matter.

  Before the Great Recession, when the economy was lifting all boats, there were a lot of order takers, talkers, and yappers walking around making money, thinking they were solid salespeople.

  But then things changed, and the order-takers, who thought they were salespeople, didn’t have the skill set to adapt and change. They didn’t have the depth of knowledge and experience even to survive, never mind excel in new realities. But guess what? The top producers under the “old” rules survived and many thrived under the new realities.

  Having A Firm Grasp Of Selling Fundamentals Is Critical To Success

  If you are smart, capable, hard-working, and just not getting the traction you need with sales prospecting and sales conversion, salvation will not be some flavor of the month, a new idea, or finding the one thing that will save you (the answer is never one thing. It is always multiple things coordinated well.)

  The root cause of poor performance is often lack of mastery of the basics. I see far more quantum leaps in sales productivity when people and companies take a step back to reassess, rebuild, and make sure the basics are right than I do because they jumped on the latest greatest new idea that just went viral.

  Doing The Basics Right Provides More Quantum Leaps Than “New” Strategies Or Technologies

  New ideas are not worth spit if you have not mastered the basics and are implementing them, practicing them, improving them consistently. You build upon strong foundations. You build upon the basics.

  Why this rant? Because there are two things very significant that has changed in selling that you must be prepared to confront head-on when you seek to gain access to top decision- makers.

  First, your best prospects are better informed. They are just a few keystrokes away from the information they need to solve their problems. With a quick, easy online search, they can identify qualified vendors and consultants they feel are worth their time.

  Second, your prospects don’t trust you. They have had too much time wasted and been snookered too often with fake sincerity, overstated claims, and half-truths. Unless you are perceived to be rock solid and head and shoulders above the rest, the risk/reward calculus works against you.

  Why Should They Spend Time With You - A Person Or Company They Don’t Know?

  Why should they take the risk, again, that some unknown entity will be worth their time when fairly quickly they can let their fingers do the walking over their keyboard and find top-notch credible vendor options worth a meeting?

  They won’t unless you give them very good reasons to do so.

  They can easily, or have already, identified some potential vendors, suppliers, consultants that they feel will meet their needs well. Why should they meet with you and take the chance that you will waste their time?

  That is what has changed.

  It doesn’t mean that you use a totally new approach to get face to face with buyers. It means that you do what used to work, but you do it better, and you have to go deeper into the process to get sustainable results.

  Build Upon The Basics And What Used To Work. Do It Better To Thrive In New Realities.

  Under the “old” rules it was important that you pick the right suspects to call. Today, your suspect pool has to be even tighter to win.

  Under the “old” rules you had to use a contact manager or CRM. Today, not only must you use one, but you must set it up with custom fields, segmentation coding, template documents, emails, and automated follow-up.

  In the “old days” you could be far less than perfect with your scripting, how you communicated credibility and value, and the interaction process you used, and still get results. In the old days, you could still be sloppy and make money — not today. Your messaging, your call process, the efficiency with which you work has to be better and much tighter to set appointments today. There is far less wiggle room if you are not totally prepared, very efficient, and quickly and succinctly communicate value and credibility.

  For those you discover are your very top prospects, they are worth more of your time and money. For that very top segment of prospecting targets, it is wise to integrate other marketing tools, both offline and online, to gain access and establish credibility and value. Tools and marketing methods that would not make economic sense among average or lower value targets generate high ROI when used with higher value targets identified through your calling efforts.

  Value Communication

  Perceptions of greater value are necessary today. What you say must have even more impact. If you are perceived to be “another one,” you are toast. You must communicate more credibility and benefits than the rest, or your prospect will let their fingers do the walking over their keyboards to select potential new vendor options.

  Messaging. You only had a few seconds to convey your message under the old rules. With the new rules, you have fewer seconds. Scripting structures and word selection were always important. Today there is even less room for the vague, the ordinary and yada, yada, yada.

  Resolve to be exceptional at the fundamentals, and you can be a top producer in this “new” age of selling. Master the basics, and you can build upon them to move from the bottom of the pack to the middle, from an average producer to a top producer.

  If you skip the basics, you are building on sand. If you follow the herd, you will get mediocrity at best; you will be doomed to again and again trying the latest “new” thing that changes it all or the “one thing” that will make all the difference. Your personal results needle won’t move. You will still be in the middle or near the bottom of the pack.

  Awareness and mastery of the basics of appointment setting can drive a sales advantage.

  With a solid foundation in place, you can adapt and thrive in almost any environment.

  Let’s review the basics.

  Then let’s build upon them.

  Worksheets, additional scripts, and periodic updates

  are available to readers of this book at

  ScottChannell.com/STM-book-extras

  Chapter 2

  Why Do This?

  How You and Your Team Benefit From a System that Generates Appointments and Discovery Calls

  Quality appointments and disc
overy calls improve your forecasts, budgeting, cash flow, and profit margin.

  You avoid sales peaks and valleys.

  You don’t miss out on opportunities anymore.

  You can reduce reliance upon your personal network and referral sources.

  You can generate qualified leads from strangers when leads from your personal network and referral sources slow down.

  You add another tool to your sales toolkit.

  You cross the prospecting chasm.

  You gain control over your sales life.

  You gain value from those who are unreachable or have no immediate need.

  High-value prospects will start to call you.

  Your close ratio improves.

  You can easily follow-up for future sales.

  You can scale faster.

  You have another way to interact with top prospects.

  You improve the mix of your interaction.

  Bottom line, being able to set qualified discovery calls and face-to-face first sales conversations generates more accounts, revenue, profits, and higher margins.

  When your other marketing and social media efforts are not delivering, you have another option: Go directly to the buyers.

  Let us review all the benefits that come to us when we can consistently and cost-effectively generate substantive first sales conversations, with the person who can authorize a check that would clone our best and most profitable clients.

  You Avoid Peaks And Valleys

  How many times have you had this problem? You either have more business than you can handle or are dying for dollars. When you are in that boom or bust cycle, something very bad is happening.

  When you’re dying for dollars you take business you should not take; you make price concessions you shouldn’t make, and you make promises for delivery and quality that are unrealistic — a guarantee of dissatisfied clients, more client churn, and lower profits.