This blog is part of a continuing program on selling, especially cold calling. Recently I was working with an owner, on how to expand his small business. He asked me to avoid cold calling to drive meetings and sales. He preferred email, snail mail, and business connections that he had. Regardless of his methods, his revenues were still down. Something had to change. He said cold calling never mainstreamed, and he did not know other owners or executives who did it. That was relegated to underpaid, junior Reps when they had them. He wanted to know why, if it was so effective and prolific that more business people would have used it?I said I wanted to know why it is always such a negative connotation but yet people did very well using it for a living. So, the question was not why it was mainstream, but how it did work in different industries and executives and was highly cost effective and repeatable.
I said to him, “was it used in retail”? Not really because your customers came to you. “Was it used in commercial or industrial sales where you had schedule stops? Not always. You had appointmentson a regular basis and you could rely on your relationships to write orders. But with specially, technology, Insurance, and a bevy of services Companies, you had to prospect to make your numbers, and cold calling on the phone, or on the door, was a big part. Things are different today.
In 1974, $25,000 was a solution number. In 2015, that same number is now worth $138,000. Selling today is more difficult as the stakes are higher, the products are more expensive, and the pressure to get deals on the board is greater than ever.
I also told him, “Sales people don’t want to waste time prospecting let alone doing cold calling, period”. That in the seventies it was not a thought, in 1995 it was replaced with email and the Internet, and today with Social media. I asked him, “If he believed that”? Interesting enough he said maybe it was not so. His customers loved hearing from him, he knew their business, he was a problem solver and an expert, and perhaps other companies would want to hear what he could bring. Bingo! Cold calling came into light for him we dispelled part of the misconception. I shared with him that earlier, when I was selling for a company and not with my own Sales Consulting practice, I represented a very complex and custom solution from a large data management company. The company sold million dollar systems to manage vast amounts of information for banks, insurance companies’ technology and automotive corporations. In my territory, was one of the largest car manufacturers in the world, BMW, with high end, complex automobiles was a prime target.
I need to grow my pipeline so I contemplated how I would get a meeting there. I know I needed to get to a Sr. executive otherwise my sales cycle could never launch, or go on forever. I didn’t have the expertise to entice a Sr. executive as I have not sold a large manufacturer as them. I did not know how complex the operations were, or a critical pain that could help my value prospect in cold calling the executive. I sought out a Sr. engineer at the company I worked for, and asked for an hour to coach me, as he was THE automotive specialist. He was extremely knowledgeable and knew the sales people could always use some intelligence to crack into an account. I needed help with one of the biggest companies in the world, so I asked for help.
I learned how the company made high profits, had dealer issues, fraud, and how it was hard to detect and correct it. These were significant operational problems. He prioritized them for me, and also helped me to understand the money involved in waste and abuse. I became an instant expert in one hour. I went back to my office, small with no windows, and composed a letter with a solid value prop and addressed it to the President of company. There were a few techniques I used like changing my title and not pitching anything except there are insights that I may have, that resonate in his industry (free “gifts of Knowledge”). I then called his admin, who said if it had relevancy, she would hand it to him. At that moment, I decided to use a FAX. He got it that day.
The next morning, I received a call from his Admin who introduced me to his SVP of Sales and the SVP of Operations. We set a meeting. I brought in a resource and developed a great opportunity. All this from a well composed cold call. Still did the homework, composed it into value, called them, ant to high level and called again to thank the President. I told my client, who owned a very small business, which you do not need to have to be a big company to sell a big company. Small companies do it all the time. You just need a war chest of skills and tolls, and it is easily done. And cold calling is one of those tools. From yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
We left to get some dinner and I told him, “I read that there were 150 million land line phones sold over the last 2 years, and to businesses. The phone is still viable”.
What do you do next? Send us an email and we’ll arrange for you to speak with Ed to chat about how these learnings can help build more sales just for your business.