Continual Vigilance

Your colleagues are extremely interested in cold calling company presidentslike you, everybody with business savvy wants to reach the executives, quickly, to close top dollar sales.

In this business environment with collapsed organizational structures, the elimination of middle management, and the increased workload for executive assistantsit’s even more challenging to break through to the inner circle of decision-makers.

So consider this–stop making the cold-calling process more complicated (and considerably more painful) than it needs to be. Quit agonizing over the writing of pre-approach letters and searching out friends who can provide warm introductions that’ll break you through, and get you into the hallowed halls of the executive suites.

Sure, pre-approach letters and warm introductions are a good mix to add to any sales strategybut even big time local and long distance phone companies are finally catching on to the fact that the product they market, the telephone, is the most direct, effective tool for increasing sales by leaps and bounds. Now, you don’t wanna miss out on use of a proven, effective sales tool, do you?

Of course not!

Here’s What Sales Pros Attempt

Now, this is interesting … a recent client survey revealed that most sales professionals feel pressed to accomplish a lot during a prospecting call. With each executive-level cold call, most professionals take a big breath and in one, great big, run on sentence try to 1)establish rapport by being friendly, 2)gain credibility by giving company history, 3)learn about the prospect with probing questions, and 4)introduce and sell products/services, all within the parameters of one brief make-it-or-break-it telephone call to the executive suite.

You’ll Never See It Coming, Here’s Why

Here’s a news flash … it can’t be done! Even bigger news … this kind of approach actually signals executive assistants that you don’t belong in the president’s office. The assistant will simply smile, refer you down to a lower leveland you’ll never know why or how you got booted down the ladder so quickly.

So, let’s go to the heart of the matter and take a close look at the structure of the phone call itself. In the 35 to 90 seconds that you’ll have to spend on the telephone at the president’s level, you’ve gotta be prepared to take the call down the straight and very narrow path in which you want it to go. And there is one absolute, positive, no doubt about it, purpose of your call. Any hint of a deviation from this purpose will result in fewer executive-level appointments.

So here’s the secret … cherish it and know it’s extremely valuable.

THE amazingly simple secret to successful cold calls to the offices of presidents is to be certain that every single one of your prospecting calls has one crystal clear purpose and one purpose only. Each word you speak during your prospecting phone calls directs and redirects the conversation toward that one goal, scheduling an executive-level sales call. It doesn’t matter whether you schedule a meeting in person, or schedule a phone meetingevery word of the initial phone call must direct the conversation toward getting that meeting booked on the calendar. Period.

Write Down the Words of a Successful Call

A technique that’ll catapult you forward is to write down the words exchanged during your cold call. Identify what words, statements, and questions keep the conversation on track toward an appointment and what words cause you to lose the appointment.

You’ll become consciously aware of the words that flow between you and your prospectand their impact. Won’t be long ’til you realize that your words either get you what you want or take your cold calls way off the path down some obscure rabbit trail.

I guarantee your competition doesn’t have a single-minded focus on high level calls and is, unwittingly, forfeiting a whole lot of potentially lucrative business. Yet they hold onto their ill-advised, accomplish-a-lot-in-a-little bit-of-time approach to prospecting at the top. You, on the other hand, will find that keeping your prospecting calls on one laser-like focus will bring in more executive- level sales calls than you ever imagined possible. Now, go get ‘em.

Forward this article to friendsthey’ll thank you for it!

For your FREE mini-course “Jealously Guarded Secrets to Cold Calling Company Presidents” visit http://www.ColdCallingExecutives.com! Or call Your Sales Coach for Extreme Profitability, author/speaker Leslie Buterin (like butterin’ bread) at (816) 554-3674 9-3 CST (that’s Kansas City/Chicago Time).

When sales people lose sales, does this mean they were lost? The words “lost” makes one think that they lost their way along a path and something happened. In reality someone else may have stolen the order from them.

When I was a kid my mother would put 25 cents, carefully wrapped and tied into one of my fathers’ handkerchiefs. This was an attempt to prevent me from losing it. She made it so huge that I couldn’t possibly lose the giant wad of material. She would send me off to school so I could use it for milk money. By the way, that was for the week! I was a kid and it was a way for my mother to insure I would not lose something.

As you know, a sale isn’t something we can wrap and seal in a handkerchief. If it was that easy, you wouldn’t be reading this for a better solution. Let’s face it; you can’t lose something you don’t have in the first place. Although some salespeople will think they have a sale before they actually have it in their hands, the ink is drying and the delivery truck has pulled away.

Salespeople lose sales because they get lost in the process.
If you have been in sales for a while you know that sales are almost 100% predictable. If we follow the sales process, we will always come to a conclusion that is favorable to us unless we skip a step or overlook something and it is always our fault for missing something. This is where we get lost.

Some salespeople don’t realize how important these steps are and that there are consequences to not following the order of these steps. Because of this, salespeople get lost in the sequence and sometimes try to skip steps of the process. This is how sales are lost. For the typical sales, non-retail I recommend a six step process with a magical seventh step that shortens the sales cycle when applied consistently. Some people combine these steps and that might be ok but you can’t skip any of them or your will lose. I divide the steps into two segments, Hunting and Farming because the first part is really hunting for the prospect and identifying the right prospects. The second part is like farming because we are building a relationship that might take months to nurture before the opportunity becomes ripe. Here are the steps in brief order.

1. The prospect must pass the “IF” test. This test is applied with questions to find out “IF” they are a real prospect, the test is ‘IF” they fit the profile of our perfect customer. “IF” they do not, we find another prospect.

2. The salesperson must then discover the “WHO” of the prospect. This is the true contact or contacts in the company or organization that we must meet with for an opportunity. This is achieved through questioning to identify the right prospect person.

3. The salesperson must then identify the “W’s” or pain points of the prospect. This is also achieved through questioning and research and an appointment is often the best way to discover this. These W’s are when, where, why, what issues that confirm our next step.

4. If we did our job in step three, we move over to the farming stage of the sales process which is really the “OPPORTUNITY” stage. Ideally we want to identify three “OPPORTUNITIES” which are solid pain points the prospect wants eliminated from their business or life. Once we have these identified, we can move to step five.

5. Step five is the easiest stage of all; it is the “PRESENTATION” stage of the sale. This is where the salesperson can combine all they have learned about the prospects problems and issues and at the right time, presents their solution. If everything was followed according to the process, the solution will be on target and received warmly for the next step.

6. Step six is the “CLOSE”. If you reach this point, the sale should be a slam dunk and a sealed deal because you have followed the process with a remedy for a solution the prospect wants.

7. The seventh step is magical because you can capture more business through a “REFERRAL” and a reference from the prospect and slip into the fourth step on the next opportunity and bypass the first three steps.

Remember, if you bypass any of the sales process steps, you lose! One of the best ways to improve sales is to focus on the process and the steps salespeople take to make a sale. Breaking up the sales process into modules and teaching salespeople how to move prospects from one step to the next is the right way to keep them from losing sales. Otherwise, you might need a very large handkerchief.

Steve Martinez is the Founder of Selling Magic a strategic business development consulting company. The company specializes in Automated Sales Process Management (ASPM) which increases sales through technology and automation of the best practices of sales. You can get our FREE reports at http://www.sellingmagic.com