Being outgoing, gregarious, and friendly used to be the savvy salesperson’s ticket to penetrating new accounts. Today, key decision makers on your target list of prospects already have plenty of friends. And, given the sheer volume of solicitations that come in on a daily basis, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the next cold call that gets lobbed in the customer’s direction has only a very small chance of success.

Some of the reason sellers are experiencing such low hit-rates is self-inflicted, by using traditional catch-phrases like, “I would love to…”, or, “I just need a brief moment of your time.” Decision makers know you’re not just looking for a brief moment of their time. They also assume salespeople have quotas to hit and would really “love” to boost their commissions.

No doubt your intentions are good, as most salespeople are earnestly trying to provide value to their customers. The challenge is separating yourself from the countless other solicitations potential buyers receive on a daily basis, and then causing decision makers to “want to” engage with you.

Suppose if it were possible to reverse this trend. What if you could create an 80%+ success rate when reaching out to new prospects, rather than continue enduring the typical 90%+ failure rate? How is this possible, you might ask?

Acquiring the skills necessary to fill your pipeline faster, and with more qualified prospects, is actually easier than one might think. But, it does require sellers to have an appreciation of next-generation selling skills, which is very different than just trying to ‘buddy’ your way into potential opportunities.

There’s no magic, and God knows old-school sales tricks or gimmicks aren’t going to work moving forward. Instead, there are a few very important questions individual sellers (and entire sales teams) should be asking themselves, like:

• What are you doing to leverage curiosity to get mindshare from key decision makers in target accounts?
• What Diagnostic Questions™ are you asking to convey credibility?
• How does opening with a generic elevator pitch differentiate you from competitors who are making similar claims?
• What are you doing to secure incremental commitments on the way to the larger sale?

When you’re on the receiving end of cold calls at home, I bet you’re not excited about giving information to people you don’t yet know and trust. So, why should we expect the old-school mentality of trying to “befriend” prospective customers, if that strategy no longer works on you or me? Hmmm…

As I was preparing to work with a new client–one of the many who has recently adopted The Challenger Sale concepts–I spotted an article in last week’s Sunday paper called “Building a Better Teacher.” Since one of the main tenants of The Challenger Sale is to Teach, Tailor, and Take Control, I read it with interest. There was one passage in particular that got my attention. The passage simply read:

“The natural born teacher has proven to be a myth. Those studies looking for the personality traits of a great teacher don’t pan out. Researchers have found that the most effective teachers can be extraverts–or they can just as easily be introverts. Some are humorous, but others are serious. Some are as flexible as rubber, and others are as rigid as a ruler. It’s not personality that makes a teacher great, but a specialized body of knowledge that must be learned–and that often goes against what comes naturally.”

From my perspective, that same conclusion can be applied to sales. There are very few naturally born salespeople. Success in selling is a function of having the skills necessary to cause prospects to “want to” engage with you, as opposed to the countless other sales callers, coupled with the ability to earn credibility, convey value, create a sense of urgency, qualify, secure commitments, etc. Other than attending a few seminars and whatever experiences you’ve had, how are people who are given the responsibility of producing revenue supposed to learn how to sell?

If we dig deeper, we quickly discover that sales is the least taught profession in the world. To become a practicing attorney, for example, you must first pass the Bar exam. To become a licensed pharmacist, you must pass the boards in the state in which you wish to practice. Accountants, doctors, architects, and professional engineers all must pass some kind of competency test in order to call themselves a professional. Even kindergarten teachers must complete their master’s degree within ten years to continue in their jobs.

What do you have to do to become a sales professional? The answer is: print business cards. In the state where I live (Georgia), you have to have a license to catch a fish or own a dog, but you can sell nuclear parts without any sales training whatsoever. Something about that doesn’t seem right.

When our oldest daughter graduated from the University of South Carolina three years ago, as we sat in the stands waiting for her name to be called, it occurred to me that all of those kids wearing caps and gowns (or their parents) have invested $100K+ to get an education and presumably a head start into their chosen careers, yet the very first thing they will have to do right out of school is to sell–themselves. And the kicker is, after 17 years of formal education (13 years of regular school, and then 4 years of college), most of these graduates haven’t been taught the first thing about how to sell, even though sales is the fuel thing drives revenue in every company. Furthermore, one’s ability to communicate effectively will not only affect their ability to land that first job, it will likely determine their success in life. Hmmm.

There are so many sales training courses out there that it has become VERY unclear as to which option will provide the best fit, especially given all the conflicting information floating around the marketplace.

While some of the more well known courses like Solution Selling, Strategic Selling, Value Selling, SPIN Selling, Target Account Selling, and Power-Base Selling focus on defining the sales process, sellers are left to their own devices to figure out “how” to execute the various objectives that have been defined. This creates a series of questions like:

–       How can I succeed when decision makers are more standoffish toward vendors than ever before?

–       How can I differentiate yourself when everyone is using the same industry buzzwords?

–       How can I create a sense of urgency so that internal champions are able to secure approval?

–       How can I get deeper, wider, and more strategic within your current accounts?

–       How can “I” increase my R.O.I.S.E (Return on Invested Sales Effort)?

For some unexplainable reason, sellers are expected to know the answers to these and other questions that deal with execution and productivity. Really? Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach best practices so that your entire sales team can take a giant leap forward as opposed to slowly ramping up via trial and error? Ironically, this thought was the genesis of QBS.

In two days or less, we can give sellers an unfair advantage in their respective markets just by teaching them superior strategy using specific sales techniques. And even though some of these techniques “go against what comes naturally,” if a salesperson tries something new and different and it works over and over, it will become natural to them very quickly.

Now the question is, what are we waiting for? When sales managers call me and we go back and forth looking at the calendar to figure out when they want to schedule their training, I ask, “Rather than worry about logistics, can I ask, when would you like to see a significant boost your sales team’s production?”   The most common answer is…yesterday.

Does any of this sound familiar? Let me know how we can help.

Salespeople have always been encouraged to ask questions…to uncover needs, qualify opportunities, accurately forecast pending deals, and identify potential next steps. But, just wanting to ask a bunch of questions doesn’t mean potential buyers will “want to” share information with a sales person they don’t yet know or trust.

Fortunately, strategic questions are much more than conversational staples for gathering information. Asking the right questions at the right time is one of the best ways to pique the customer’s interest, establish credibility, engage key decision makers in target accounts, differentiate yourself from the rest of the ‘noise’ in the marketplace, and increase the customer’s sense of urgency for making a decision.

The Evolution of Question Based Selling

Secrets of Question Based Selling (Freese’s first book), represents the core of the QBS Methodology. With each successive book, QBS has evolved into a cohesive set of strategies, techniques, and specific conversational tools that far exceed the conventional desire to simply gather information.

It Only Takes 1% to Have a Competitive Edge in Sales contains 100 chapters, each designed to give sellers a 1% advantage over the competition. After all, top performers aren’t 100% better in any one area, rather they’re 1% better in hundreds of areas.

The New Era of Salesmanship enhanced Question Based Selling by diving into the challenge of how to continue to sell effectively given the ever-increasing levels of customer skepticism in the marketplace. With the constant barrage of sales calls and solicitations, we have entered an era where sellers have to be much more savvy and strategic than in years past to convey compelling messages, or even get mindshare from key decision makers in important target accounts.

Sell Yourself First further expands the QBS methodology as direct commentary on the fact that how a salesperson is perceived by their target customers is more important that the company they represent or the products being offered.

SalesForce 2020 has once again taken Question Based Selling to a new level. While hindsight may be 20/20, it is becoming more and more clear that many of the old-school sales tactics that have been touted for decades no longer make sense as we rapidly approach the year 2020.

At the end of the day, salespeople and sales organizations have a decision to make. They can either continue to try and resuscitate traditional sales approaches, or adjust their approach in a way that will enable them to be perceived by customers as a truly valuable resource, as opposed to just another sales caller.

Contact Us to find out more about how Question Based Selling can be customized for the intended audience, cost options, and the overall impact QBS will have on your go-to-market strategy.

When contacting new prospects for the very first time, wouldn’t it be great to have a 30% to 50% success rate instead of the standard 1% to 2%? Think about it. If only one or two out of a hundred people actually chooses to engage with you, with the rest of your opportunities going down in flames, it almost seems inhumane to ask someone to continue making that many calls with such a low success rate.

It turns out that making cold calls in 2017 is a bad strategy. Salespeople hate to make them because they incur such a high rate of rejection, and customers hate to take cold calls because they perceive them as useless wastes of time. Consequently, cold calling tends to produce an extremely low return on invested sales effort (ROISE).

Now, I‘m not saying you shouldn’t call prospective customers, nor am I suggesting that you make fewer calls or work less. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t make “cold” calls any more. Fortunately, there is a better way.

What’s the problem with a cold call? The answer is simple: Temperature. Cold calls tend to sound vague and purposeless, rather than valuable, credible or relevant to the person on the receiving end of the call. So, what do you suppose the chances of making a sale are if the customer’s first impression is that this call is probably going to be a waste of time? Perhaps I should just come right out and ask: When is a good time for you to take cold calls from a salesperson you don’t yet know or trust? I think you’d say that it’s never a good time. But, what if it was possible to change the customer’s mentality to be more receptive to your calls?

Let me give you a sample of what a cold call typically sounds like:

Salesperson: “Good afternoon, Mr. Customer, my name is Joe Smith and I’m with Equitable Real Estate Life Insurance Mortgage Company. I wanted to introduce myself and see if there would be a good time to set up a meeting so I can show you how our products could help you manage your short-term monetary goals and well as help with your longer-term financial planning.

Customer: “Ahh…no, thanks.” (click)

Sure, you can mix up the words a bit and pacify yourself by thinking that your cold calls sound much different than the sample above; but at the end of the day, we should care less about what we say, and focus instead on what the customer hears. Without being customer-focused, sellers end up leaving lots of voice-  mails that never generate return calls. Same with email—email messages are constantly being sent into the abyss of the decision makers’ inboxes, never to be heard from again. And, if you’re lucky enough to get through to a “live” person, customers have learned the easiest way to get a salesperson off the phone is to either say, “No, thanks…”, or simply ask, “Can you send me information?”

In either case, a potential opportunity is squandered because the salesperson doesn’t sound purposeful, relevant, valuable, or credible. If there was a fix for this, wouldn’t you rather convert more potential opportunities into real prospects? This entire conundrum is explained in Chapter 12 of my first book (Secrets of Question Based Selling), which is appropriately titled, Turning Cold Calls into Luke Warm Calls.

The key to transforming cold-calls into luke-warm calls is to understand that people are generally reluctant to share information with someone they don’t yet know or trust. You can easily prove this theory for yourself. Just walk up to someone you don’t know and ask, “Ma’am, what’s your biggest problem?” What do you think will happen? My money says they’ll give you a dirty look and then walk away.

So, when you call prospects, it’s okay to be pleasant and cordial, but you’ve got to realize that people want to know two things right off the bat: Who you are, and why are you calling me? If you are calling for no reason whatsoever, why bother even making the call? That’s what I mean by being purposeful. But, most sellers are indeed calling for a reason, and it shouldn’t just be to chit-chat about something as superfluous as the customer’s picks for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Instead, there are dozens of ways to sound more purposeful when targeting a specific audience. Note that if I made five prospect calls to five different people, or sent emails to five different accounts , the context of my message may vary widely from one to the next, but my strategy of coming across as a valuable resource rather than just another cold-caller doesn’t change. Here are two examples of conveying a more meaningful message:

Salesperson: “Hi, Robert, this is Chuck Miller with ABC Company, I’m on the team that works with large manufacturing accounts in the Great Lakes Region. I had a meeting with your counterpart in another account, and two issues came up in our conversation just before lunch last Friday that I though might directly impact your manufacturing process; one of which is time sensitive. So, I wanted to be proactive and see if it would make sense for us to connect. Is this a bad time or do you have a few minutes?”

Salesperson: “Hi, Susan, this is Dana Evans with XYZ Company, I’m on the team that works with hospitals in Central Florida. We’ve had a handful of new announcements in the last six and a half weeks, three of which could directly impact your delivery of patient care—at what could be a fraction of the cost. So, I wanted to be proactive and see if it would make sense for us to have a conversation. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Both of these examples assume that you reached the person “live.” You wouldn’t have asked if it was a bad time when leaving a voice-mail or email message. With the exception of that last sentence, however, you could use these same words to increase the purposeful-ness of your electronic messages. For example, on voice-mail, you could easily say, “If you get a chance today, could you please call me back. My number is ________________.” With email, I might write something like, “To avoid a championship game of telephone tag, might I suggest that we pick a time to get together on the telephone to go over the various options, how that would impact your business and the associated costs? I should be in the office until tomorrow afternoon when I have to catch a flight to Chicago. Let me know what time works best for you. Please advise.”

These calls are intended to sound pleasant and cordial, but they don’t waste the customer’s time by being vague or irrelevant. In fact, being overly friendly prospects hoping that prospects will feel more inclined to buy your product or service will more likely backfire in today’s standoffish selling environment because customer’s don’t want to be schmoozed. They want to be helped. Fortunately for sellers, when your calls sound purposeful, relevant, and credible, and you are perceived to be a valuable resource, you will build plenty of relationships within your targeted accounts. Put it this way, if I was going to make a bunch of prospect calls, I would rather my efforts produce two, three, or even four times the average success rate. Once you get to that point, you double your success rate again. That’s how you sell lots of stuff.