Follow Up

You might be losing business because your follow up system doesn’t work.

Nearly 30% of those prospects who ask for a follow up call or email become long-term customers. Problem is, many sales reps forget. In the never-ending quest to find new business, their system falls apart.

To make more money, invest in a sales tracking program such as ACT or Goldmine. It will provide you with every detail of a sale from first contact through closing. The system will prompt you who to call, when and what is to be discussed next.

If you are already using one of these tracking software programs, make sure you are doing so effectively, taking advantage of all it offers, including software updates. It will illuminate your sales path and help you close more business.
If you sales tracking systems are broken, fix them. You’ll be surprised at what you’ve been missing—prospect who want to become customers.

Dust Off Those Sales Resolutions

Sales resolutions, like fitness and diet self-promises, are already starting to lose their grip. Selling professionals have fallen back into the same old rut of not prospecting, not filling pipelines and doing anything to avoid paper work or worse, making a cold call. And when it comes to organization and time management, most good sales people lack the skills.

Don’t despair, the year is young and you can get in touch with your resolutions once again and make this a great sales year.

Here are 8 steps to get your well-intentioned sales resolutions back on track:

Get out of the comfort zone, really! Tackle the tasks you hate without much thought. Pick up the phone, prospect and handle paperwork efficiently and timely.

Quit talking. Quit talking about you. A prospect wants to buy from you if you’ll only let them tell you why and they will, if you just start listening.

Forget the close. If you’ve been selling for anytime at all, you remember the ill-taught closing techniques. Forget them. Closing is a natural part of the sales conversation. Don’t push it.

Take time to research your prospect. Find out what it is that you may be able to help with. Far too many sales reps fall down here. You are not too busy to skip this.

Get in the Game. Many a sales rep rearranges drawers, handles personal errands and does anything but work a sales system. Quit putting it off and get to work.

Enough with the dumb questions. Ban the following questions to prospects: How are you? What’s new? Ban the following statements: I was just calling to check in (substitute touch base). Have a nice day.

Deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. How many of you spend far too much time dueling with gatekeepers while the decision maker remains elusive.

Track, track, track your efforts and results. If you don’t have a CRM or sales planning system like Goldmine or ACT, get one now. You’ll learn a lot about what efforts pay off most and you’ll be more organized than you ever thought.

If your sales are suffering, look in the mirror. Better yet, look at your 2009 selling resolutions and commit to them. You made them for a reason. Remember?

I'm Not Making The Cold Calls!

At a holiday party, a well-dressed, articulate woman and I engaged in conversation. She said she was a former account executive for a top marketing company and I told her my company makes prospecting cold calls and sets sales appointments for a variety of companies.

She looked at me and said, "I get it. What a great idea. When I was a sales rep there was no way I was going to make cold calls, in person or on the phone!" She went on to say that she relied on internal leads from an inside sales appointment group and referrals.

When I asked if she could make more money by prospecting herself she said, "absolutely, but I did well enough. I didn't get rich, but did OK."

Her former company, that wanted the sales force to prospect, but didn't enforce it, is now out of business. Maybe too many sales people were happy to do just enough to be OK.

The Real Cost of a Sales Appointment

Using an outside sales appointment setting group is expensive, or is it?

At first glance, with fees upward of 30 bucks an hour, it seems real expensive and maybe even cost prohibitive. A second look will show that this might be the best investment you ever made.

Let's assume that you've been enlightened with the idea that using an appointment setter(s) to make your sales reps more productive is the right thing to do. Let's further assume that you've at least thought of using an outsourcing firm to perform this task for you. In-house or outsource? Which one makes more sense?

An inside sales appointment setter might make you feel better because you will see him every day, toiling away at his desk dialing and smiling. It only costs $8-$10 an hour with a few spiffs thrown in for good measure. The appointments he schedules are fair at best but you think he's getting better.

What about the other costs though? The desk space, phone and computer line, taxes, insurance and training. What happens when the appointment setter doesn't show up one day for an important calling project and there is no one to take his place and he doesn't show up the next day or the day after that? Now you have the cost of recruitment and training on your shoulders again.

If you are working the in-house appointment center right, you also need to hire someone to compile sales and call reports and gauge effectiveness of different campaigns. That reporting is one of the most important tools you have to know that you are calling on the right prospects with the right message at the right time.

The right outsourced sales appointment setting firm will perform as an extension of your sales group, dialing more and setting more appointments than your inside callers. They are well trained, professional, and articulate and they come along with a support group that will furnish you with meaningful reports that tell you a lot about your market and sales effort. Your sales reps productivity will double!

The right outsourced sales appointment setting firm will streamline your sales process and take away the management, training and recruitment hassles while providing you with a steady stream of highly qualified appointments with prospects who will buy from you.

If you are thinking of using in-house sales appointment setters, think long and hard. Is it cheaper? In the short term: maybe. Long term it will cost you more than you ever imagined and could in fact, derail your sales future.

The Fallacy of Pay for Performance Appointment Setting

by Brian Grinonneau

If a deal seems too good to be true, you can bet it is.

When searching for a sales appointment setting firm, some clients are tempted by the pay for performance model. It is intriguing. Have the appointment setting/ telemarketing firm only receive pay if appointments are made. It seems risk free. It is not.

Most pay for performance models are hatched in offshore call centers. The problem, aside from a language barrier, is these performance based companies push too hard, don’t disqualify poor prospects, use sub-par callers, waste a lot of your time and leave an indelible ugly mark on your company image.

A pay for performance telemarketing company oft-times is poorly equipped to put your best business foot forward. It makes haphazard calls from a noisy room with no real structure in place. The only goal is to get lots of appointments with no regard for quality or planning. The caller who is working on your account today may not be tomorrow and on day three it is someone different again perhaps with no knowledge of the intricacies of your project.

To achieve success when outsourcing your sales appointment setting strategy, you have to select a firm that has a solid management team with a strong sales background. This team will be responsible for putting you in front of the accounts you want most, but also in helping you better understand your market. Leading call centers will know the best prospects on whom to call, why they buy and how to set and appointment with them. The right appointment setting company should be an important, natural extension of your sales department focused on your ROI.

The best way to find the right telemarketing firm is to perform due diligence by asking the following questions:

May I see the bios of your management team?
What is included in your service?
How are your calling agents compensated?
Will I have a caller or two assigned exclusively to my project?
How do you monitor progress on my project?
How do you report results and market trends to me?
How often will you communicate with me and by what form?
May I speak with and confer with the callers assigned to me?

Marketing is an ongoing testing process and a telemarketing center is an important part of it. A call center's ability to be proactive, change direction when needed, and carefully track the strategy will give you a clearer view of your successes.

When you next consider a telemarketing company know that your best results will come from a company that has solid management, meaningful reporting and educated, well-paid callers. Don’t be tempted by the seemingly low priced offerings of pay for performance plans. They will cost you more than you could ever imagine.