Don't Listen To Others

Quit Cold Calling

If you can’t cold call, don’t! It’s that easy.

How, you now ask, can you get qualified prospects on whom to call and turn into your new customers if you don’t cold call? Let someone else do it.

The typical sales type will do anything to avoid dialing the phone to try to convince someone they don’t know to meet and listen to their pitch. It is uncomfortable bordering on painful.

Watch your sales pro during “phone time”. He will rearrange papers on his desk, take extended restroom breaks, work feverishly on an email, chart or other paperwork, dial and hang-up quickly claiming to get a busy signal, doodle, stare into space, take calls from customers he must service, get extra coffee, meet with other staffers who need his attention right now and on and on it goes. A sales rep will do almost anything to avoid the dreaded cold call.

The downside, of course, is very few calls get made, no new rocks are overturned and the sales pipeline remains empty. Sales projections are missed, money is lost and unhappiness reigns supreme.

Turn this highly important task over to a phone sales professional and watch your fortunes rise. A sales appointment setter or telemarketer will dial the phone 30 to 50 times an hour and talk with a fair number of qualified prospects, scheduling appointments and gathering important competitor information. This prospector goes about the job cheerfully, never losing sight of the goal of setting meetings with qualified potential customers. He is a craftsman—an artisan who never gives up.

Using these phone pros builds your business by canvassing targeted SIC codes, demographics or geographic locations. More meetings are scheduled, more presentations made and many more sales closed.

Quit fighting the obvious. If you can’t cold call, DON’T.

Doing The Job For Free

Making the decision to use sales appointment setters isn’t really so hard. If you consider all of the facts, the choice is simple really. Separating sales appointment setting from the actual sales process is plain and simple, smart. It fills anemic pipelines, evens out revenue droughts, provides meaningful reporting, improves morale, greatly reduces oversight, helps you make more money and it can be done free.

The word free has lost its meaning over the years. Free means something with a lot of strings attached that may really cost more than if you would buy the item outright. To be fair, in the case of sales appointment setting, the better term might be zero net cost rather than free.

Imagine your company has a staff of three outside sales reps. (Good salespeople all but lacking the time or desire to prospect and cold call. It isn’t unusual. In fact, there is nary a company exec who doesn’t echo that very complaint on a daily basis.) You make the decision to employ a sales appointment setting firm to schedule sales meetings. The hook is, the sales reps will pay for the service—pay for their new appointments.

Management usually gasps at this suggestion saying the sales reps will refuse, complain profanely, quit and take their book of business to a competitor. Yes, they will complain loud and long. No, they won’t quit. As the program is explained, they will understand that this makes their job easier and in fact, helps them make more money—money that dwarfs what they will pay for an appointment setter.

The typical sales rep spends 80% of his day servicing, schmoozing, following up and involving himself in non-sales activities. It leaves precious little time to prospect and cold call to find new clients. Before long it cuts into his earnings and the company profits forcing him into frenetic activity to try to make quota and maintain the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. Frenetic sales activity is a poor substitute for the orderly sales process prospects demand.

The sales appointment setting firm, statistically, will improve selling activity by 30% on average. It provides a regular, steady stream of prospects on whom to call. Moreover the appointment-setter becomes an inside sales rep helping his outside counterpart sell more by providing, in addition to appointments, leads, requests for information and valuable insights about competitors. He becomes the keeper of the calendar, the follow-up man, and the cheerleader. Before long your sales rep is happier, much more productive and there is little need for sales management.

Free appointment setting or zero net cost appointment setting. You pick the term but know that it will change the face of your sales organization in the most positive way ever. You may even rethink your take on the word free.

You've Got to Be Kidding Me

By Brian Grinonneau





Here's an idea hatched in the minds of short-sighted corporate cost cutters: "Let's hire an overseas call center to handle outbound sales appointment setting and inbound service issues". In the immortal words of Johnny Mac, you've got to be kidding me.

Want an example? Try doing business with Spirit Airlines. That's the company with cheap fares but lousy customer service. A recent problem with a boarding pass resulted in on the phone hold times of up to an hour, only to be greeted by a representative named "Roger" who sounded a hell of a lot like Rameesh. Listen to this guy pronounce Seattle.

Let's get smart here. People in the U.S. (your customers and prospects) want to talk with someone who speaks pretty flawless English. Long Island nasal and southern twang is ok but a "no trace of an accent" midwestern dialect is preferable. Put an overseas caller on the job and blow this deal and all future deals once and for all.

Why do businesses with good street cred use call centers from India, Pakistan and other far away places? Think. It's in the bottom line. Man, you can have that job done for pennies on the dollar. Problem is: the job is so poorly done that you have killed a sale and taken customer care to new lows.

Next time you get a come on email or sales call from an overseas call center, ignore it. Or if you prefer, hire the company and put them to work. It makes it so much easier for smart companies to use professional U.S. telemarketers and show you what ROI really means.

Sales Appointment Setting: A Matter of Geometry?

by Brian Grinonneau


Amazing isn't it, the number of smart business types trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with their approach to sales management. It doesn't fit! It never will. Open up to some new options.

A sharp sales rep wants to sell. That's all. No cold calls. No prospecting. No scheduling meetings. No paperwork. He wants to get in front of the client and perform. (see: close the deal) Problem is: overwrought sales management thinks that you need to push the cocky sales staff to build a skill set that focuses more on the mundane tasks of sales planning. Ridiculous! Delegate the job to someone else.

Before you say it costs too much to bring on new staff to work for the sales reps, you need to really consider the ROI. MaSM studies in late 2007 show that sales productivity can more than double and cash flow is akin to ocean waves when using appointment setters.

A sales appointment setter is an introvert who prefers making a connection by phone and setting the stage for the performer. The sales star is an extrovert focused on the gratification of the sale and the money and bragging rights it brings. Two distinct halves of the sales equation that make for one hell of a result.

Sales appointment setting brings real meaning to the most overused word in business today: synergy. Pair up sales appointment setters and even the most average sales reps and you've got a team that will blow away quotas and projections. ROI will finally mean something.

Doing what you've always done and expecting different results just doesn't work. You know that. It really is the square peg, round hole theory.