Why Cold Calling Is DeadWritten by Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.
Our world of selling is closed off from other areas of business that continue to adopt and embrace new, efficient ideas. I was reminded of this recently while re- reading Seth Godin's "Permission Marketing." Here's a book that was intended for business owners and marketing executives, yet it provides a much-needed dose of common sense that would be of great benefit to sales organizations, especially sales managers, who continue to cling to very old, and, in their minds, very right, ideas. Unfortunately, our brave new world has made these old ideas very wrong.Seth Godin talks about Interruption Marketing versus Permission Marketing. Interruption Marketing is traditional advertising that interrupts your day in an attempt to get your attention and sell you something. In other words, it is marketing equivalent of Cold Calling. Permission Marketing is systematically getting prospects to give you permission to present to them. In other words, it is marketing's equivalent of what I teach salespeople to do. In book, Seth uses metaphor of someone trying to get married to describe flaw in Interruption Marketing, or Cold Calling. The bachelor goes into a singles bar and asks every woman in place to marry him. When they all say no, he blames his clothes, buys a new suit, and tries again at another bar, only to fail again and again, just like a cold caller. Are you getting point he tries to make in that story? Think about it. A salesperson spends weeks cold calling with dismal results. The salesperson goes to sales manager for advice on what to do differently to start getting results. A conversation ensues about what salesperson is doing. A lot of old ideas begin to surface. Ideas such as "Initial Benefit Statement," "Elevator Speech," and other concepts that once upon a time were right answers, but have since become very wrong answers. Working on these things is equivalent of man in story blaming his failure on suit, changing into a new suit, then going to a different singles bar to do it all over again.
| | Dramatically Improve Sales with The KISS TestWritten by Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.
We've all heard term KISS at one time or another - "Keep It Simple, Stupid." However, majority of salespeople violate this basic principle more often than not.Let me start with some examples of what I'm talking about. At one position I held, I sat next to someone who could have been a top salesperson. He and I both operated much same in that rather than cold call, we ran our own personal marketing programs to generate leads and simply took calls that came in as a result. The problem is what he did with calls. When someone called me, ready to buy, I immediately went into closing deal and making arrangements to either come out with paperwork or to fax it over. He, on other hand, went into a full-length company story and a lot of other information that he absolutely should not tell a qualified prospect unless they ask for it. The end result is that people who called ready to sign up for one of our services lost interest and didn't buy anything at all. Another example is what happens every time I try to make a business purchase. Here I am, saying "Yes, I'm going to buy," and sales rep lauches into a company story about how long they've been in business, who their big clients are, and on and on. Lucky for these salespeople, product usually sells itself and I still buy. However, I'm willing to bet that a lot of people don't. Nothing is more frustrating than picking up phone saying, "Hi, here I am ready to buy," and having some rep go into a story bragging about how great company is and all that they can do. That comes off as pure arrogance to a business owner. What's more, talking about your big enterprise clients alienates most small business owners. They assume their needs will be placed second to those of big dogs and that they'll be treated as just a number when calling for service.
|