When I did outside sales in the Washington, DC metro area selling long-distance phone services, I had go far outside the Beltway (what locals call Interstate 495) to random cold calls. I had to cross the interstate because I’d been thrown out of 85% of the buildings inside the beltway – including a building in Richmond, VA.
One time, I went down to Manassas, VA to prospect, and just kept aimlessly driving around to find a ‘good’ spot – any area populated with office buildings. I found an industrial park, started making my calls (and getting thrown out) until I came to one office in the industrial park that had music coming out of it. I walked in and saw a man leaning back in his chair listening to music, which would have been normal except that he had a Doberman next to him. The thing was huge.
Big dogs scare me, but big dogs that are the size of a horse paralyze me.
I stammered my way through my pitch, telling him I could cut his long-distance phone bills in half. He responded that he didn’t have a phone, but I was so tense because of the dog that I just kept saying, “But I can save you money.”
“How can you save me money on my phone bill when I don’t even have a phone, boy?” he asked me.
“But you see sir, my service crushes AT&T and I can save you money!”
I just kept pitching – I didn’t listen.
“What part of me not having a phone don’t you get?” he said as he started to get up.
The dog took his cue from his owner’s agitation. I slowly backed away, found the nearest bathroom at a gas stop to change my underwear, and headed back to the office. My day was done, because I failed to prepare and I made the fatal sales mistake of not listening to my prospect.
This story is a prime example of my old-school sales life. The way I prepared for a sales call was sitting outside my car, psyching myself up for battle with security guards and gatekeepers, and rehearsing my pitch to the prospect: That I could cut his phone bill in half – no talk of value or features, just a pure price play.
I didn’t care what kind of business they had. Just as long as they had a phone I thought I could cut their bill in half. I didn’t realize that not every business made hours and hours of long distance calls.
If I had done some – any – homework, I could have been more strategic in my calls. Firms that had “international” or “global” in their names or descriptions would probably do a lot of long-distance calling: Companies like big law firms, shipping companies, and import/export companies.
You never knew what you were going to get. Sometimes I’d be pleasantly surprised and find a few good fits, but overall it was a bad use of my time to randomly prospect companies with no understanding of whether they could be a good fit. And when you storm into somebody’s office claiming to be able to help them with a problem they don’t have, it annoys them, wastes their time and yours, and damages your brand.
Outside sales may be a numbers game, but why didn’t I make it smarter?
Why didn’t I do some homework?
I didn’t have a smartphone back then or Google at my fingertips. I could do about 30 minutes of business intelligence before I even approached the prospect if I really wanted to. But even then, managers wanted to see the number of businesses you called on, and they were all about quantity and pure numbers. Quality was lost on them.
Smart selling doesn’t work that way.
Gather information, make a plan, and have an idea about what kind of company you call on so you can make your pitch tailored to their anticipated needs. Increase your odds of a good call by increasing your knowledge of their business and how it fits with yours – let’s call it Prospecting IQ. Be smart, not stupid.
When you can warm up that first call just a little bit by finding some commonality or knowing the kinds of pains that companies and their competitors usually struggle with, you give yourself an edge – an edge that helps you look more like a value-provider than a price-pushing product provider.
I meet a lot of stupid salesmen. I can spot them, because I was one. I’m not perfect, but I am better because I learned there is a better way.
from HubSpot Sales Blog http://ift.tt/2ehwCDh
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