I deal with a lot of teams making a lot of cold calls.  My job is to go into a company such as Dell Computers, sit around for a bit drinking tea and listening, and come up with a hit-list of factors that contribute to the cold call’s success – or otherwise. 

I then mould the team’s new cold-calling approach using the best bits – and leaving the bad lines, habits and approaches behind.  Finally I train the team to perform the new cold calling approach until its natural.

Here is one of the common issues when I listen to cold calls:

Customers don’t always think about you the way you want them to think about you.

Here’s an example: 

When I was recently at Dell, the Internal Sales Reps (ISRs) had a focus on data storage.  Dell on-sells some pretty big brands in the data storage game, such as EMC, and the ISRs wanted to find out who from their cold call list might be interested in gaining a powerful new storage solution.

So the call was made.  And here is the first 15 seconds from an Internal Sales Rep called Danny:

• Danny:  John its Danny from Dell.  (Thinking about storage).
• John:  Oh yes, Dell.  (Thinking about that new Dell ad with the multi-coloured laptops starting at £349 including VAT).
• Danny:  John can I please ask you about your storage requirements there at Langley?
• John:  OK Danny (Thinking that you mean storage on my laptop because that’s what Dell do).
• Danny:  We have EMC in here today and we are offering customers….

Do you see how there were two streams of thought occurring? 

The customer thinks of Dell as a laptop provider, while Danny the salesman makes the assumption that the customer knows that Dell sells storage.

How could this be addressed?

By establishing CONTROL of the way your customer perceives you.  And doing it early in the conversation.

We have to control the way customers think about us from the beginning.  If we allow them to control the perceptions then know that they may be thinking of a recent advert, a different product, negative publicity or a host of other things.

So I will often start a cold calling training session with the following three questions:

• What are you trying to sell today?
• Is it what the customer expects you to be selling?
• If not, how can you adjust that perception, quickly, during the start of the call?

From their we build an ideal introduction using our Natural Training First 15 Seconds Approach.  This approach means the prospect is left in no doubt as to what we are selling, and how we are selling it.

Using USPs in our First 15 Seconds we can control the way they think of us in a way that reinforces what we are selling. 

• Danny:  John it’s Danny from Dell – John quick question:  Did you know that at Dell we store over 30% of the world’s data, making us the biggest data storage house in the world.
• John:  Hi Danny – I think I had heard that somewhere, yes…

By controlling the conversation or cold call from the outset, we achieve the following benefits:

1. The conversation is framed well – it is on the right track
2. We can (and will) control the conversation the way we need
3. It’s a “waffle-buster” (helps us get straight to the point), and
4. It moves us on either to a close or begins the consultative process.

The point is, if we control the conversation from the start, displacing what’s in the prospect’s mind with our fresh angle, then we are in a much better position to sell throughout the rest of the call.

 Give me a bell if you would like to talk through your, or the team’s, approach.  I’ll be happy to help.