Does a CRM get you better appointments?

I spent a very late night this week customizing a CRM, standardizing data, importing it and creating a new reports...in fact the whole process took about two weeks.  Somewhere around 2am I asked if it was really worth it.

The answer is yes.  Why?  Because in sales prospecting two elements have to be perfectly balanced:  efficiency and effectivenss.

You have to be efficient at making calls, printing letters and sending emails...the more efficient you are, the more prospects you contact and the more results you generate.  But you also have to be effective...contacting the right people, in the right industry and at the right size companies.

And the key to being both efficient and effective is having the right tools.  And that means the right tools which let you address the requests of prospects immediately and move on to the next.  In my experience, both small companies and large fail their staff in this area, but it's their obligation to provide the right tools if they are going to require results and compensate based on results (as they should!).

So yes, if you are a sales prospector/appointment setter, it's worth having a well-tuned CRM.  And if you are a manager or company owner, it's also in your best interests, so put in the time & money it takes to get it right!

How to be the most knowledgable telemarketer

You would think the best approach to being a highly knowledgeable prospector or sales person would be to study diligently and immerse yourself in all the details about your service or product.

But you'd just be deceiving yourself. It's impossible to know all the answers to every question a prospect might throw at you. Most likely they have years of expertise in their field and you will always lack their level of knowledge...so don't even try to impress them, you'll just look silly.

But you can sound intelligent and prepared by remembering one key point: the person asking the questions ALWAYS controls the conversation.

It's simple, but difficult to do in practice. The key thing you need is not more knowledge, but the ability to answer with a question.

Some question versions which work well are: "That sounds like an important issue to you; can you tell me why?", or "I'll check into that, but can you tell me how you've handled it in the past?", or "That's a great question; how would you be using that feature?"

Always remember, you are the sales expert, not the product expert!

A secret prospecting opportunity

For a number of years I've followed prospecting results to see if there was a pattern to timing. You know what I mean...everyone says don't call Monday morning or Friday afternoon (bunk!), or don't call the day before a holiday. Is it really true, or is it just folklore so we can all squeeze in a long weekend?

Turns out it's not true. Regularly, we have some of our best results on Mondays and Fridays. More surprising is the consistently strong prospecting results we get between Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

Sound strange? Maybe. But think about it...after Thanksgiving business travel and meetings slow down, budgets are set, new initiatives are waiting until January.

This all means your prospects are more available, which is exactly what you want when making a prospecting call. You don't want them to make a decision or even necessarily meet with you...you just want them to take your call and have an initial conversation to see if the topic is worth pursuing for a future in-person meeting.

So don't ignore Mondays and Friday, but especially don't ignore the two weeks after Thanksgiving. It will set you up for a very strong January!

What's really happening out there.

With all the news stories of businesses in trouble (another $1 trillion for banks announced today!), you'd think business activity is grinding to a halt. Ok, yes things are slower than they were (maybe it's a return to "normal" growth, whatever that is), but a surprising number of companies are out there aggressively seeking new customers and being successful at it.

How do I know? Because we're making the calls for them.

Recently, we've been starting 2-3 new projects each month generating new customer leads for businesses intent on growing...despite the current economy. Yes, we are working harder to find those new leads for them...more calls and emails, more compelling scripts...but they are finding new prospects.

And guess whose market share they are taking. Maybe yours!

In upcoming posts I'll share with you more details about what we are seeing now in the sales prospecting environment and the techniques we're using to get the best results. Check back for more!