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Give cold calling the finger…

Barry Caponi — Wed, 30 May 2012 10:08:06 +0000

The best appointment setting software just got better!

You’ve heard me talk about the importance of efficiency in this blog many times. It’s not enough to just improve the effectiveness of our calls. After all, there are only so many hours in the day. Efficiency is just as important.

You’ve also heard me tout the software we use to attain that improved efficiency, Klpz, from Contact Science. It’s the only application designed for appointment setting that we’re aware of. Customers routinely report that it increases the number of calls they can make in an hour by two to two and-a-half times. Anyway, Contact Science just announced that it has released its iPad version after being tested by one of our customers for a couple of months.

If you’re an iPad user, this new release provides the ability to quickly access your list of people you need to call today from the road. No more printing out your list to take with you and update upon your return.

For those of us who cold call for a living, life just got a little easier!

Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called Coldcalling101™. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations—the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 817 224-9900 or at barry@coldcalling101.com. You can also find answers to many of your challenges in our books: Contrary to Popular Belief, Cold Calling DOES Work! Volume I: Effectiveness, The Art of Appointment Makingand Volume II: Efficiency, the Science of Appointment Making.

Five simple rules for dressing for success on an Initial Appointment.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:13:41 +0000

You might think in this day and age of business casual, what you wear isn’t important. Beware, like it or not, it does matter.

When I first began selling, I read a book called Dress for Success, by John T. Malloy. Back then, it was pretty simple as to what I wore on an Initial Appointment. It was always a suit. Today, it’s not so simple.

I came across this blog by Tom Searcy this week with five simple rules for dressing appropriately. Check it out before you go on your next appointment.

Five simple ideas on how become a better listener on appointment setting calls.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:09:27 +0000

Ever ask a question on a call and get an indignant response of, “I already answered that question”?

In our role-play sessions this happens all the time. People are so intent on what they are going to say next, that they aren’t listening to what the person on the other end of the phone is saying. It is to be expected during these practice sessions because people are not yet comfortable with their new skills so they are internally focused. But surely that doesn’t happen on live calls, right? Wrong.

If you think about it, I think you’ll agree with me that it has actually happened to you on business calls—maybe even done it a time or two? How did it make you feel when became apparent that the person you were talking with wasn’t listening? Did it make you feel like wanting to do business with them? Probably not.

In appointment making situations, the biggest technique I know of to make sure you’re not one of those people who are not listening is to have mastered the process you use on your appointment setting calls and know cold what you’ll respond with in every situation (or at least those you hear most often). How do you do that? Simple, you must have thought through the responses you receive and have mapped out how you’ll respond in each of those situations. Then practice, practice, practice.

And by the way, the reason we do instructor lead role-play sessions in our Prospector’s Academies is because contrary to popular belief, practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Here are four other quick ideas for becoming a better listener. I saw these in a blog by Mary Goodman and Rich Russakoff this past week. Here’s the link if you want to read their entire blog. But remember, none of these can be applied unless you follow my first suggestion!

1. Don’t interrupt the other person. Let them finish their thought

2. Listen actively with your voice

3. Ask clarifying questions, and my favorite…

4. Talk less

“A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.” Seneca

Barry Caponi — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:25:06 +0000

Procrastination will kill your goals and maybe even more.

Seneca was a Roman philosopher and is right on the money with this thought. Ever succumbed to temptation and did something you love to do when you knew you should be doing something else? Of course you have—if you’re human. Here’s the kicker: did you feel guilty while doing it? That is my definition of a double whammy.

This week’s message is simple. Do what is most important first. Sounds pretty simple because it is. Most of us humans don’t adhere to this simple adage—at least not all of the time.

Tony Robbins defines procrastination as knowing you should do something, but still not doing it. He goes on to say that the reason for procrastination comes from associating more pain with doing the task than we associate with putting it off and doing it later.

Cold calling is one of those tasks that we know we need to do, but many of us will do anything, including dust the office (done that) when the time comes to start calling.

I can talk all day about the positives that come from getting it done, but humans respond to the fear of loss more than the pleasure of gain, so here’s a little fear for you. I was talking with a VP of Sales the other day about potentially doing one of our appointment setting programs for them and I asked him about their turnover. He said that he had just fired two sales professionals that very week. “Why did you fire them?” I asked. “They just wouldn’t pick up the phone and prospect” he replied.

Enough said…

Wow, even I am impressed by this result.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:19:16 +0000

600% increase in appointments set from sales training still going strong eight months after training ended.

The biggest challenge for sales training is to maintain the results that occur because of the training. One of our customers has now done it for eight months!

Enlightened sales executives want to know how to sustain the gains they will see from a sales training program. If the training is good, an ROI results early enough to pay for the program many times over as good sales training does result in more sales. In our world, it begins with setting more Initial Appointments as that is what we obviously train people to do. Before the end of the first buying cycle, our customers see a substantial ROI on their investment.

But even with our customers, the question always comes up regarding how to keep those gains going. How do we keep sales professionals from slipping back into the ‘old way of doing things’?

In a blog entitled, Six times more Initial Appointments thru cold calling, published back in December, I chronicled a case study where one of our customers put 22 outside sales professionals through one of our Prospector’s Academies. In the first twelve weeks they saw a 600% increase in the number of appointments the team was setting. We’ve now put close to 100 sales professionals through the program with similar results.

We knew we’d get that up front result as we’ve been doing that for years. What we really wanted to know was, does our unique approach provide for the ability for them to sustain those gains over the long term. We just completed an eight-month milestone review of what happened to that group.

The remaining sales professionals (one of the ancillary benefits of our program is the ability to quickly weed out those who are not willing to prospect at the level required in a very quantifiable manner) have not only maintained the pace they came out of the Prospector’s Academy with, many have continued to improve their results.

If I may brag for a moment, not many sales trainers can point to a 600% increase in anything coming out of a training program, but to maintain that accelerated result for 8 months is something we’re very proud of.

I had a sobering experience this past week.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:12:50 +0000

I had the honor to sit next to an Army Sargent on a flight escorting a fallen comrade on his final journey back home from Afghanistan.

Anytime we get caught up in our day-to-day lives, we need to give some quiet thought to those who commit their time, energy, and, sometimes, lives, to protecting what we take for granted every day.

I was on a flight from Dallas to Philadelphia this past week. While we were waiting to board, the gate attendant announced that we had the honor of accompanying a soldier on his final journey back home. They asked us to all stand while they loaded his coffin into the hold of the plane and while his special two man honor guard boarded.

We all stood as this took place. Afterwards, the entire gate area remained very quiet as you might imagine. I had been upgraded to first class, so a few minutes later, I was among the first to board after the two escorts had. Much to my surprise, I wound up sitting next to one of the soldiers who were escorting their comrade back home to Pennsylvania to be buried.

The poor Sargent I sat next to had been up since 3:00 am in order to drive up from Ft. Hood to catch this morning flight, so he slept for the first hour. I think I was even a bit relieved that he was sleeping, as I really didn’t know what to say to him. “Thank you for your service,” seemed a bit trite for the situation. When he awakened, though, we fell into a nice comfortable conversation.

I won’t bore you with all we discussed, but one of the questions I asked him was how he had been selected for this duty. In typical Army fashion, he said he didn’t know, but after serving two tours in Iraq, he considered it an honor to have been chosen. I asked him if he had been given any specific training for it and he said no.

We talked about a lot of things on that flight, just like any two passengers would to pass the time. We even talked about what he was going to do when he got out of the Army in a few years. He had not signed up until he was 31 and was planning to stay in until he got 10 years in, so he is going to be 41 when he retires from the Army. He wants to get into the broadcasting.

As we were getting close to Philly, I asked him what he was going to say to the family. He said he didn’t know. He had lost a couple of friends in Iraq so he said he knew the right words would come. As he said those words to me, though, he was looking straight ahead and his eyes were filling with tears over a man who he told me he had never met. I’m not sure those words came as easily as he imagined, but I’m not sure the words were needed.

I imagine the family appreciated these two soldiers accompanying their son and husband home, so that he didn’t have to make that trip alone.

I never knew how the Army did that, but I am glad I now know. I’m also glad they do it the way they do. It certainly put my business trip and my life in perspective in a very personal way that day.

I did wind up thanking him for what he was doing for us and it didn’t sound near as trite as I thought it might. And for all of you who have served or have had family members serve, thank you as well from the bottom of my heart.

Activity efficiency, on its own, does not necessarily equate to the desired result.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:00:42 +0000

Said another way, be careful what you wish for, or concentrate on. You may get a false sense of accomplishment.

Stephen Covey, in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says to start with the end in mind to make sure you are doing the right things efficiently.

Consider this: My job is sales, and specifically, bringing in new customer revenue. To accomplish that, I know I need to get in front of more prospects. To do that, I need to have more conversations with potential suspects in order to set Initial Appointments with them.

So far so good, right? So let’s take it to the next step. I decide to use the phone in order to set those appointments because I know that I can be more efficient in reaching out to more people in the time I have available than by canvassing door to door. I now make myself as efficient as I possibly can in motoring through my list of names by investing in an auto dialer. When someone answers the phone, it automatically connects me to that person.

In doing so, let’s say I increase the number of dials I was making per hour from 20 to 25. Assuming I was on the phone an hour a week for 44 full selling weeks per year (the actual average full selling weeks in a year, if you’re interested), I would go from being able to make 4,400 dials per year to 5,500.

Before you go off thinking that is pretty fantastic, let me pose a series of questions. What if I am not very good on the phone? Does failing more often or ‘efficiently’ help very much? What if my targets hang up because they hear that click when the auto dialer connects me to their line? Am I really more efficient over the long haul if I am concentrating so much on just having the conversations that I do not take the time to record the results of a call before I go on the next one? Not really.

The moral of the story is that we need to make sure we’re defining our end result properly. In our Prospector’s Academies, we teach sales professionals to not only be more efficient, but effective as well. We say, “Contrary to popular belief, practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” In other words, even on the effectiveness side, just going through the motions, no matter how efficiently, will not get us to our desired result.

Asking for a specific time for an appointment does work.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:17:04 +0000

Many people like to use the, “Are mornings or afternoons better for you?”

A sales professionals in one of our Prospector’s Academies told me this story the other day during a role-play session and I thought it was worth passing on to you.

He told me that he had always been afraid to say no when a target would propose a different time for an appointment than he had originally asked for; even when he had something personal scheduled. He told me that he would say yes to almost anything, even if it were inconvenient—just to get the appointment. He told me that for the first time, he countered with a third time and the prospect said yes. He was ecstatic. “It worked, it worked!” he exclaimed.

If you’ve been following me for long, you know that we teach asking for a specific time for appointments as opposed to providing choices. Sometimes our targets are definitely willing to meet, but can’t do so at the time we asked for. Sales professionals who are not yet confident in their appointment making skills, will many times jump at the first time the target might offer as an alternative, even if it means being totally unproductive that day because of where the target is located. Some even jump at the chance to cancel a scheduled call block. “But boss, it was the only time they could meet!”

Remember, if they are willing to meet, you will easily be able to come up with something that makes sense for the both of you. You are also delivering a subtle message when you signal that you are busy. Don’t come across as desperate—even if you are—find a common ground that makes sense for you, too.

Two techniques to get more returned voicemails.

Barry Caponi — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:08:41 +0000

Nobody returns voicemails anymore; or do they?

Our customers report that, in the B2B market space, the percentage of returned voicemails has dropped over the past five years. Our experience mirrors that. So should we stop leaving voicemails? Our answer is an emphatic, “No.”

The reasons for that are numerous:

You’ve already invested 80% of the time it takes to place a call when you get to voicemail, so why not leave a 20 to 30 second, well thought out, well delivered voicemail? Our marketing departments would kill to the ability to deliver a well-aimed message to the targets they think will buy from us. So, if we’ve gotten to their voicemail, let’s leave that well thought out, well delivered message.
When they do return a voicemail, assuming that we delivered a well thought out voicemail that gives the target a good reason to return the call, they will at least semi-qualified themselves when they return the call. The call will also be warmer and the discussion more meaningful.
Even though we know that less than 5% of our universe of potential targets believes they are in the market for what we’re selling when we call, there are some out there that are in the market. So, why would we want to waste the investment of that dial to the target that believes they are in the market.
With Caller ID on most people’s phones these days, many targets will not pick up the phone if they don’t recognize the number. So, if you don’t leave a message, they’ll never take your call. Talk about wasting time…
Our methodology calls for the final attempt to contact a target in our planned pursuit (we call it a Cycle), to tell the target we’ll not be calling them back for a while, so if they are interested, please call back now. We get more returned calls from this message than any other. It will not work if we’ve not left earlier messages.
For more reasons, go to the ‘Search’ field to the left and type in ‘voicemail’. You’ll be shown more blogs that address this topic as I strongly believe in it.

So, now that we’ve agreed to leave the voicemail, what are the most effective ways to get a target to return a voicemail?

Identify the top reasons why people buy from you and craft different messages for each voicemail. Then put those key reasons in terms that peak curiosity by offering to share how others have found this particular reason to be of benefit to them. Do not put it in terms of how you think you can help this particular target. (See Top Ten Biggest Mistakes Cold Callers Make – Number Two. It’s also covered in my books.)
Make it personal.

In past blogs, we’ve talked about the importance of our lists (see below for a list of some of the best). The better the list, the more often we’ll get through to a person we’re wanting to meet with.

The result is we are more efficient and more effective. A better-qualified list is one that has the following attributes:

Identifies companies that use what we sell
Identifies companies that can afford what we sell
Identifies companies that can be profitable for us to sell to and support
Identifies H.E.R.B., the highest person responsible for buying what we sell
Provides pertinent information that would be helpful for our call, including facts about the company and the individual we’ve identified
Provides multiple targets within a given company, where applicable

If you sell something that makes this extra effort to make each voicemail message personal, then do it! (see Four questions to ask ourselves to determine how much research to do prior to cold calling.)

Regardless of whether you fit the profile where doing the research to make the message personal or not, the investment in time of creating a better list is worth the effort. The better the list, the more appointments you’ll get when you get through. And, that means either more sales per dial, or fewer dials being necessary. Either one make our lives better!

Do you believe cold calling works, or do you believe it doesn’t?

Barry Caponi — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:08:10 +0000

The answer to that question may be holding you back in your selling career.

There is a concept in psychology called, “Learned Helplessness”. It means that when we experience something often enough, we can develop a belief that supports that experience. With cold calling, we hear the following comments from people all the time. “Cold calling doesn’t work.” “Leaving voicemails doesn’t work.” “I won’t use scripts because it makes me sound canned, like the proverbial telemarketer reading their script.”

On the flip side, my experience is that cold calling does work, people do return voice messages, and internalized scripts do sound just as natural as a normal conversation; and so do the sales professionals that have gone through our Prospector’s Academies. So our belief is that cold calling does work.

Tony Robbins, in his book, Awaken the Giant Within, tells us that if we indulge in these negative beliefs, we strip ourselves of our own personal power and destroy our own ability to succeed. I fervently believe that. Therefore, when I need for something to work where my own experience up to that point tells me doesn’t work, I’m willing to explore how other people seem to be making it work. In other words, I’ll force myself to go beyond my experience, or belief, and find out what the other side to the story is.

I titled my book, Contrary to Popular Belief, Cold Calling Does Work!, for a reason. It’s because there are too many out there that have formed a belief that it doesn’t. Don’t be one of those. Go find out for yourself.