Stop Making Sales Calls, Just Have Conversations

The term "sales call" makes any prospect cringe.  It even makes sales reps themselves cringe as they hate making calls themselves and facing rejection and sales resistance. The good news is you can stop making sales calls altogether.  One of the most important aspects of accomplishing this is to makeover your mindset, and to do that you have to take the term "sales" out of your initial goals altogether.  Take it out of your title, your introduction, your email, your thinking.  

What do you replace "sales" with? Just have a conversation. Executives have conversations all day long, they have conversations with people they don't know, with people that call them to make introductions, with people they meet at events, and with just about anyone that doesn't come off like they are trying to "sell" them something. A conversation is non-threatening, it's not something they need to reject, push back on, or ignore....it's just a conversation.

Most traditional sales training even today is focused on numbers. Treating leads as numbers, calls as numbers, activity as numbers, goals as numbers, all the metrics are impersonal measurements based on numbers--so what that does it also converts the tone of the dialog you are having into something very impersonal.  They are 1 of 50 you need to call today, if they don't do what you want them to--then move on to the next one. Ask if there's a budget, are they planning to buy, when, will they meet, and so on. 

That worked (kind of) during the era when prospects were highly dependent on sales reps to provide information about the company, they needed a rep to engage with to make the changes they needed at their company.Before the internet became a very sophisticated infrastructure of finding information on just about anything they want to implement, they HAD to talk to a rep before they could get a demo.  The HAD to meet with a rep to get more precise information, to get references, to evaluate if your company had the solution they need.  Now the tables have turned, and sales reps need prospects to talk to them. However, the prospects don't need a rep until they are very far along in their decision. Up to 75% of the initial sales cycle that reps controlled and were heavily involved in is now in the control of the prospect--which is why they have such a low tolerance for "sales calls" today.  

So how do you transition from a selling mindset to a conversation mindset?

1. Reframe your mental objectives for an initial call. Is the goal really to know if they have a budget or is it to know if they are planning to do some work in your solution area and are open to further discussions?  Two very different discussions.
2. Change the dynamic of the conversation from creating an immediate class distinction, i.e.,"am I calling at a bad time?" or "if I can have just 2 minutes of your time?" to "I'm calling to see if it makes sense..."  Talk like a peer and you will get treated like one, if you open a discussion by talking up to your prospect, you immediately set the tone you are beneath them and potentially undeserving of their time. It creates a dynamic that is subtle but exists. This is key. If you open a discussion instead of selling, you get responses. Email is a perfect example of missing the point of opening a true peer dialog. Here are a couple opening lines from recent emails I have received that are for enterprise business solutions or services:
• As Chief Executive Officer of The Vanella Group Inc, would you be interested to purchase.
• Don't wait, buy today....
• Register today for 25% off with the coupon codes...
3. Become curious, ask questions before you over-inform. One of the biggest mistakes reps make is to do all the talking before assessing what the prospect wants to talk about. During coaching sessions with sales teams, one thing often becomes clear is reps get shut down early from going down a path in terms and using language their prospect isn't connecting the dots with. Remember, they weren't thinking about this topic when you called necessarily,  so you have to create the frame for them to have the conversation in and use terms they are viewing the requirement in. Something to try, is prepare some questions that you normally wouldn't ask until you have already qualified a prospect, that way you'll see how they are perceiving a requirement so you can speak in the language of their need they use.  
4. Don't try to sell on the first call, use it as a platform to connect and establish it makes sense to talk further.  Some reps feel anxious they need to cram everything in on a first call or get to the close, or ask if there's a budget, and in doing that the prospect senses their self interest and backs off.
5. One of the most effective coaching points I give, is to visualize the conversation happening somewhere else. In an informal setting, with someone you know, in a tone you speak with people you are comfortable with....it makes a difference if you are imaging yourself standing in front of a CIO anticipating rejection or thinking of it as a conversation in line at the bank.

A good way to measure the difference, is how many times do you feel you failed at a conversation--do you ever feel like that?  It is really just part of your day and normal interaction. We have conversations all day long, we feel confident and successful having conversations....it when you turn it into a "sales call" that we mentally set a different stage and anticipate roadblocks.

Next time you call a prospect, set your goal to have a conversation and just understand more about them...you'll be surprised the lack of resistance and push-back you'll get, and in return you'll see a much higher level of actual opportunities as a result of removing the "selling" from your call.

Lead Generation or Lead Genocide? What Companies Do to Kill Their Leads

Lead Generation is one of the most important activities marketing teams do for sales.  And for at least the last 5 years topics like "Increasing Lead Conversions" or "Achieve Sales and Marketing Alignment" or "How to Execute Effective Campaigns" are consistently at the top of the agendas at major conferences across the country and the source content for dozens of "Guide to's...." out there.  

In addition, since marketing automation is rapidly becoming mainstream with adoption growing in all industries, lead generation is still a primary focus of marketing--with some organizations even spending more than 1/2 of their budget on lead gen related activity.  Unfortunately some of the companies that buy marketing automation now have a high powered email blasting tool to drive their prospects nuts with offers to give them pricing. Let's set the record straight, everyone already knows you are happy to give them pricing--use the 2 seconds you have their attention to help them build confidence in your knowledge of their space, not point to the delete button.

So what is the problem?  Why doesn't anyone seem to have the solution to increasing conversions or coming up with the magic formula to an actual qualified lead?  A Google search on "Lead Generation" will bring up 17,600,000 results.  Everyone is looking for LEADS, and lots of them.

One of the things I see consistently missing from all the discussions is that what is least taken into account is that "leads" are in fact "people."  Understanding human behavior IS the secret sauce to converting leads to revenue.

Somehow in the process of lead generation, the fact that what you are really trying to do is convince people your solution is best right?  But time and time again, those prospects you spent thousands to get into your pipeline are being driven out by poor relationship management.

A "Lead" is a person, not a piece of data that behaves in a certain way or when it doesn't do what it is supposed to do as if it's a system problem. Unfortunately leads are sometimes treated like "things," forgetting the human psychology behind it.  The way many companies talk about their leads, pipeline, buyer behavior, and prospects--is with the same emotional intelligence as they would have talking about changing a tire.  The thing is, "leads" ARE people.  They buy because of the experience they have with you and your solution, the management of the relationship, the problem(s) you solve for them, and the positive impact you will make to their organization and operation. 

Who owns this?  It varies, there are many breakdowns right on the front lines of well executed campaigns that generated leads, but the interaction with them breaks down at that last mile.

What are some ways leads are being killed on the front lines?  Let me share just 10--there are literally hundreds more.

1. Examine how your team engages with prospects.  Example: I had a rep tell me "when I see a lead, I think...can I kill em?" I guess that works if you are hunting deer, but in this case it was selling an analytics platform and "killing" your prospect is also killing their interest after they talk to anyone with that mentality.  This is the call that the person is interested, they want to talk to you--they look at your site, they have a major requirement they need to solve and then they get to a rep and within minutes the rep is asking if they have a budget.  If they do or don't, that is a turn off.  Because "leads" ARE people, they respond like people in any other circumstance.  So imagine you are buying a suit or some expensive item, and ask the sales person to take it out so you can look at it and they say--can you pay for this if I show it to you??  Are you worth my time before I get started here?
2. Stop treating your prospects like "things" and start treating them like people.  They are busy, it isn't all about you, a vendor call is the very last priority they have, and if you want their time you better be able to make it worth their while by being super smart about engagement and relationship management.  Example: Last week I got a call from a company I did some business with last year.  It wasn't a great experience but the Director did a good job of doing some damage control, and we agreed to keep an open dialog.  The next day I get a system generated email from them asking me to update my record in THEIR Salesforce instance to note if I am still a prospect for them or not--that was so incredibly lazy and rude.  Then to make things worse, a few days later I get a cold call from a different rep on their team trying to sell me from scratch and didn't know anything about the last 6 years I have talked to them, the conversation I had last week and that I have been a former customer--and I said to talk to my contact there but this rep pushed me to net it to one word, was it "good or bad" working with them. Uh, bad?  The best part about this example is this is a company that offers a sales related service designed to increase revenue. 
3. Stop worrying about the sale and just talk.  Sales reps are automatically perceived as selfish, self serving, desperate, and pushy--stop doing things that confirm that to prospects.  Example: I had a rep call last week.  I said I would schedule a meeting.  I already accepted the invite, published it on my internal calendar, and planned to have the call. However, the day of the meeting, the rep sent another invite, and emailed me asking if I got the 2nd invite because I didn't accept the second invite? Then when I didn't answer the email they called the front desk and said they are looking for me. My admin was like 'who is this guy??"  You know what that does?  That makes me think, "you know, I don't have time for this meeting anyway--let's just do this another time."  Confirming accepted meetings is one of the most irritating and damaging things reps can do.It just reminds prospects that this is a sales call and they have other things they need to do.
4. Stop "winging it" on early calls.   I can't tell you how many calls reps make without doing any research on their prospects. Example: If I am on a call with a rep, one of the first things I ask is if they know what we do and did they look at our site.  And if they don't, that tells me they don't care what we do, and in some cases I will tell them to do their homework and call me back. My site is very clear what we do, and if someone didn't take the time to research something that simple, they need to do their homework. If reps wonder why early calls didn't go as great as they thought they would, this is one of the many reasons. It isn't the prospect's job to educate reps about what they do--it is the rep's job to create relevant scenarios where the prospect can see themselves using your platform/solution/service. 
5. Leverage Sales Intelligence Sales intelligence is a term that is used to describe all kinds of data available on companies. It can be internal information within your CRM, data out in the public domain, purchased data, lots of definitions are under Sales Intelligence. One thing is sure, it's out there and you need to use it. Some of the breakdowns are a lack of capturing data into the CRM record so there is an aggregated record of interaction.  Example: Some companies have long sales cycles with multiple stakeholders. If you looked at the account record in their CRM, you wouldn't see more than a couple of calls, contacts, and emails sent.  Enormous amounts of intelligence are missing because they aren't captured. Take the time to capture what you know so you can use it later when you need it.
6. Asking About "Strategic Plans", "5 Year Goals", "Business Plans" and all things that irritate prospects Even today, many reps still open discussions with questions like "tell me what your 5 year plans are for marketing" or some other question that 1) is none of their business, and 2) has nothing to do with the item at hand.  Or asking "what is the biggest challenge you have with..." Those are questions that aggravate prospects and are a self fulfilling prophecy to reps of why calls go bad. Reps need to create value, not get execs to open the kimono about topics that have nothing to do with the solution you are talking about.
7. Care about the customers that trusted you.  I can't tell you how many times I have heard stories of reps that tenaciously pursued prospects and once they either closed the deal, or the deal got pushed out--the rep fell off the face of the earth.  Example: I use this as an example often, but it's a good one. I had a customer that bought a solution from a company I knew, the rep pursued them like they were the most important deal in the world and jumped through hoops to get the deal.  They got the deal, but then the client had problems for months with a variety of issues and had a tough time making progress to resolve them.  I asked when the last time they spoke with their rep was, the answer was "we haven't talked to them since the day we signed the deal." They were clearly   disappointed all their pursuit wasn't as genuine as originally perceived.  Unfortunately, this is a pretty standard occurrence.  Things escalated to a point where the whole thing almost got unplugged, but something that would have smoothed things over is if the original rep would have just taken a minute to connect the right people and facilitate a fix.
8. Be Confident, and if you aren't, learn how!  Nothing loses attention of a prospect more than someone calling that isn't sure what they are doing, who you are, or what they are trying to sell you.  Your voice will give it away, "Hi I'm calling from Acme? Do you know us?" Or opening a call with "Do you have a minute?" Or "Is now a good time?" It is never a good time, make it a good time by what you have to say.  Executives calling other executives don't apologize or make some class distinction out of the gate, they just talk.  So that is a very important skill to have.  I often hear reps I coach at other companies introduce themselves like it's a question, subconsciously that tells the prospect you aren't confident.  It is a statement, not a question.
9. Be Honest  I still get calls from reps saying my admin gave them my line, or I downloaded something I didn't or whatever the thing may be that is used to open a discussion.  Again, just call and have a conversation. There is no need to embellish, invent, assume, or do anything but be yourself.  The other tactic is to leave a message with no info so you think it is something else or call back out of curiosity, it might get you a call back but will not get your prospect's trust.
10. And the biggie....It Takes A Lot of Attempts to Reach Execs 90%+ of companies out there don't understand it takes 5-12 attempts to reach prospects.  They have a 3 attempt/3 email rule as a standard and they are barely getting on their radar at that point. It is so important to be "Persistent with a Purpose." Not blasting them with calls multiple times a day, but not calling once and expecting a call back.  There is a complete and utter lack of understanding about the frequency required to reach a prospect in today's buyer landscape.  Millions of dollars are left on the table just from this item alone.

For companies to see what is happening on their front lines, they need to look under the covers and really understand where the leads are going, where they are ending up, and how they are being handled.  Doing this will add 20%-50% or more active deals to the pipeline just from systemizing it.  Senior execs are the ones that need to drive this change, it will come from the top down.  The answer often isn't you need more leads, but better handling of the ones you have will take your revenue to levels you never expected you could!

Why Relationships Aren't Valued in Some Sales Environments

This is a complex problem, but part of it having the wrong hiring profile, self-centered people can't manufacture genuine relationships. Dan Waldschmidt in a recent blog post of his talked about the futility of "relationship selling" and the REAL reason it doesn't work.

My response is companies that are faced with long-time cultural dynamics in sales teams that foster short-term thinking, and not caring about the client in a genuine way have a hard time adding "relationship building" into the mix because it isn't the dynamic the team was built with. It's like telling a front lineman to be a contortionist in Cirque du Soleil. Many companies that have brought in "hard closers" to hit the ground running have built a team of near sighted players. For example, I know just one of many many situations that go like this--rep talks to prospect, within 5 minutes the rep is asking about budget and trying to figure out if there is something here they want to pursue, and when it doesn't magically surface to the top they are out there there. When in fact there was something that just took more creative collaboration and taking a problem solving approach to the discussion. Or, another common scenario is a rep is a prospect's best friend until they close the deal, and then they are out of there. And when the customer has problems or needs some outreach, the rep is nowhere to be found. And honestly, not in all situations but in some, the rep should stay engaged to help because they built the trust that closed the deal. In a perfect world, a person would feel a sense of responsibility since their name was a big part of it. An example, one rep called a prospect multiple times a week doing everything to get the business, it was more of a partnering approach--went on for weeks and weeks, then they closed the deal. Lots of implementation problems and high visibility issues happened and when I asked the customer when was the last time they talked with the rep--the response was they haven't talked to them since the day they signed the contract. It is unfortunately the old-school thinking of many sales teams to be a prospects' best friend until they either close the deal,or see they aren't going to make them any $ and dump them like a hot potato. When I interview people, one the questions I ask--and one of the most important, is "give me an example of when you have gone above and beyond for a client, for your company?" That tells me so much about a person. I get everything from "well, you are really making me think here Mari Anne..." to something along the lines of "well I stayed till 5:15 once...." Then I get the people that are committed to helping their prospects/clients/companies to succeed and don't have that mentality of scarcity in everything they do. Those answers of how they went out of their way to personally make a difference tell me everything I need to know. 

You can't re-engineer people that think like that at their core, they are coded that way--even if they can copy what they THINK it looks like, like adding gobs of contacts on social media, or attend network events and schmooze the ones they think they need to know to appear connected, it is just vapor because they are doing it for self centered reasons.  But you CAN address it up front at the hiring stage and hire people that really do care about what they are doing or coach the people that want to be more genuine and just need some skills development. Taking a root cause approach to it all is the way you don't perpetuate the car salesman persona into your company. 

If a relationship is all about the "deal" that is the equivalent of a scam--if you are genuine with your prospects/clients then you have something that is further reaching into your personal reputation and how prospects view you, and a by-product of that is you will close more deals.

First Impressions Matter, Especially in Today's Market

The importance of first impressions is undisputed. Whether it’s a meeting with a potential client, a job interview, a new boss, a new acquaintance, a neighbor, a new colleague, the list goes on. And making the most of that first chance allows you to make a significant difference as to the final outcome of that interaction.  

When it comes to cold calling, the principle applies to an even higher degree because you only have your voice to make the impression.  You can't offset not saying the perfect thing with a professional demeanor, or you can't be somewhat soft-spoken but still exude confidence with a strong handshake and your overall presence--you are accomplishing all of those things with your voice and choice of words.  Your voice is creating a mental picture, and you are compensating for in-person gestures with your dialog.

The impression that a first call or a cold call makes will stick with the prospect and set the tone for building the relationship--or end it right there.  It could make the difference of a prospect even wanting to talk with your company again, or willing to break off some time and talk about what they are looking for.  

In 2012, we are well aware of the selling landscape.  Your prospects are constantly bombarded with calls, emails, inter-company distractions, pressures, and their own emergencies. They have 50 things going on at any given time and getting a vendor call in the middle of it would have to be pretty compelling for them to stop everything and have a discussion.

That being said, why would companies want to put the least skilled, lowest paid, least knowledgeable people on front lines making cold calls to new prospects?  It may be the budget that drove that decision, but the long-term revenue loss is much more significant in the lost opportunities.

Outbound calling today requires a very senior level skill set.  Since prospects are able to research you before they ever talk to you, today's prospecting teams need to add value above what your prospect's can find on their own. They need to be able to connect and converse on a peer-to-peer level and neutralize any sales resistance and create a discovery dynamic.  They need to have:

- Situational fluency
- Industry expertise to help your prospect visualize the solution you offer in their specific environment
- Ability to steer a discussion real-time based on the prospect's topics of interest
- Emotional intelligence to know when to speak, when to listen, and what questions to ask
- Complete understanding of corporate structure and an empathetic grasp of today's business and executive challenges

Companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into building their direct sales teams. Harvard Business Review published a study that revealed companies value presentation skill as one of the top 3 desired abilities for sales reps. But so many times those same companies will put the weakest link on the front lines to introduce the company. That same quality of presence the direct team needs, also needs to be on the initial call as well to even have access to executives. Choosing low cost resources that deliver volume or low cost services vs. quality can do damage in the long run.  SiriusDecisions reports that 40-70% of prospects that have interest do eventually buy, retaining presence in those accounts requires skill and persistence. And many "Did You Buy" studies companies conduct on leads that fell out of the pipeline reveled that they did in fact make a purchase, from another provider. Many times it is just mismanagement of the relationship and poor engagement that lost the deal just because another vendor did it better.

Using senior level resources to introduce your company and solution allows you to address real-time any misconceptions the prospect has, understand requirements, establish trust, and bridge and engagement effectively out to your direct team.  The buying and selling landscape is volatile, and it's important to be in the right place at the right time--and you can't do that reading a script or measuring how many dials are made as the main activity.
I have said this many times, it isn’t that prospects don’t want to take cold calls; they don’t want to take a bad call.  So make your calls the ones they take. 

Putting your best foot forward will pay off throughout the relationship you build with prospects and make a real impact on your pipeline and retention of opportunities.  Your increased revenue potential will confirm you need to take into account the selling environment of today.

It Just Isn't Easy

Having met thousands of people in sales over the years, one thing is sure.  Cold calling isn't easy.  It isn't for the lazy, people that don't want to invest in themselves, the thin-skinned, or the entitled.  It isn't for people that want the easy way out, or the sales reps that have no interest in others.  It also isn't for people that are tuned out, have no appetite for learning, or that see cold calling as beneath them.  The best cold callers are people that are very intuitive, care about their prospects, their offer, and invest in themselves. 

There's lots of hype around topics like "never cold call again" or "cold calling is dead." But is it?  Cold calling in the sense of picking up a phone without doing any research has been dead for years, but anyone in sales that is successful is able to pick up the phone and have a conversation. 

In fact, one of the most important skills to have isn't a smooth convincing presentation that can make someone agree to a meeting they don't really want to have, but rather the skill of understanding what your prospect's work environment is like and caring enough to learn how to navigate through it.

An example of not knowing a prospect's environment is the calls and emails I get every day, and it's all the same stuff--they want to show me how they can change what I'm doing, why what I am doing now is wrong, why they are better, and why I am wasting money with my current model.  First, they don't know what I am doing, I actually am fully aware of the optimization level of what I have in place, I know the cost of what I am doing, and what you just proposed is completely incorrect for my work environment.  What would have worked is to just say you want to connect and learn about what I do, talk about what you do, and see if it makes sense to have deeper discussions. 

My point?  Most cold calls alienate prospects.

What does cold calling really require?

• Know what you are calling about--not just your company but the category your company is in. Spend time researching, learn the industry, understand the "why" aspect around the reasons companies buy. Don't wait for your marketing department to provide information--they are slammed too, educate yourself. Spend a few hours each month reading trade publications, look up related topics on Wikipedia, Quora, or Focus. 
• Develop your skills--not objection handlers and being manipulative, but how to connect with prospects on a person-to-person level.  I ran across a research point that most sales reps don't invest more than $20 a year to develop themselves professionally. It isn't the company's job to make you better, it's YOUR job to make YOU better. The things that make you better are not cheesy tricks to get prospects on the phone--the real substance is learning about how companies buy, what is meaningful to them, how your solution ties into the big picture. There is actually a study HBR did a number of years back that still stands true today, you can download it here What B2B Customers Really Want It shows companies hire almost opposite from what customers really want.  Be what customers really want.
• Each call teaches you something.  One of the biggest disservices a rep can do in their development is miss the education each conversation will give you. Many reps (and it is clear the moment a rep checks out on a call) just shut down once they don't see an immediate opportunity.  The thing they miss is they have a prospect on the phone--LEARN from them. Ask them what they looked at most when they put what they have in place...create a question track to just talk with them as people, you have them on the phone--talk with them.  Your best source of information is often prospects.  You shouldn't be having the same conversations in 6 months that you are having today--you should be more fluent, more educated.  And much of that growth comes from understanding the value in each discussion--opportunity or not.
• Know your prospect--not just the title you are after, but what does their work environment look like?  You can be sure of this:
• Most executives are in back to back calls/meetings or reacting to something going on in their organization
• They get 200-300 or more emails a day that require some kind of action
• They get 40+ calls of one sort or another, staff, management, etc.
• Some don't check voicemail or delete ones they don't immediately recognize
• They are doing more with less budget and staff than ever
• You are one of about 10 other vendors that called them that day
• They are real people with lives, families, health issues, and everything else that they need to deal with.

What does this all mean to you?  Stand back and assess where you or your team is, and where you might need to make some improvements.  Changing an overall mindset is often all that's needed, not a complete overhaul of sales process and training--just realizing what you are working with and are you taking advantage of everything you already have access to.

  

Is Cold Calling A Science?

Sci·ence

   /ˈsaɪəns/ Show Spelled[sahy-uhns]  noun

1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws

Are there actual "laws" of cold calling? Can it be predictable?  Lead generation and cold calling have always been the front line of identifying new opportunities--but why are some efforts successful and others not? Much of it depends on how much understanding there are of the "laws" that govern the results.  And the laws go much deeper than just "calling."  There is an artful execution of preparation, list management, persistence, coverage, and mastering opening conversations with people that are resistant.

What are the laws of Cold Calling?  There are many, but here I will cover 4.

1. People do take calls, they just don't take bad calls.  What makes a bad call?  One without preparation.  A quick story, someone asked for a connection  with me via LinkedIn through another CEO of a well known software company--he was gracious enough to help the guy out, I agreed to pay it forward--why not.  The message appeared to be around something that would help my company so I said sure, I'll schedule a call.  He calls me at the agreed time, and he starts talking about how hard it is to find a job--and he is looking and do I know of anything.  I am thinking, "you go through a CEO of a publicly traded company, to another CEO to ask for an inside sales  job??" So I ask what he has done, and he says he has worked in enterprise software sales  (turns out it was a small network appliance he was talking about) and continues to tell me how hard it is and he can't find a job, now he wants to work from home. Then he asks what my role is in the company?  I said "you don't know who you scheduled the call with, did you research our site before you called?" Of course not.  What is the learning from this experience?  Your prospects get calls like this all the time.  From reps that are poorly trained, unskilled, and happen to get through to them only to further sour prospects against taking calls.  What can you do?  Be confident, crisp, and prepared.  Know exactly what you are going to say, and learn what is going to be meaningful to them.
2. Your prospects are busy. This is a law that many people ignore even in today's time-sensitive environment. How does this impact your role as a sales rep?  You need to have persistence.  It almost always takes 3+ attempts to reach prospects, more senior levels it takes 5+ at least.  Many reps don't incorporate this into their work process.  Many times they call a prospect maybe 2 or 3 times, send an email, and they're done--prospect isn't interested.  While they are mentally giving up on the prospect, the prospect is thinking "I need to call them back, they've called me 3 times and I need to get with them or they'll think I'm not interested." And your prospect continues to get pulled into their busy work day, meetings, putting out fires, and commit the next time you call they will talk with you, but they never get a call. And over time you both forget about the other, and your competitor calls them the 5 or 6 times needed to get to them and closes the business. Literally every day we hear apologies from prospects about their slowness in getting back to us, that's okay--we understand, we don't give up.
3. It takes more than one discussion for the relationship to become reciprocal. You called them, it is on YOU to make it happen.  I recently heard a rep say "I left a message, they should call me back." In a perfect world, sure--but in real life, a sales call is one of about 150 things happening in the day of an executive, if you want to talk with them you need to do it on their terms, which is to try harder. They aren't anxiously waiting for an opportunity to plunge into a sales cycle they don't feel they are in control of.  Demand generation in the form of cold calling starts off one-sided, you want to talk to them--but once your prospect is truly engaged, then they will call you back.  That doesn't happen out of the gate.  People only have so much time in a day, and that extra bandwidth they have isn't spent returning vendor calls. Jill Konrath's book SNAP Selling, explains how to sell to super busy executives in the best way I have ever read. I consider it a "must read" for sales reps .
4. People have a programmed first reaction to sales reps. Whether you are selling 1M ERP platforms or monitors at Office Depot--people have an ingrained response to sales reps, what is it?  It's "no thanks, I'm just looking."   You have probably even said it yourself. The funny thing is the behavior is the same too. An example, maybe you can see from your reporting that multiple people within a company are hitting your site looking at certain solutions, and trying to learn what you do. It's the same as the person in Office Depot spending 20 minute looking at HD monitors, more often than not, when the sales rep walks up and says "can I help you?" the response is "no thanks, I'm just looking."  The fix to not get shut down in both of these scenarios is the same, change how you engage.  With the visitor on your site, instead of saying " I saw that you were on our site and would like to schedule a call and give you a demo to show you how we can help your organization " to "I know you were looking at some of the solutions we have around enterprise management, are you planning to do some work around that?" Simple question. To the monitor shopper, instead of "can I help you?" ask  "do you have an HD monitor now?" and take the discussion from there. Both of those engage in a conversation.

The most important thing to remember about the Laws of Cold Calling is you can make it  a predictable activity when you design it for real world scenarios. The more you align with your prospects, the more you can achieve the formula for success in a repeatable, consistent way.

Are You Focused On The "Last Mile of Engagement?"

The last mile of engagement can be likened to the last stretch before sliding into home base in a baseball game. So much effort is made by the batter to get to 1st, 2nd, 3rd. The player strategically steals 2nd, timed his sprint to 3rd perfectly, and seemed sure to make it to home base. But imagine if during that stretch from 3rd to home, the player decided to jog, or stop and wave to his family in the stands, or worse yet at the last 5 feet decided to walk. You can be sure it would make all the prior effort useless.

That is what often happens with lead generation. Marketing invests millions of dollars to generate leads that gets the team to each base. Each move is strategic to develop a prospect; content is mapped to their interest stage, communication is carefully timed to send the right thing at the right time, whitepapers are researched and written, webinars are conducted, lists are built. So much effort goes into having a prospect say "we have something going on, I want to know more."

Many marketing teams today are managed by results. They have very specific KPI's they are working towards and are under tremendous pressure to deliver on lead generation. So this is why marketers need to make sure the programs they run are executable for sales through processes, feedback, communication, and education. It is also a vendor responsibility to design workflow that supports the sales teams and have a feedback loop to monitor the success. Many of the companies we work with have longer sales cycles with big ticket enterprise solutions, so the relationships with prospects run for months before the deal closes--there is a lot of white space in there that needs to be managed at each stage. When we build workflow we do it with both the sales teams need to engage with opportunities, and the marketing teams need for metrics and data.

A few things that make the last mile critical:

1. Lead generation is not a transactional effort, or at least it shouldn't be. Lead generation is the front end of a relationship with your client/prospect that progresses in stages. Some sales teams are eager to engage with later stage leads but where there isn't immediate gratification those leads get neglected. Calling those leads back the following quarter can discover they bought from someone else that was engaged. To maximize the investment companies need to put systems in place to keep a dialog going.

2. There is an administrative component to managing lead generation. Prospect intelligence needs to be aggregated, captured, and then managed through the lifecycle of the relationship. Sales is designed to close deals, Marketing is able to understand behavior of a prospect on a website or build a nurturing activity that is mapped to the stage of that prospects journey of their purchase. It is important for each group to work together to get to "home base."

3. On any lead gen program, each interaction with a prospect needs to be documented. Many times once a lead is handed off to sales, you can look in their CRM instance and see notes like "sent email", or "had a call" with no context. It's marketing's role to extract that info from sales so they know what to do. If the "Last Mile" rests only with Sales without involvement from Marketing, a lot of the lead management aspects of it will be against their DNA.

Marketing needs to make sure they are participating in their programs, all stages of sales cycles are managed, and they are actively involved with the program to make sure it's implemented for long-term success. It is extremely important there is a well planned launch and introduction to programs and leads are delivered with context. One thing that can happen is marketing will run programs that are discussed with sales management but not launched to reps, then reps get leads they don't know the source of and they put a light effort into reaching them and then they fall off their radar. The management of the lead data is broken on both sides. This needs to be a top-down effort to get everyone working together and not to foster the sales and marketing divide but get both focused on the task at hand which is to create revenue.

Companies that implement their programs well, work with vendors that understand the "Last Mile," and enable their teams to be successful experience tremendous growth and success with their lead generation activity.