In between appointments today I had made a short list of three net new suspects that I wanted to cold call. All three of those cold calls turned up a fat ZERO. I'm okay with that because I'll be following up in the near future with phone call and email. Sooner or later I'll get an appointment but hoping it doesn't take 10 or more years like some of the ones I've had. At my age 10 years is not going to cut it.
In Between Drives
About mid-day I pulled into a park so that I could check my emails and voice messages. No big news in the email and there was one voice message from a friend of mine that worked in marketing a few years back. Thus, I made the call and left Chris a message. A few hours later Chris was able to call me back and we got caught up on what we've been doing for the past year in our personal and business lives.
I was delighted to hear that Chris had hooked up with a office equipment dealer in the mid-south. Thought that was awesome and I later found out that he took a job offer in sales. Which led me to ask how things are working out for him. Chris told me he closed a decent size deal for multiple units for about $40K with an existing account, has about 100 existing accounts and a **** load of net news . As I thought we were getting close to the end of the call, Chris stated that he wanted to ask me a few questions related to prospecting. Chris stated that he's been having a hard time with getting appointments and conversations going with net new clients.
Prospecting Cold Call Dials
I was in full agreement to help, however I had many questions for him before I could help. I'll bullet out those questions for us.
- How many cold calls are you doing per week? The answer I got was 100
- How many of those are walk in cold calls? Answer was 20
This meant that our new rep that was making 80 dials a week. Ah, right, been doing this long enough to know that fudging is common practice. I told him 16 calls a day is not going to cut, even with the walk in cold calls. I told him he sucks at prospecting and he needs to be making at least 60 calls every day. Anything less and you're going to wash out. With only having 100 existing accounts there is plenty of time.
Prospecting Cold Calls Walk-ins
We know that Chris is doing around 20 cold calls a week which is not that bad. But when we you only have 100 existing accounts, dude you need to step up your game!
- How do you cold call walk-ins? Answer was that when he picks a company to cold call he will cold call additional companies in that area.
Okay I thought, not so bad, however you should plan your cold calls. What I mean by that is to comb your CRM and look for accounts that you haven't been able to get through to yet. Pick 25 of those accounts and make sure they are "paper intensive" type of accounts. Look to your verticals of Healthcare, AEC, Law and pick other one, just make sure they are accounts that could result in multiple placements. Don't ever willy nilly walk-in cold calls because you are wasting valuable time. In addition your only goal is to get the name of the decision maker and scope the place out.
Tip: Don't add new suspects to the CRM when you haven't defined the suspects in your CRM (if you see one or two accounts that you'd like to break into that's fine).
Personally, before I ever speak to the Decision Maker or Person in Charge I want to do the research on the company. What they do to make money, how many employees, the more you know the better. Facebook, Linkedin, Manta, and Google are my favorite sources. Next you want to do the research on the DM. Who they are connected to, where they worked, their existing and previous position and if you can find it what they like or care about.
In the next installment I'll tell you what we spoke about with the following titles
The Pitch, Work Ethic, Prime Time, The Email, Breaking the Bank
-=Good Selling=-