The big difference between a cold call and a referral call is social capital.
Social capital is the currency of relationships. It’s the currency of trust. If you’ve been in sales doing it the old school cold calling way long enough you may start to believe social capital does not mean anything. But I believe it means a lot. [Read more…]
I used to do it.
I would get to the office extra early and I’d start dialing before 8AM.
I wanted to become a rock star sales dude and I was mentored by my boss that the trick was to call CIOs (Chief Information Officers) early in the morning.
At that time of day, the stressed out CIO would be in the office but his assistant would still be fighting their way through the New York subway.
Ingenious! [Read more…]
In this post, I want to tell you about something that boosts prospecting results: trigger events. A “trigger event” is when something changes in your prospect’s world.
Change is good for you when you’re selling as when something changes in your prospect’s world, it often creates a need. Sometimes that need is something your product can address and hence a sales opportunity is created. [Read more…]
The biggest challenge facing most sales people and small business owners is getting meetings with prospective clients.
Cold prospecting techniques get harder-and-harder every day. Even cold techniques turbocharged with boatloads of technology get harder-and-harder every day as everyone gets the technology and the arms race for a better sales stack escalates.
[Read more…]
This post is about an interesting place you can look for “suspects” when you are prospecting.
This is a place that is super-obvious, but as with many real world things, often not utilized: your company’s own CRM/old contact lists.
I’ve seen the scenario umpteen times. A rep has a quota to make and feels under-the-gun. The first place they go for a “suspect”/”lead” list is Linkedin or another third-party list (InsideView, Zoominfo etc. etc.) Where they don’t go is their company’s own CRM.
This is odd because the people in your CRM have presumably had some thought put into selecting them. Someone at your firm may even once have talked to those people. [Read more…]
Don’t sell to anybody.
OK, I mean don’t sell to just anybody.
You really should be careful who you invite to give you their money. The problem is every deal seems great until you actually “get married” to your prospect and they become your client. As you know many such “marriages” end up in unhappy breakups. [Read more…]