You get to your office, sit down at your desk and open up your calendar. A concerned look sweeps over your face. “Only one appointment this week.” You look at your pipeline and get that squirmy feeling inside your gut, as you realize your pipeline is not as full as it used to be. You’re wondering where you’re going to find your next prospect.

The uncertainty begins to sweep over you. The stress starts creeping into your body, for you realize you can’t keep procrastinating making the cold calls you need to in order to book more appointments with key decision makers.

Does this situation sound familiar? As you might imagine, I’ve been getting a high volume of calls from sales managers and their salespeople struggling to meet their sales goals.

After investing several hours cold calling, this experience can leave you feeling depleted, frustrated and annoyed. You don’t understand why you’re unable to set the appointments with the prospects who you know you can help and therefore need to meet with. You ask yourself, “Why won’t they talk to me? I know I can help them. If only they’d give me some time on the phone.”

In desperation, you cry out, “This cold calling thing doesn’t work for me! What else can I do to schedule meetings with more qualified prospects who can buy from me?”

In this video, I address the question, “Is cold calling really dead?”

So, what is the answer? Is cold calling really dead? The answer is a resound, “Not even close.” Therefore, do not abandon cold calling! Cold calling is far from dead and I see evidence of this every day.

Sure, I realize for many people cold calling and prospecting ranks right up there with getting their teeth pulled without the gas.

However, as someone who has coached and trained thousands of salespeople and managers over the years, here’s what I’ve learned very early on. It’s not that cold calling doesn’t work. Cold calling works fabulously well. It’s the way you’re cold calling that doesn’t work. In other words, consider that it’s more about your approach and cold calling strategy; what you say and how you say it – that is ineffective and what your prospects are unresponsive to.

So be careful. Most people who feel cold calling doesn’t work in actuality, have learned the wrong lesson.

Side note: Over the last year, my cold calling book has been gaining a renewed popularity as competition increases and the need to find more qualified prospects to fill your pipeline intensifies. So, if you’re ready to develop a permission based prospecting system then check it out here.

What’s the initial objective of a cold call or your prospecting and new business development efforts? Rather than focusing all of your energy on making the sale, first determine if there’s a good fit between you, your prospect, and what you are selling.

Instead of feeling that the intention of prospecting is to get a sale, provide a demonstration, submit a proposal, or schedule an appointment, the initial intention of prospecting is to determine if there’s a fit worth pursuing.

While this may sound a bit strange, closing the sale and earning the business of a prospect is not your initial goal. Instead, your primary objective is to determine whether you and your prospect are a good fit.

Take a moment and think about how this change in your attitude and mindset would change your cold calling approach as well as your experience.

While your traditional approach may be to produce a measurable result, now your primary objective is to discover whether you and your prospect are a good match and if this relationship is worth moving to the next stage of your selling process. If you feel that you constantly have to push the sales process forward, you’re not taking into consideration that the prospect may simply not be ready, let alone may not be a good fit for what you are selling. Pushing the sales process forward before a prospect is ready only creates pressure for the both of you, fostering an unhealthy relationship from the start.

By changing your thinking and your approach, you’ll now be able to focus your energy and precious time on the right prospects who are more inclined to buy from you, rather than wasting your time sending out proposals and following up with people who you have no business following up with in the first place. Filling your sales funnel with unqualified prospects does nothing for you other than cost you time when you spend it on people who are simply not a good fit for you or your product and service.

Here’s a clip produced by CanDoGo.com on how you can make this critical shift in your thinking which will result in more selling opportunities and less cold calling reluctance.

There may be times when someone holds certain perceptions or beliefs about your product, service, industry, performance or processes that may be inaccurate. Or, maybe you need to enroll people in an alternative solution, a new way of looking at a situation or a different way of thinking. When this occurs, and you’re running into resistance from the other side when trying to create buy in or you are hearing conflicting opinions which you do not agree with, you may react by telling the person they’re wrong. Or, you attempt to fill in the conversation with statistical data, evidence or proof that supports and defends your point of view in order to convince them to agree with you.

Lets face it, when someone is told they’re wrong or their belief is in conflict with the position you’ve taken, they either shut down and stop listening or come out fighting in an attempt to defend their stand. Once this happens, a confrontational atmosphere is created between you and the person you are speaking with. When you invalidate someone’s viewpoint, they become further entrenched in their case and are less willing to budge or move off of their platform.

Rather than react to their remark, demonstrate your interest in understanding what motivates their thinking and reasoning in the first place. Become interested in gaining a greater awareness around where they are coming from and seize this opportunity to validate and connect with some aspect of their feelings and thinking. Saying things like, “I appreciate how you feel” or “I understand your feelings/position on that” lets the other person know that you are sincerely trying to understand and respect their view and what they had said, rather than dismiss it. This demonstrates a willingness on your end to smooth out the playing field, continue the conversation and find a common ground and solution, without becoming argumentative and defensive.

To avoid confrontation, detach from your agenda and outcome for a moment and instead, respond to a person’s statements or comments with a question that directs the conversation toward creating a new opportunity, belief or solution. Questions allow you to correct someone gracefully or explore a new possibility without having an emotional reaction, dismissing their opinion and feelings or telling them they’re wrong.

To avoid the battles that happen in daily communication, focus on helping other people get what they want in every conversation. This is especially important if you’re running into situations like these with the people you work with. We often forget that, while we may all hold conflicting viewpoints, you are still ultimately working towards one collective goal, objective and vision within the organization. We need to continually be mindful of our shared goals and keep this in front of our line of vision. This approach enables you to do so, while acknowledging and respecting each other’s differences. You’ll also find out that you have more in common than you had originally thought.

Drive these types of conversations with well crafted, neutrally charged questions that are not loaded, manipulative, adversarial or have a hidden agenda attached to them. The byproduct will be healthier collaboration that ultimately gives you what you want with less effort. These questions will also help foster a deeper level of buy in and the mutual alignment of goals that you need in order to ensure that together, you generate worthwhile results over the long term. The following questions will enable you to create new opportunities that you would not have noticed before and uncover innovative ideas that are otherwise left unexplored.

1.What else do you feel might be possible? What else could be true?

2.Can you please share with me your thinking on that? What does that (solution, approach, problem, etc.) look like for you? What does that look like through your eyes?

3.May I share my view on that? Are you open to hearing another point of view on that?

4.Is it possible that there may be another approach/solution here? Is there a different way we can look at this?

5.Is it possible that there may be more/other facts to consider?

6.How can I best assist you around achieving what you want most?

7.When did you decide that was true?

8.That’s interesting. Can you share with me why you feel/see it that way?

9.What else is true about that? Is that the truth or is it something else?

10.I’m not too sure what you mean. Can you say more about that?

11.How do you mean when you say (better results, well trained, not qualified, not professional, unmotivated, poor service, etc.)? What does (success, persistent, organized, responsive, more responsibility, a qualified selling opportunity, overwhelmed, etc.) mean to you/look like to you?

12.I hear that you’re saying this can’t be done this way but what if it could be done? What would that mean to you?

13.What would be possible if…..?

14.What result are you looking to achieve here?

15.What is most important to you?

16.What’s the common ground that we share? What’s the common objective that you see here? What do you feel we are in agreement around?

I received the following question from a salesperson the other day who was struggling when it came to qualifying his prospects during a cold call. He was looking for an effective way to best qualify his prospects and how to avoid wasting time when meeting with the wrong ones. What follows is his initial inquiry and my response, which I felt important enough to share with you, as many salespeople seem to be struggling with this very issue today.

That is, “When cold calling, exactly how much initial qualification is enough before determining the next step in my selling process? Do I do all of my qualification up front on the phone before scheduling a face to face meeting or do I wait until I meet with the prospect and then conduct a more robust needs analysis? How do I make this determination?”

Here’s the email I received:

“Hello Mr. Rosen,
I am a salesperson selling health insurance who is currently working on my sales system. My target market is owners of small businesses. I call them and set appointments from telemarketing leads. I have a script in which I use to set the appointment and qualify them, before meeting them face-to-face. I’d be curious to know what strategy you feel is best regarding my two approaches below.

First Approach: Do minimal questioning and qualification and just set the appointment. Then at the appointment, conduct a fact finder to find out their situation and what they like or don’t about their current health insurance plan. Then, set another appointment and come back with a proposal and recommendations. I will pre-close them on the first visit.

Or is this a better this way?

Second Approach: Call and qualify them and ask them all the questions over the phone to find out their current situation on this initial phone call. Then, I will bring the proposal to the first face to face appointment, recap what we discussed over the phone, explain the plan and try and make the sale. Pretty much try and make the sale on the first face to face visit.”

Here was my response:

The answer is – BOTH. There’s always a minimal amount of non negotiable qualification that must be done before meeting with a prospect. Then, when determining how much deeper you can go in your qualification, depending upon the situation it could go either way, so let the customer decide.

The IDEAL scenario is the second one you mapped out. And it’s all in the spirit of saving you your precious and limited time following up and meeting with people who you shouldn’t be meeting with in the first place. The cost of meeting with unqualified people is compounded exponentially because you’re not only meeting with the wrong prospects but you’re now losing time that you could have invested meeting with the right ones – the ones that your competition is meeting with.

Of course, there are those situations where the prospect simply doesn’t have the time nor desire to answer all of your questions during an initial phone call and at that point, it’s going to be a judgment call on your part. So, to minimize the risk of meeting with the wrong prospects and maximize your time when meeting with the qualified ones, what I would recommend is making a list of the non-negotiable qualifying questions that must always be asked, regardless of the situation, so that you get a baseline understanding whether or not this person is even a candidate for your product or service.

Here’s a great way to handle how much qualifying you can do over the phone and how to do it in a way that would encourage the prospect to spend more time with you during this initial telephone conversation.

Simply put, let the prospect decide. After all, people want to save as much time as possible and would appreciate any opportunity to be more efficient when it comes to leveraging their time. That said, the next time you speak with a prospect over the phone, use the following approach during your initial needs analysis/qualification process.

After asking them a couple of preliminary, non negotiable questions, deliver the following message.

“Mr./Mrs. Prospect, I know you’re busy and I want to respect your time. That said, I want to share two options with you that would save you some time when deciding what solution is best for you and whether or not there’s even a fit here. We could schedule a time where I can visit with you to learn more about your business and your objectives and then at that time, schedule another meeting where we could discuss my proposed solution, or, to speed up this process and avoid scheduling another meeting, we can continue our conversation now on the phone so that at the end of this conversation, you would have a very good sense as to whether or not I can deliver more value than your current solution is providing you and if it even makes sense for us to meet face to face in the first place. Which option would work better for you at this time?”

When you give people a choice and share with them the benefit of investing a little more time with you on the phone, you’ll find that your prospects are much more willing to do so. And if you’re saying that your prospects are, “too busy to spend more time with me” or “this won’t work in my industry,” I would challenge you to re-think whether or not this is truly your prospect’s objection or a costly assumption that you’ve created in your own mind. If this new marketplace has changed the way we sell and engage with our prospects, then the old rules of how we qualify and set appointments with our prospects much be challenged as well.

This win – win saves both you and the prospect time, while ensuring that you’re meeting with more of the right prospects.

Landslide.com recently recorded a video for a series with the theme: “Respect sales.” The idea is to show how sometimes people think salespeople have it easy – they get to travel, play golf, go on dinner outings etc. but the reality is far different.

So, what actually happens when a salesperson takes a prospect out on the golf course? Any good salesperson knows that deals just don’t fall out of the sky. Follow Landslide’s sales guy as he puts up with his difficult prospect and tries to close the deal. Click play on the video below.

If the video does not load, here is a link to the video.

BOOK EVENT EXTENDED THROUGH THIS WEEK! Due to Keith’s book selling out and making #1 on Amazon, we’re extending this event through this week! You can still get the book 34% off and the hundreds of dollars worth of bonus materials. More here.

Watch the Video Here.

Here’s one example of the type of opening statement and cold calling approach you can create that’s sure to generate more qualified prospects for you than ever before. This example was one that a cost reduction company used when calling on the C suite of prospects, such as the controller or CFO. Once you listen to the opening statement, I’ll then dissect this approach so you can see the strategy behind it.

Watch the Video Here.

Listen to this podcast here.

You get to your office, sit down at your desk and open up your calendar. A concerned look sweeps over your face. “Only one appointment this week.” You look at your pipeline and get that squirmy feeling inside your gut, as you realize your pipeline is not as full as it used to be. You’re wondering where you’re going to find your next prospect.

The uncertainty begins to sweep over you. The stress starts creeping into your body, for you realize you can’t keep procrastinating making the cold calls you need to in order to book more appointments with key decision makers.

Does this situation sound familiar? As you might imagine, I’ve been getting a high volume of calls from sales managers and their salespeople struggling to meet their sales goals.

After investing several hours cold calling, this experience can leave you feeling depleted, frustrated and annoyed. You don’t understand why you’re unable to set the appointments with the prospects who you know you can help and therefore need to meet with. You ask yourself, “Why won’t they talk to me? I know I can help them. If only they’d give me some time on the phone.”

In desperation, you cry out, “This cold calling thing doesn’t work for me! What else can I do to schedule meetings with more qualified prospects who can buy from me?”

In this podcast, I paint a visual of the typical scenario being played out through the eyes of a salesperson; one that you may be intimately familiar with, while addressing the question, “Is cold calling really dead?”

You can tune in and listen to this podcast here.

NOTE: Given this page is updated often, this podcast may not be listed as the most current one on the top of the list of podcasts.

Side note: Over the last year, my cold calling book has been gaining a renewed popularity as competition increases and the need to find more qualified prospects to fill your pipeline intensifies. So, if you’re ready to develop a permission based prospecting system then check it out here.

Listen to this podcast here.

Enough theory for a moment. People need answers; granular, tactical, “How do I do this the right way and what do I say when I finally connect with a prospect when cold calling?” type of answers.

Those proactive souls who happen to cold call me and reach me live in an attempt to generate another prospects to fill up their rapidly drying pipeline certainly deserve the acknowledgment for putting forth the effort.

Unfortunately, with the opening statements and cold calling approaches that I’m hearing, their effort is more of an exercise in futility. Simply, they aren’t well crafted and are far from compelling or unique, and as such, these salespeople are doomed to have to make far too many calls where their success is often limited to finding that one prospect who’s simply ready and willing to talk to them regardless of how poor their approach may be; the proverbial low hanging fruit. (After all, even a blind squirrel is destined to find a nut every once and a while.) This strategy of stumbling onto a qualified prospect is far too time consuming of an activity to often make it worth your while.

In this podcast, I share one proven and powerful example of the type of opening statement and cold calling approach you can create that’s sure to generate more qualified prospects for you. Becoming more strategic and effective when cold calling will yield more measurable results making fewer calls by leveraging every conversation you have.

This example was one that a cost reduction company used when calling on the C suite of prospects, such as the controller or CFO.

You can tune in and listen to this podcast here.

NOTE: Given this page is updated often, this podcast may not be listed as the most current one on the top of the list of podcasts.

“Are salespeople asking their prospects the wrong questions?” As I mentioned in my last post, this was a conversation that came up while being interviewed by Geoffrey James for an article he was writing for Selling Power magazine on what managers need to do to effectively coach their sales team when cold calling.

The answer to this question? Well, it’s actually yes and no. Yes, many salespeople are asking good questions that help uncover whether or not the prospect is a fit for the product or service they are selling. Conversely, many are asking the wrong questions that drive the prospect away from you, rather than move them closer to a sale.

The real universal gap that I see after coaching and training thousands of salespeople, regardless of industry or profession, is the set of deeper qualifying and disqualifying questions that need to be asked, which simply aren’t. These are the questions that go beyond uncovering the more obvious criteria that may determine whether or not the person is indeed a likely candidate for your solution, product or service. I’m referring to the tougher questions salespeople are more reluctant to explore that uncover the prospect’s underlying thinking, the real decision makers involved as well as the decision making process that goes on behind the scenes which most salespeople are unaware of.

Instead, these salespeople operate under a cloak of ambiguity and false hope. Because they don’t have all the data they need that would determine whether or not the selling opportunity is authentic, many wind up investing their time and energy on moving the wrong prospects through their selling cycle.

Now the cost to the salesperson and the company is exponential; lost time spent on the wrong prospects x time not invested uncovering the truly qualified ones.

If you are often left in a state of shock when you lose a sale you thought you had, never hear back from a certain prospect who you thought was great fit or if you’re spending your time guessing, hypothesizing, wondering and justifying why a prospect fell into the growing abyss of lost selling opportunities and stalled sales, I can guarantee you this; it’s because you’re not asking the deeper questions that need to be asked.

While being interviewed by Geoffrey James for an article he was writing for Selling Power magazine on what managers need to do to effectively coach their sales team when cold calling, a question regarding how effectively salespeople are qualifying their prospects surfaced during our conversation. (Geoffrey is also the author of seven books and the columnist for BNET, Business 2.0, CIO, The New York Times as well as many other publications.)

You can find Geoffrey’s blog here, which lists some of the deeper qualifying questions that salespeople must learn to ask.

To go beyond these questions for a moment, what I actually found to be intriguing were the comments that readers had posted after reading his blog. Now, I’m all for and certainly encourage feedback and comments, all in the spirit of mutual collaboration, growth and stimulating a valuable dialogue. And I applaud anyone who’s willing to take the time and post their thoughts and comments, good or bad, as I am always open to a healthy debate with those who may not always agree with my point of view or share a different perspective on the subject matter at hand.

The lesson I want to highlight regarding reader comments is this. While we all must challenge what we see and hear regardless of the source of information, we need to be mindful about how literal we are and to what degree we internalize the advice.

One person commented, “Certainly I feel that this list of questions is a good guide to a salesman for points of discussion and are generally important to him and his business, but as listed they might well cause offence. They would need to be more carefully phrased and made relevant to the prospect by careful research.”

I couldn’t agree more! After all, these questions were not written the way I would ask them either, but were extracted from a conversation we had and then written as a way to simulate new thinking regarding the additional criteria that every salesperson needs to develop a greater sensitivity and awareness around when qualifying each prospect.

Another reader commented on certain questions they agree are rock solid and the ones they feel are not.

This drives my point home. That is, take what you read and look at the spirit behind the questions or any advice, rather than just judging the question itself, black and white, yes or no, it works or it doesn’t. Thinking in absolutes leaves no room for innovation or creativity. Rigid thinking blocks the ingenuity we need to tap into that fosters change and improved results.

There are very few universal hard and fast laws when it comes to selling that work 100% of the time. Sometimes strategies work and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they work only a percentage of the time, which to me is still a huge win. After all, a 35% improvement is still a noteworthy improvement.

Looking for the ultimate fix and perfectly flawless solution quickly becomes a diversionary tactic and justification of your current performance, as well as an excuse why you do not have to change you ways or try something new.

Unless something is written specifically for you or crafted for you or for your company or sales process, we need to be reminded that we need to take the advice we read and then tweak it to make it real for us. Just like a buffet, we take what we like, leave what we don’t, and mix certain parts or ingredients together so they work for us.

Let us not lose sight of the value here. As Geoffrey wrote, “When most sales reps are developing a B2B sale, they limit questioning to generic issues like which products the prospect is currently using. Here’s a better idea: ask questions that reveal if the prospect is truly qualified to buy and how the buying decision will be made. This is not to say that product-level info is useless. But why bother to probe for that data if the opportunity isn’t real? If you have the answers to these questions, you know whether or not you’re wasting your time with this prospect, or whether you’ve got a deal that’s waiting to be done.”

Some readers of this blog actually provided some great examples of how to re-language these questions so they are more artfully crafted and positioned in a way that would make YOUR prospect more receptive.

So, keep those thoughts and comments flowing, don’t stop challenging what you hear and enjoy the buffet of knowledge in front of you.

Reality is, after all, created in the language we use.

To complement my last blog where I shared some valuable tips on how to generate more referrals that were provided by my colleague Dr. Tony Alessandra, I felt we needed to get even more tactical by revisiting the positioning, language and the dialogue you need to be mindful of when actually asking for a referral, as well as the proper time and place to do so. Below is a strategy that has helped many salespeople and non selling professionals build their pipeline and their practice by knowing when and how to ask for referrals. What follows is a dialogue you can use that honors the permission based selling model that I’ve written about in my cold calling book.

What exactly classifies as a referral? If we were to create some parameters that define what a referral is, this is what it would look like.

Synonymous with “recommendation” and “testimonial,” a referral is a potential prospect that is directed or given to you by someone you know or someone you don’t know who feels that you are the best source for help or information regarding a specific, subject, product, or service.

What makes a referral so incredibly attractive and desirable is that it is, for the most part, a warm lead. That is, when you approach a referral, there is less of a need to convince or sell them. A certain degree of interest, credibility, and comfort has already been established. Chances are, there’s already a need present. All you have to do then, is turn that need into a want or a desire for your product using the questions in your needs analysis.

Typically, your clients are going to be the top source for referral business simply because they are the ones who actually utilize your product, making them the most effective testimonial you can find to endorse your product.

The following dialogue illustrates how you can establish a referral agreement with your clients. This way, you will be able to identify the clients who are willing to become a referral source for you and the most appropriate time to ask them for referrals. This is a great example of how to set up your strategy to increase the amount of referral business you currently generate.

You: “Mrs. Client, may I take a moment to share with you how I build my business?”

Client: “Sure.”

You: “Well, what I enjoy most about what I do and where my time is best served is working with my clients. I want to spend as much time as possible serving my clients and exceeding your expectations. In order for me to spend more time with my clients and less time marketing or prospecting for new business I really need the help of my satisfied clients.

Please understand, I’m certainly not asking for any referrals from you now. Personally, I feel that would be incredibly presumptuous to ask you to introduce me to other potential clients before you even have a chance to truly utilize and benefit from my services. After all, we just started working together!

However, in a couple of months or even weeks, when you are clearly realizing the benefits of my services and have gotten even more value than you expected, would you be comfortable sharing the results you have experienced with others and introduce me to those people who might also benefit from my services?”

Client: “Sure, I don’t see why not.

You: “That sounds great. Thanks in advance for this consideration. Just so I know what it will take to make you a raving fan, what can I do to make you comfortable enough to actually want to refer business to me?”

The most effective way to earn referrals is to over- deliver on the value your clients expect so that you actually exceed their expectations. Once you confirm this to be true, it now becomes a great time to ask for testimonials or a reference from a happy client.

If you find that you are having difficulty asking for referrals, then question how strong your belief is in your product, your commitment to serving your clients, and the value proposition you can deliver.

Setting up a referral agreement with your clients will remove any reluctance and make you feel much more comfortable when asking them for referrals. Since they now know this is something you will be asking of them, it’s okay to ask.

Download this ebook for free here.

Our new marketplace requires new strategies and a new way of thinking in order to achieve more and thrive. Here, you can access these new resources I developed specifically for salespeople and sales managers to attract more prospects, boost your sales faster and coach your sales team into sales champions so they can close more sales today.

Here’s the second in a series of new resources and ebooks I’m giving away.

The Seven Types of Prospectors

What kind of prospector are you? Although developing a unique, personalized approach to prospecting is encouraged, there are some pitfalls to be aware of and some communication styles to abandon that you may not even be aware of which will sabotage your prospecting efforts. Use this guide to uncover which of the seven types of prospectors you most closely resemble and what you can do to adjust your prospecting approach and communication style for maximum impact.

Download this ebook for free here.

About 25 years ago, I read my first book on selling. It was, The Secrets of Closing the Sale. Like many sales and business professionals, this was the first book that I was ever exposed to which focused on the subject and the art of selling. 25 years later, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down and meeting with the master of selling and personal development, the often imitated but never duplicated, Zig Ziglar.

Now, if you’re in sales or a self help junkie, you know who Zig Ziglar is. (If not, you’re either someone who hasn’t truly invested in your career and embraced lifelong learning by continually investing in your development, you’re fairly new to the selling profession or are just starting out, or you’ve been living under a rock for far too long.) Zig (he prefers to be called Zig over Mr. Ziglar) is truly an American Legend, an icon in the world of personal and professional growth and one of my personal heroes. (The conversation I had with him further cemented why this is still true today). Zig has shared the platform with many distinguished Americans such as Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush and has authored over two dozen books on personal growth and success, family, sales and leadership that have touched the lives of millions of people across the world.

Zig has an appeal that transcends barriers of age, culture, industry and occupation. Since 1970, he has traveled over five million miles across the world delivering powerful life improvement messages, cultivating the energy of change.

Zig Ziglar’s corporation is built upon the same philosophy he expounds to his audiences – hard work, common sense, fairness, commitment and integrity.

In his autobiography, Zig offers a candid and inspiring account of his transformation from a “too small, poor boy from Yazoo City, Mississippi,” to one of the world’s most highly regarded motivational experts. At the heart of his story are his many heroes who modeled solid values such as faith in God, commitment to hard work, compassion for others, common sense, integrity, and a sense of humor.

“Wow! What an amazing experience. What did he teach you that was new?” This is the first reaction I would typically hear from people when first telling them I had spent an afternoon with Zig and time at his headquarters. So, what impact did Zig leave on me that I have taken to heart? What profound, new and valuable message was I able to walk away with from my meeting with this highly acclaimed guru and though leader?

Before I answer that, (no, I won’t make you wait until my next blog post) here are just a few of the things that Zig and I casually chatted about. (Our conversation was videoed and I will be posting the video to share with you in the very near future.)

• How the selling profession and the profile of a salesperson changed and evolved since the time he authored, The Secrets of Closing the Sale, 25 years ago.
• What salespeople need to do today to ensure their success in this new marketplace.
• What leaders need to be more mindful of if they want to ensure the success of their organization.
• The people who have impacted his life the most.
• Zig’s definition of integrity.
• A message for the younger generation out there, who are working hard at trying to build a successful career and a family.
• His legacy.
• What parents need to do to be more accountable around raising children with stronger, more meaningful values.
• How people actually go about developing or upgrading their attitude.

I was fortunate to gain the perspective of such a worldly man grounded in the values that matter. You would even think that it would be a bit of a challenge to retain all of the gems Zig shared with me. Conversely it wasn’t. It was surprisingly, yet reassuringly very simple. You see, the ultimate epiphany I had, the priceless message that Zig delivered, was grounded in the core principles that are and have always been right in front of us.

Zig reinforced what really mattered most; the basics. Yes, that’s right. The basics that we so often gloss over, neglect, take for granted and assume we already have in place. The very basics that are paradoxically, still the undeniable and timeless secret to success and designing a life worth living.

The basics of truth, being your word, living a life of integrity, honoring your core values and your commitments, honesty, family, faith in yourself and helping your fellow man and woman selflessly and graciously. Yes, the basics that our society seems to have an unyielding tendency to put aside and dismiss in search of the latest and greatest, the next “Big Thing” or the flavor of the month. We have fooled ourselves into thinking there is some other secret out there that would help us get what we want most and propel us to where we want to be, both in our home life and at our work life.

We are hiding behind the guise of “What’s next” without honoring the core, fundamental beliefs and values that make us all worthwhile human beings. As we immerse ourselves in our own thinking, as we get distracted and challenged by the upsets and problems at work, as we continue to allow the media to erode our thinking and our heart-centered priorities as well as sensationalize our deepest fears and insecurities, we move farther and farther away from the person we truly want to be, and then with a shock, we turn around and notice that the person we have become, is not the person we want to model, especially for our children.

Our integrity has now been compromised, and we wonder why we continually feel, “off,” out of sorts, or out of balance with ourselves, regardless of how much more money we make or what other possessions or successes we amass. We can’t understand why personal satisfaction, our self worth, sense of fulfillment and our peace of mind continually escapes us and our grasp, and becomes more and more elusive.

To reinforce Zig’s message, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with his son. When talking with Tom Ziglar, the CEO of Ziglar, Inc., he shared with me so many wonderful stories about his dad. During one of our conversations, he shared with me one of his dad’s quotes which was, “How much better would world be if people cared as much about their responsibilities as they do their rights.” With the level of greed and American Entitlement that has plagued our society, which has only come into our direct line of vision due to our challenging marketplace and the media continually reporting on the failure of so many large institutions and organizations, this message is so timely today, more than ever before.

Zig’s message touches the heart, soul and spirit of everyone he interacts with, especially those who work with him. It was during my video shoot later that day, as I was filming some new training and coaching insights, when someone else in Zig’s office shared another story that is yet another testament to Zig’s character and being a man who lives by his word and walks his talk. I was told that, throughout all of the years Zig has traveled the word, before every seminar or presentation he ever delivered, even as they’re introducing him and calling him on to the stage, he would always make it a point to pick up the phone and call his wife, just to tell her he loves her.

What a better place our world would be if every man and woman would call their spouse or significant other on their way to work, just to say, “I love you.” To this day, Zig cherishes his wife and the relationship he has with her (the Redhead, as he lovingly refers to her in his books). He keeps her on the pedestal that she so rightfully deserves to be on. Again, what would our world be like if we followed in Zig’s footprints, doing the things that really matter most.

When it was time to conclude our conversation, one of the final questions I asked Zig was, “I’m not sure if you’ve been following the numbers on your book sales and where they rank in terms of popularity. So I took the liberty of seeing how The Secrets of Closing the Sale has been doing on Amazon. Currently, your book holds the following rankings regarding how popular they are in specific categories. In the category of sales and selling, your book is rated number 15. Now, here’s what I found interesting. Under the category of spirituality, your book is holding strong at number 3. Now, I know you’re a very spiritual man. And regardless of your faith, how do you explain this? What’s the connection between success at selling and spirituality?”

To that question, Zig smiled and responded with a resonating message that reinforced why the holistic approach to professional development will always be the most effective and long lasting. That was, while skill, talent and what you do is important, it is the essence of a person, your character and who you are that matters most.

At 82 years of age, he still has that spark, that twinkle in his eye, that presence he naturally exudes from a man who we can all use as a model of what it means to be not just remarkable, but to be human; that’s the Zig we know and love.

I don’t know if there are too many authentic heroes like Zig left in the world, and I know he’s still one of mine. And as I look on my desk at the gift that my children had given me just the other day (an early Fathers Day present), I’m reminded why I do what I do and what gets me out of bed each day. My five year olds (twins) came back from school and in their youthful exuberance, handed me a picture frame they had made with the cutest picture of each of them wearing a suit and tie that their teaches had dressed them in. On the top of the frame it said, “When I grow Up I want To Be Just Like My Daddy.” How important our role is as parents, our most significant role we will ever have. That message was a happy reminder of how important it is for me to follow in the footprints of success that my hero has left behind for all of us to travel on.

I am profoundly and deeply appreciative of my time with Zig and of the gifts that he has shared with the world.

And to Mr. Zig Ziglar I say, I am grateful for the contribution you have made to me, as well as the impact that you have had on all of us throughout the years. Keep shining.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Companies are running so fast in an attempt to catch up on their sales numbers that they aren’t aware of the blinders they’ve developed which are obstructing their view of the fuller picture when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity, especially the deeper level of questioning and discovery every salesperson needs to engage in today.

Sure, you can ask your prospects the more generic questions about the current products, services, solutions and venders they currently use. But what about the questions that facilitate a buying decision; the tougher questions that help you better understand if this prospect is, in fact, even qualified to buy from you now, in the near future or ever? Delivering a recent seminar to a senior team of sales professionals reinforced how most salespeople, regardless of how experienced or seasoned, are still stepping over the additional questions I’m suggesting we need to ask.

I’m referring to questions that uncover:

Here’s a tip from your coach: Low closing percentages = a misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.

If you don’t have the answers to these questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it.

So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

In this podcast, I detail several critical questions you need to answer that will enable you to uncover the gaps in your data pool that in turn, will help refine your overall approach to how you prospect and sell and the measurable effort that’s required for you to do so successfully.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Watch the Video

Salespeople wear their emotions on their sleeve. As such, your prospects will sense your reluctance or fear. A prospect wants to do business with a salesperson that’s excited about what they have, not someone who is struggling to promote their product or service.

Rather than a sign of conviction, this can be construed as a sign of doubt or uncertainty. If you’re not convinced that what you have to offer is important enough to make a call, then how can you expect your prospects to get excited about what you have to offer? This will sabotage your cold-calling efforts, cultivating an unhealthy relationship from the start.

From: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling

Related Winning CanDoGo™ Insights

Never Cold Call Again

A Great Sales Coach Uses His Heart

Call Me Back Please!

Lately, I’ve been getting a high volume of calls from sales managers and their salespeople struggling to meet their sales goals. So, let me paint you a visual of the typical scenario being played out through the eyes of a salesperson; one that you may be intimately familiar with.

You’re on your way to work and during your commute, you’re thinking about what you hope to accomplish that day.

You get to your office, sit down at your desk and open up your calendar. A concerned look sweeps over your face. “Only one appointment this week.”

You look at your pipeline and get that squirmy feeling inside your gut, as you realize your pipeline is not as full as it used to be. You’re wondering where you’re going to find your next prospect.

The uncertainty begins to sweep over you. The stress starts creeping into your body, for you realize you can’t keep procrastinating making the cold calls you need to in order to book more appointments with key decision makers.

You remember what your boss told you. “Your funnel is drying up,” he says. “You’ve got to get on the phone and make more calls to your existing clients and to new prospects if you want to meet your goals.”

“Okay I can do this,” you tell yourself.

You find some people to call.

You take a deep breath and start dialing their number. “C’mon just answer the phone,” you say to yourself.

“Voice mail.” You don’t leave a message because you never get your calls returned anyway.

You dial the second number on you call list. Someone answers the phone and you hear, “Mrs. Johnson’s office, how can I help you?”

“Great, another gatekeeper,” you mutter to yourself. You’re actually caught off guard that a live person answered your call. Thirty seconds later, after your valiant, yet ineffective attempt to connect with your prospect, you hear a pleasant but well trained, “No thank you. We’re not interested.” You’re off the phone with the gatekeeper in less than one minute, as she’s been conditioned not to take unsolicited calls, especially cold calls.

You dial the third and fourth number. No luck. “More gatekeepers,” you say. “Why can’t I get past them?” you ask yourself. You start questioning if luck is actually what you really need or if there is more to cold calling than you originally thought.

“Okay one more shot.” You push yourself to dial the fifth number on your call list.

Someone picks up. Shockingly, it’s the prospect! Maybe you’ll get ‘lucky.’ And knowing that you need to open up this call with something gripping and compelling to grab this prospect’s attention to the point where they stop what they’re doing and want to engage in a conversation with you, you say, “Um, Hi. Mr. Smith? Uh, this is Chris from ABC logistics. How are you today?”

“Busy!” he says. And with that, he hangs up the phone.

Now, you’re depleted, frustrated and annoyed. You don’t understand why you’re unable to set the appointments with the prospects who you know you can help and therefore need to meet with. In a discouraging tone, you ask yourself, “Why won’t they talk to me? I know I can help them. If only they’d give me some time on the phone.”

You feel you’ve just wasted three hours of your day that you’ll never get back. In desperation, you cry out, “This cold calling thing doesn’t work for me! What else can I do to schedule meetings with more qualified prospects who can buy from me?”

And that’s when you ask yourself this toxic question which is often followed with a ‘yes’ that feeds the justification of your performance. “Is cold calling really dead?”

No, I did not have a hidden webcam secretly installed in your office, in case you’re wondering how I’ve been able to paint such a vivid picture that so closely resembles what you may be experiencing yourself. If anything, take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone and you can do something about it.

So, what is the answer? Is cold calling really dead? The answer is a resound, “Not even close.” Therefore, do not abandon cold calling! Cold calling is far from dead and I see evidence of this every day. After all, a majority of all Fortune 500 companies utilize some form of telephone prospecting every day.

Sure, I realize for many people cold calling and prospecting ranks right up there with getting their teeth pulled without the gas.

However, as an executive sales coach who has coached and trained thousands of salespeople over the years, here’s what I’ve learned very early on. It’s not that cold calling doesn’t work. Cold calling works fabulously well. It’s the way you’re cold calling that doesn’t work. In other words, consider that it’s more about your approach and cold calling strategy; what you say and how you say it – that is ineffective and what your prospects are unresponsive to.

So be careful. Most people who feel cold calling doesn’t work in actuality, have learned the wrong lesson.

For example, if I asked you to go outside and dig a ten foot deep hole with a spoon, do you learn the lesson, “Well, I guess I can’t dig holes very well” or is the real lesson; “If I had the right tools I would have been able to accomplish this goal faster, with less effort.” You see, it’s all about the tools you’re using when cold calling. Even if you handed Tiger Woods, one of the greatest golfers of all time, a pair of lefty clubs, while he still may outperform most golfers he would not be able to operate at his best, at the pinnacle of his potential, simply because he’s using the wrong tools. The same philosophy applies to your career and to cold calling.

Most salespeople sound exactly the same as every other person when calling on the same prospect, rather than develop their unique and compelling message that grabs someone’s ear to the point where they are interested in what you have to say. Why should a prospect want to hear the same approach time and time again? How can that possibly distinguish you?

So if you’re not getting the results you need, instead of abandoning a proven selling strategy, it’s time to upgrade your cold calling and follow up system. With a strong prospecting and cold calling model that is mapped out step by step; which also includes the compelling opening statement you need, the reasons why someone should listen to you in the first place (rather than opening up a call by asking for an appointment, demo, proposal, etc.), well crafted questions to determine if there’s even a fit between you and your prospect, as well as a strong voice mail and follow up strategy, you will see what a competitive edge “cold calling” can give you.

Side note: Over the last year, my cold calling book has been gaining more popularity as competition increases and the need to find more qualified prospects to fill your pipeline intensifies. So, if you’re ready to develop a permission based prospecting system that will enable you:

Here’s the link to Amazon to read all the five star reviews or you can go to my website here to learn more about this book.

“What do I need to accomplish in the first few minutes of every cold call I make?” “What’s my overall objective of a cold call?” These questions rank up there as two of the top questions I’m asked. If you’ve been following my last few posts, I’ve been hyper-focused on the importance of sales benchmarking and identifying best practices.

In the spirit of simplicity, there are actually five core objectives during a prospecting conversation which I’ve listed below.

That’s it! Now ask yourself, does your system achieve these five core objectives?
 

More great news about a company I happen to be a raving fan of. Press release below. Recognition they rightfully deserve.

Landslide Technologies Named Top 100 Private Companies in Eastern U.S. by AlwaysOn

Company Selected as Technology Innovator in SaaS and Enterprise for 2009

Landslide Technologies today announced that it has been selected to the 2009 AlwaysOn East 100 List. The AlwaysOn East 100 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2009 list. Landslide was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction

Landslide Technologies was selected for its solid customer traction and focus on helping companies build world class sales organizations. Landslide’s Sales P3 System is the only cloud computing offering that combines powerful sales process software with live personal sales assistants to provide salespeople a complete environment for increasing sales.

From providing the ability to embed proven sales processes in the day to day lives of sales reps, to providing the right job aids at the right time and personal assistants to offload data entry work, the Landslide Sales P3 System is purpose-built for the sales organization.

“We selected Landslide because of their single-minded focus on increasing sales,” said Chris Roussos, CEO, OrthoSynetics. “We expect to see significant improvement in our sales team’s productivity by supporting them with best-practice sales processes and the personal live assistants.”

Since its launch in 2006, the company has received awards from industry experts including the ‘Cool Vendor’ award from Gartner Group, the Product Innovation Award from Frost and Sullivan, the ‘One to watch’ by CRM Magazine two years in a row and has been twice included in Gartner’s SFA Magic Quadrant as a Visionary company. In addition, the company’s focus on sales process and the needs of the salesperson has won it endorsements from leading sales experts such as Michael Bosworth, Jill Konrath, Gerhard Gschwandtner, Keith Rosen, Dave Kurlan and many more.

“The AlwaysOn selection of Landslide is a validation of what our customers have known all along: that Landslide is the first true sales-centric offering built with a mission to help salespeople succeed,” said Razi Imam, CEO, Landslide Technologies. “Our focus on helping salespeople close more deals rather than just capture more data is what distinguishes us from traditional sales offerings.”

Landslide and the other AlwaysOn East 100 winners will be recognized at the Venture Summit East Conference at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston, MA, on May 20-22. This two-and-a-half day executive conference is co-presented by J.P. Morgan and Forbes and will feature presentations and high-level debates from the most influential institutional investors, venture capitalists, corporate buyers, investment bankers and research analysts in the Eastern U.S.

“It’s no secret that technology and innovation are vital to bringing our country out of economic recession,” said Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “The companies on this year’s list have not only created innovative technologies that solve real business problems, but have stimulated economic growth through the generation of new jobs. I congratulate every winner selected for this year’s award and wish them all tremendous success in the future.”

A full list of all the AlwaysOn East 100 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website at http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/32212

About AlwaysOn
ALWAYSON ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a global blog network. In 2004, ALWAYSON continued to lead the media industry in innovation by introducing a social network where members can connect and engage. ALWAYSON is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (Summit at Stanford, OnMedia, OnHollywood, GoingGreen East and West, Venture Summit East and West) and quarterly print “blogozine” by empowering its members to post and share their ideas and meet each other online. As our loyal readers know, ALWAYSON is committed to the free-market, merit-driven approach to reporting and event programming. No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants.

About Landslide Technologies
Landslide Technologies is the provider of Landslide Sales P3 System, a Sales Production System that helps BtoB companies increase sales volume. Landslide Sales P3 System is the first system that combines sales process consistency with sales performance technology and outsourced administrative services to transform individual performers into a world-class team of consistent sales. The company is privately held with headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA. Additional information can be found at landslide.com.

Stop. Just stop for the next several minutes that it’s going to take you to read this. Okay, now take a breath. Get off the treadmill for a moment and ask yourself these questions. Yes, these questions are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective around what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for.

Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers, that you didn’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed which are obstructing your view of the fuller picture; the landscape you’re trying to farm and manage when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity. Here are those questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team).

“With all the effort I’m putting forth in an attempt to generate more prospects and selling opportunities, following up and retaining existing clients to ensure that I’m bringing in as much business as possible:”

• Am I acutely aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily that would secure my success?
• Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?
• Do I know how much cold calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on) and when to call it quits and move on when attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect?
• Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)
• Am I holding myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?
• When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?
• Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)
• Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up selling and cross selling opportunity?
• Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client as well as territory management? Do you have a call report system?
• Do I have the right questions that provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

And to clarify further when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101 – Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone with you or end the meeting and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources or venders they currently have, the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall or destroy the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: Low closing percentages = misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it. So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

I’ve decided (and many of my clients and readers are on board with this as well, so I hope you’ll join us) that it’s no longer as tough as it was out there. That’s right. Strip away what you hear in the media, and look objectively at what you can control; this one telltale sign that something in your selling formula needs to be developed, modified or redefined:

If there are people in your organization, even in your industry or profession who are currently performing like rock stars, that should provide you with one very critical insight. That is, it can be done because it is currently being done by someone else!

Of course it is going to remain “tough out there” if you don’t have your defined best practices, data points and numeric formula to help support your selling efforts. After all, it’s one thing to up your game and work on developing and refining your selling skills as well as your sales management skills. However, to complement this so that you have a comprehensive solution to better performance, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the numbers that will drive your activities in the first place as you exercise your newfound selling and leadership strategies and newly developed competencies. Use these questions I’ve posed to help uncover the gaps in your data pool that in turn, will help refine your overall approach to how you prospect and sell and the measurable effort that’s required for you to do so successfully.

Here’s a very clear insight into one example of some general statistical information about the selling profession that will help you begin the process of fine tuning and developing your own data driven solution to increasing your sales.

48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
12% of salespeople only make three contacts and stop.
Only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.

Now, get this:
2% of sales are made on the first contact.
3% of sales are made on the second contact.
5% of sales are made on the third contact.
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact.
But 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.

Now, these numbers may change depending upon your selling cycle, geographic location, the dollar amount of your deliverable, target audience as well as the service or product you’re selling but the essence of this message still remains in tact. That is, do you have your own set of data available which you have used as the cornerstone to constructing your prospecting and selling strategy? If not, it’s the same as getting into your car and saying to yourself before embarking on a trip, “Okay, I need to get to a specific destination, but I’m not exactly sure which direction to travel nor how long it’s going to take me to get there.”

It’s no longer about simply ‘doing more’ but about doing more of what’s right. In our new marketplace, going out in the field and just doing more of what you did yesterday would be the same as trying to sell VCR’s, pagers and CD’s today. (Even my youngest asked me the other day, “Dad, what’s a CD?”). Your product has changed over the years and while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, this evolution must be guided by the numeric benchmarks in order to see the full, panoramic picture of the truth that surrounds your current situation. This will eliminate the costly oversights I’ve detailed earlier and ensure your future success.

We all need to be reminded of this universal law, “We resist what we need to learn the most.” And interestingly, while salespeople and sales managers are more inclined to take the reactionary, visceral attitude, “Lets just get out there and make it happen,” we need to pull back the reigns before engaging in blind sales activities and instead, start with doing what is often perceived as the more mundane, often boring task of benchmarking the right practices and then measuring their effectiveness by the numbers before embarking on these activities. Empirical data will provide the blueprint you need to succeed as well as the certainty, confidence and conviction necessary for a healthy sales mind and attitude.

After all, the greatest rainmakers realize the importance of checking the weather first so they know where the best locations are to make it rain, and have the tools to do so.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

Listen to the full podcast here

In this week’s podcast I discuss the difference between prequalifying and prejudging your prospects and clients. This is a critical distinction to get because if you’re prejudging them, you’re already creating a self imposed barrier to more sales and creating more selling opportunities.

To permanently eliminate any confusion, lets draw a distinction between what it means to pre-qualify and pre-judge someone such as a prospect. If you read my cold calling book, you know that I’m a strong advocate of pre-qualifying anyone before you invest your very limited and precious time in meeting with or speaking with them.

Conversely, pre-judging someone is something you do that shows up in the filter or barrier you have in your listening.

Here’s another way to distinguish between the two. When you are pre-qualifying someone you are arriving at a conclusion that determines whether or not there’s a fit worth pursuing based on a defined set of criteria you uncover through the use of well crafted questions.

Pre-judging said simply, is all about you. Here, you are relying on your faulty and costly assumptions, thoughts and beliefs to determine their needs and whether or not this prospect will potentially buy from you.

When you pre-judge someone you’re making assumptions about them before you ask any questions or uncover any facts.

When you pre-qualify someone, you’re asking questions to uncover their unique and specific needs without making any assumptions so that you can determine very quickly if there is in fact, an authentic fit worth pursuing.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Concerned about how to find new and profitable prospects to develop and maintain your customer base? Then stop stressing over how to do it and attend this live, 60-minute Audio Conference that I’m delivering in two weeks and learn how to cold call and prospect like a sales champion. Below are the details.

TITLE: Win More Prospects Today: Dramatically Increase Your Selling Opportunities to Boost Your Sales

DATE: Thursday, April 30, 2009

TIME: 1:00-2:00 p.m. EASTERN STANDARD TIME

LOCATION: Your Phone

PRESENTER: Keith Rosen

Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.

SUMMARY
Prospecting in this tough economy can leave salespeople banging their heads against their desks. However, finding new and profitable business has never been so important. You must find new prospects and develop great relationships today so you and your company will be thriving and well positioned in your industry when the economy turns around.

Join us for this 60-minute conference where you and your colleagues will get the tools to:

• Learn lead generating ideas to keep your pipeline filled all year
• How to get past the toughest gatekeepers and straight to the decision maker
• Follow up strategies that grab attention without the pestering
• Ways to handle “I’m not Interested” – Overcome any objection

PROGRAM BENEFITS
This practical 60-minute, audio conference will provide you and your colleagues with the skills needed to prospect effectively and efficiently over the telephone to increase sales and boost revenue.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
How to Make the Gatekeeper & Voice Mails Your Ally
• Learn what to say to get you in the door – and get your calls returned
• How to build instant rapport with gatekeepers – get them on your side
• Must know fatal cold calling mistakes every salesperson makes

Heat up Your Cold Call & Pump Up Your Prospecting
• How to find customers who ARE buying and avoid ones who aren’t
• Learn opening statements that will keep prospects from hanging up
• Successfully overcome your fear of cold calling. (It doesn’t have to be painful!)

Understand Your Most Valuable Proposition
• Increase sales opportunities with crafted prospecting templates
• How to ask the right questions- get the prospect to reveal their pain
• Be aware of words that work & words that destroy selling opportunities

Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.

Hosted by Progressive Business Publications, a leader in fast-read actionable advice on workplace issues, the audio conference gives you the opportunity to add immediate, impact to your prospecting efforts in a manner that is:

FAST - No wasted time here. Get right to the heart of the matter in a 1-hour block designed to easily fit into your busy schedule.

CONVENIENT - No airlines. No travel. No time out of the office. Listen from the comfort and convenience of your desk.

EASY - A telephone is all the equipment you need. Just dial in, punch in your access code, and you’re in. That’s it. Follow along with the audio conference handout that will be provided in advance.

ACTIONABLE - Our audio conferences provide money-saving tactics you can start using right when you hang up the phone.

IDEAL FOR MULTIPLE LISTENERS - Use a speakerphone and as many people as you want can listen in – at no extra cost to you. Many professionals use these sessions as a cost-efficient, time-efficient means of training supervisors, managers, and staff and reinforcing key issues in a fresh new manner that they will remember and act on.

AFFORDABLE - Priced at $199, it is a fraction of the cost of travel and attendance fees for other high-priced conferences or seminars.

Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.

In CanDoGo’s latest post, I found a useful tip that my friend and colleague, Tony Parinello wrote that stands out above the crowd as a selling strategy to adopt that works exceptionally well. Here’s the excerpt from Tony, followed by some more tools you can use when you run into the all too familiar price objection.

When VITO Objects to the Price – By Tony Parinello

“Your price is too high.”

Whenever you’re calling on a Very Important Top Officer, you’re bound to run into some first-call objections. Let’s say you place a telephone call, and when the prospect picks up, you launch into your opening statement and you get interrupted with something that sounds like this:

“I’ve seen your solutions before. Your price is simply too high for our budgets.”

Don’t respond with: “We offer specials. This month, it’s 10 percent of list,” or “What would you consider a fair discount?” or “How much would we have to lower it to get your business?” or “I can talk to my manager and see if we can offer a lower price.”

Instead, I want you to respond with: “Ms. Importanta, could you please define price?”

Don’t be surprised if VITO responds with: “Price is what I pay. It’s what’s on the invoice!”

Be prepared to answer with all of the services you don’t typically charge for and be prepared to put a price tag on all of them, including pre-sales studies, evaluations and other services that are valuable to the prospect and would be costly if they were to hire a consultant or industry expert to perform.

So what have we learned? Here are a few valuable nuggets to walk away with.

First, we’ve learned that it’s our assumptions around the sales process that often sabotage our selling efforts right from the start. In other words, “Your price is too high” can mean several different things depending upon who is sharing this perceived objection with you. After all, what exactly does, “Your price is too high” even mean? Certainly something different to each customer, depending on their point of view.

Unfortunately, the majority of salespeople make the costly assumption that the dollar figure they quoted for the service or product offered is what is really in question. And this can be the farthest thing from the truth. Yet, salespeople will continue to forge ahead and react accordingly, based upon the presumption, their honest belief that it’s the price that is getting in the way of earning their business and if they drop their price, offer some discount or “better deal,” they’ll earn a new customer.

Isn’t it amazing that a salesperson can conduct a one way conversation in their own head and come up with a solution to a customer’s objection without even involving the customer! Yes, salespeople can be incredibly creative, even to the point where it costs us sales.

Fact: Dropping the price before validating and isolating the core roadblock(s) to making a purchasing decision often results in diluting your value, damaging your credibility and ultimately losing the sale rather than winning it.

Here are some healthier responses to this common objection, “Your price is too high” that would serve you better than the typical reactionary and adversarial posture salespeople take in an attempt to defend their price. Besides, if this is the selling environment you create, where it’s ‘you vs. the customer,’ we all know who’s going to win in the end.

The next time you hear, “Your price is too high” respond with the following questions. You’ll be amazed at how much more useful intel you can collect just by going a few layers deeper with more powerful and tactical questioning.

After using these questions to respond to this objection rather than react with an adversarial statement, notice how often the real objection that’s getting in the way of moving forward actually comes down to price. Probably only about 15% of the time, instead of what you initially perceived to be much higher. Since the real objection is often several layers deep, it’s going to be the right, pinpoint questions that deliver the relevant information you need so that you can offer a solution that’s going to fit best.

In my next blog, I’ll unpack the second learning point worth integrating into your selling approach. That is, how, exactly, do you build value?

Listen to the podcast here

Got your mojo?

Are you born with it or can you develop it? Here’s a recent podcast I did with Salesopedia that explains what makes up your sales mojo, which defines who you are and how you come across to others.

Listen in as I describe in detail how your confidence, attitude, mindset, relationship with fear, and your ability to be engaged in the moment, all combine to determine how powerful your sales mojo can be. During these times, you need every advantage to be successful in your career, especially in sales. So make sure you tune in to get your sales mojo and develop your unique, winning edge.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Just Follow Up Wins Sales Article of The Month on Top Sales Articles.

Read the full article here.

You may know what that next step in your selling process actually is. But do you know exactly, when? Are you confident in what that next step is and when it will be taken? Many salespeople struggle when it comes to determining whether or not to follow up and when that “perfect” time to do so actually is.

Have you ever burdened yourself with these internal questions?

This ambiguity in your selling process is then compounded exponentially when you finally reach out to this person, just to connect with their voice mail on the other end.

If any of these questions sound familiar, it’s a safe bet you may be missing a critical step in your selling process. Here’s one of the golden rules of selling which, for many reasons, gets violated every moment of every day.

Always, always, always, have the next step mapped out and agreed upon in every selling situation, in every conversation with a prospect or customer.

This removes the toxic ambiguity that pollutes your mind and your thinking and robs you of time that’s better served focused on more meaningful and rewarding selling activities.

Here’s a link to this article, Just Follow Up.

Tony Parinello recently released a new book which is more timely and relevant than ever before. Entitled, Five Minutes With VITO-Making the most of your selling time with the Very Important Top Officer, authors David Mattson, CEO and a partner at Sandler Systems, Inc. and Tony Parinello have been generous to share some chapter excerpts with me that I now have the opportunity to share with you.

Presence is everything when it comes to selling. How you come across, that is, how you ‘show up’ and present your case to the prospect can make the difference between the beginning or the rapid end of your very first conversation with them. Regarding of how you’ve connected with your prospects; through cold calling, prospecting or by other marketing means, here are Tony and David’s five critical objectives of your first phone call.

Excerpt from Chapter 22

Five critical objectives of your first phone call

Your first phone call with any prospect is a critical factor in determining whether or not you will eventually make a sale. Because of this, it is crucial that you remain focused on the real purpose of this first conversation.

Critical Objective #1

Make a great first impression.

Your first phone call is about bonding and building a business relationship. Never use an icebreaker. It is a shallow attempt to reduce tension and a total waste of time. Get straight to the point. Don’t go into any technical details about your product or service unless you’re asked. Forget that you need to make a sale. Sounding desperate is going to bring a quick end to your conversation.

Critical Objective #2

Communicate with unshakeable confidence.

Pick up the phone, take your shot, stick to what you know and remember that if you fast-talk your prospect they will hang up. Remain confident and concise throughout the conversation.

Critical Objective #3

Focus on what is relevant to your prospect.

When you’re making a pitch, your prospect is going to be asking him or herself, “How does this apply to me and the economics of my operations and/or the wealth of my shareholders?” Make sure your product or service is a clear answer to this question.

Critical Objective #4

Establish an up-front contract.

A conversation with a prospect is all about commitments of time, attention and resources. Be up-front with what you are offering them, and what you are asking for. Lead your prospect towards making additional commitments to you, but make them feel like they are in control of the terms.

Critical Objective #5

Make a great last impression.

What you say at the end of your first conversation matters almost as much as what you say at the beginning. Make sure your prospect hangs up the phone eager to speak with you again.

To order the book or for more information, click here.

Tony Parinello recently released a new book which is more timely and relevant than ever before. Entitled, Five Minutes With VITO-Making the most of your selling time with the Very Important Top Officer, authors David Mattson, CEO and a partner at Sandler Systems, Inc. and Tony Parinello have been generous to share some chapter excerpts with me that I now have the opportunity to share with you.

Since writing a powerful sales letter is a key element of your successful selling strategy, here are Tony and David’s Four critical tips for writing sales letters that deliver results. Enjoy!

Excerpt from Chapter 20
Radical Tactics for Explosive Results

Throw your old selling strategies out the window – it’s a whole new world out there.

When the economy changes this much, this quickly, it can leave even the best sales people with dry pipelines and smaller deal sizes. This doesn’t mean that prospects have stopped buying or that it’s impossible to make as much or more than you made last year. You can still hit your numbers if you know how to adapt.

The best sales professionals are flexible and intuitive. They recognize that a shift in the economy or their industry requires a shift in their selling strategy. Their success is achieved by trying something new rather than clinging to what worked in the past.

Instead of hammering the phones twice as hard as you used to, ask yourself “Who is spending money right now?” Don’t be surprised how high up in an organization you have to go to find someone who can make a purchase. Your usual suspects probably have lost their budgets, along with their authority to make most decisions.

Today’s real prospects – the ones with buying power – have titles like CEO, owner or president. So says experts and authors David Mattson and Tony Parinello, the authors of Five Minutes With VITO, Making the most of your selling time with the Very Important Top Officer.

The people at the top are the people you should concentrate on selling to, because they are still buying. Stay focused on the strengths of your product or service, but understand that these prospects value things differently today then their subordinates. You won’t get VITOs interest by talking about features and functions or anything else that falls short of helping the company 1) make money, 2) increase productivity, or 3) reduce defects and other drains on profitability. It doesn’t matter if you sell IT services or cleaning products, the person at the top wants to talk to you if you make a clear case for positively impacting the bottom line.

Now more than ever it pays to be persistent, unconventional and smart when you’re prospecting. In order to get attention, you may need to break some rules.

Four Critical Tips for Writing Sales Letters That Deliver Results

Four critical tips for writing sales letters that deliver results

Writing a powerful sales letter is a key element of your successful selling strategy. Variations of this letter can be used for contacting every prospect on your list. You cannot afford to make a mistake on this versatile tool.

Critical Tip #1

NO logos. NO letterhead. NO slogans.
NO corporate branding.

Your sales letter should not include anything that easily identifies you or your company. Force your prospects to read your letter before deciding whether or not they know you – or want to know you.

Critical Tip #2

Keep it on one page.

Sure, you have lots that you want to tell your prospect. The problem is that your prospect will not read more than one page of information. Keep your sales letter short, to the point and leave lots of white space.

Critical Tip #3

Use eye-catching headlines.

If you want your sales letter to be read, it should be easy to scan. Your prospect isn’t going to spend time looking for the most important information. Make your headline brief, direct and to the point. Thirty words max.

Critical Tip #4

Never fold your sales letter. Don’t use your company’s standard envelope. Hand-write the address.

In order for your prospect to read your letter, they have to notice it first. Use a large 9×12” envelope with a handwritten name, title and address, and a return address with no company name or persons name. Do not put anything else (such as pens, business cards or oddly shaped objects) inside. This is not direct mail, it’s the beginning of a business relationship.

To order the book or for more information click here.

Keith Rosen’s Free Seminar Series
-The Art of Enrollment – Turn More Conversations into Clients

Mark your Calendar! January 28. 2009
Participant dial in number and access code below. Attend this event as our guest for free.

“People don’t want to be sold. They want to be enrolled.”

If you’re a coach, trainer, consultant, or non-selling professional, this is one tele-workshop you can’t afford to miss on the evolution of selling.

How effective are you at converting conversations into clients? Do you find yourself struggling to find more clients? What do you do to be unique and make an impact in the very first conversation you have with a prospect? Masterful coaches and speakers leave not only a lasting impression – they also create one.

It’s no secret that most coaches, speakers and non-selling professionals don’t like to sell. The income of most coaches reflects that. As such, they unknowingly use ineffective selling strategies rather than develop healthy, winning relationships with clients. Relying on price as a competitive differentiator dilutes your true value offering.

Coaching and training is not something you “pitch and sell.” The next evolution in how you engage clients is through the Art of Enrollment. What has been initially perceived as an inherent ability in certain leaders, coaches and top achievers is now a documented, step by step process that allows anyone, especially non-selling professionals, to convert more prospects into clients. You can do so in a natural, conversational way that honors your personal strengths, talents, integrity, values and style of communicating.

In this program, I’ve taken my twenty years of coaching and million dollar enrollment process that enabled me to develop one of the most successful coaching practices in the country and I’m now sharing my system with you in this program, The Art of Enrollment; a proven process to build a highly profitable, rewarding and sustainable business.

Specifically designed for coaches, consultants and trainers to learn how to:

Date: January 28. 2009
Duration: 90 Minutes
Time: 12pm EST
Location: Your Phone
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Below is the access number and code to participate:

Approximately 5 minutes before the session begins, start to dial this U.S. based phone number: 212.457.9879
When prompted, enter their Participant Access Code: 124866#

For more information visit the course description page here. I look forward to ‘seeing’ your there!

Many of the strategies that we engage in today, whether in our thinking as well as in our actions, are often counterintuitive to what we may believe would be the solution to achieving our goals and objectives; especially as it relates to cold calling and prospecting for new business.

Here’s a sample of the top paradoxes of prospecting that make prospecting so challenging. However, once these paradoxes are woven into your thinking, you’ll notice how these contradictions will provide you with a competitive edge that no other marketing piece, feature or benefit of your product or service could even come close to.

Lets face it. You and I both know that the ultimate objective of your prospecting efforts is to sell more and boost your income. However, to achieve this goal, it’s just not where you are going to focus your energy and thoughts.

If you can understand and embrace these paradoxes, you now have the opportunity to respond to each prospect in a healthier, more productive, and more enjoyable way.

Do you remember like it was yesterday where you could get away with connecting with your key accounts on a less frequent basis? Today, you must over-respond and over-communicate to the needs of your customers or risk losing them to your competition.

If you’re in the transactional selling business or are an order taker, then chances are, you don’t always have the strongest relationships with your customers. Therefore, more time must be spent fostering stronger relationships with key clients in order to insulate them for your competition. After all, tighter budgetary constraints = less spending = fewer and smaller selling opportunities = increased competition. Or does it have to be this way? What about this model.

Tighter budgetary constraints = less spending + making the needed adjustments in your selling strategy to account for this change = Capture greater market share.

This doesn’t mean calling on your key accounts just to “check in.” Just the other day, I received a voice mail from my credit card processing company. They were calling, and I quote, “Just to see how things are going.” Gee, this is certainly not the type of call that’s going to stimulate new sales or more sales.

Instead, have a better set of timely questions that will help you understand how the current economic crisis has affected the way they do business and make purchasing decisions.

Especially today, there are many salespeople who are hiding under their desk in fear not wanting to talk to their customers. This is a perfect opportunity for you to seize more market share.

The salesperson of tomorrow will continue to evolve into more than a salesperson, but a valuable resource and a trusted advisor throughout the entire selling process; and beyond.

This presents a huge opportunity to mine for additional upselling and cross selling opportunities.

Think about it for a moment. To develop the possibility for a sale, you have to uncover two critical things:

First, where the prospect or customer is now (Current State)—->
Second: Where They Want To Be (Desired State)

It’s your job to move them from their current state to their desired state through the use of better questions. If you want to know if your questions are being effective, just ask yourself this; are your questions giving you all of information you need to know about your prospect and their situation? The wrong questions will not only provide you with the wrong information but they will guide you right out of a sale and any selling opportunity that may have existed.

Below are the questions I mentioned I would blog about from the webinar series I delivered the other day for Hoover’s with Dr. Denis Waitley and Tom Hopkins.

Here are some relevant questions to explore with your current customers and prospects to uncover their priorities, how they are making purchasing decisions today and any upselling opportunities that may exist:

When prospecting, it’s going to be the following decision oriented questions that are going to move the sales process forward and motivate your prospect to want to buy from you. These types of discovery questions will enable you to develop a greater sense of urgency that will motivate them to make a buying decision.

A client of mine recently emailed me an audio file to listen to. It was another coach sharing their perspective around the Law of Attraction and the role it plays in our lives. After listening to this audio clip, my reaction was, from the five story view, I’d say that I have full mindshare around this concept. After all, I am certainly an advocate of the Principle of Attraction – to a point!

I remember about seven years ago being interviewed for an article in a coach magazine on the power of Attraction. You see, while the power of Attraction can have a profound impact on your life as it relates to how you can manage your mindset to achieve your most precious goals and attract that which matters most to you, there is a loophole. If not managed correctly, the Law of Attraction can quickly evolve into a list of excuses, justifications and reasons for not taking action instead of assuming full accountability for your life and everything in it. In other words, attraction without the action to support what you want to achieve and create most is a diversionary tactic. It gives a person permission not to take action and instead, sit on your couch and eat potato chips, just waiting for the power of your intentions to manifest into what you really want most.

Then, there’s the other Attraction Principle worth challenging. Attraction suggests to, “Continually do what you’re currently doing. Stay detached from the outcome. There’s no need to change things up until the perfect opportunity presents itself. And if you find resistance to any activities in pursuit of your goal, it’s the wrong activity or the wrong goal.”

I fully agree with not having any attachments around the outcome. (As a coach, this is the #1 principle you need to master to become an effective coach.) However, this is dangerous coaching to give to some people – especially those people who are very literal. Moreover, it is this type of thinking that fuels the sense of American entitlement that is destroying the fabric of our society.

After all, the pendulum of extremities swings to both sides. While I agree you certainly don’t want to ‘force’ a goal or an outcome, which could be a sign that it’s the wrong goal or wrong outcome, I also feel that if you truly do believe in something, you need to push through certain things, such as procrastination, so that you can do what you know you need to do in order to achieve your goals, regardless of whether or not you want to do them. I know thousands of salespeople who want to make more money and close more deals. However it doesn’t mean they want to prospect or cold call in order to do so. They may have to engage in the activity of cold calling in order for them to get to where they want to be.

If interpreted incorrectly, the Law of Attraction can be used as a diversion not to do these “Have to’s” or “Need to’s,” and can be the driving force to free you up from any personal accountability.

Here’s another universal law. We attract what we need to learn the most and as such, we resist what we need to learn the most! Therefore, consider that the obstacles and challenges we come face to face with, we actually attracted in our lives. And we attracted them because we need to learn a valuable lesson once we embrace and move through that issue or situation. So, consider that this is the universe’s way of testing us to see how badly we want to achieve our goals!

Lets revisit the a salesperson I mentioned who has a specific income goal and part of their strategy to achieve this goal requires them to cold call. What if you don’t want to engage in this activity? According to the principle of attraction, if there’s resistance, don’t do it. And if you adhere to this, you’ll soon find yourself out of a job or out of money.

Instead, either find an alternative method to attract new prospects, or refine your cold calling approach to fit you and your prospects. The limiting misinterpretation of the Law of Attraction would say, “No, keep doing what you’re doing the way you’re doing it before – no need to change.” This is dangerous, especially if the way you are doing things now isn’t achieving any of the desired results you seek. Something has to give.

On a personal note, if I didn’t adhere to this deeper definition of the power of attraction that encapsulates the critical element of full accountability, I can tell you this; I wouldn’t have become an executive sales coach, written five books, hundreds of articles, dozens of ebooks and have achieved the goals and level of success that I have in my life. Instead I’d be sitting on the couch watching Oprah, eating junk food and waiting for the principle of attraction to show me the way!

Bottom line: Attraction + action + full accountability for everything in your life = extreme success!

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear from you!

Here’s a great new resource worth using. It’s alltop.com. Alltop.com collects stories from “all the top” sites on the web. They have grouped these collections into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as sales, environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics and automobiles. At each Alltop site, they display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.

Think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. Alltop is attempting to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. Their goal is simple: provide “aggregation without aggravation.”

The way it works is this: They import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and display the headlines of the five most recent stories (except Moms.alltop which has fewer headlines because there are so many feeds). When you place the cursor over a headline, alltop displays part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it. To read the story, click on its title. To go to the home page of the site, click on its domain name. That simple. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Quite often when we think of qualifying a prospect, we believe this process to occur earlier on in the relationship. However, the qualifying process can take on many forms. Here are three different strategies you can incorporate into your prospecting efforts as it relates to qualifying your prospects at a much deeper and more rewarding level. You’ll notice new selling opportunities right in front of you that you never knew existed before.

#1 – Learn from Each Call – Conduct Valuable Research

For those calls where you feel you’ve given it your best effort and you’re just not getting anywhere:

“I do apologize for the intrusion as well as my approach. I can understand how people are a bit skeptical of a cold call. Quite frankly, so would I. May I ask, when making a decision on what [venders to choose, products to buy, services to use], how do you go about gathering your information? This way, if I ever get a second chance to speak with you, I can honor your decision making process and hopefully connect with you in a way that you are more comfortable.”

OR

“What would have made you more receptive to my call today?”

#2 – Prospect Your Prospects

For those prospects who may simply not be a fit, yet may know people who are:

“Mr. Prospect, thanks again for taking the time to speak with me today. I’ve certainly enjoyed our conversation. Based on what you are currently doing, it seems that our product is not a good fit for you. However, I hope our conversation reinforced what a great job your current vender is doing for you.

While there may not be anything I can provide you that would make a measurable difference in comparison to what you are doing now, maybe there’s another way we can work together. In your line of work, I’m sure you run across other people who have shared similar challenges that you had and might be looking for a better solution. If you know someone who is always looking out for ways to do things better and who you feel could benefit from our product, would you be comfortable referring them to me?”

Then, continue with: “That sounds great. Then may I ask who you know that would be a good candidate for our service?”

3 – Get Permission to Follow Up and Prospect Them

For those prospects who may now be in your pipeline and need follow up to insulate them from your competition, while keeping your finger on their buying cycle and when they may be ready to buy:

“Mr. Prospect, thanks again for your time today. Before we rap up this conversation, I’ve noticed that in the past, when I have attempted to reconnect with someone months after our first contact, many things have transpired. Changes in their position, in their company, or in their life often have tendency to divert even the best-laid plans. Since there are so many things that can happen in two months, I was hoping that I could stay in contact with you without stepping over the line and being annoying about it. With your permission, can I contact you from time to time with updates about our product or valuable information that you may find of interest as it relates to your business?”

A monthly newsletter, a free trial, an article of interest, a great new product feature or being a resource for additional needs they may have are just a few ways to deliver value during this “down time” and keep your finger on the pulse of every prospect you speak with.

With all this talk about qualifying and how to qualify a prospect, it’s critical to ensure that, especially those of you who are attempting to cold call for the first time or prospect in a more unique or innovative way than you’ve done before, you understand the difference between qualifying and judging a prospect.

To permanently eliminate any confusion, lets draw a distinction between what it means to pre-qualify and pre-judge someone, such as a prospect. If you read my cold calling book, you know that I’m a strong advocate of pre-qualifying anyone before you invest your very limited and precious time in meeting with or speaking with them. Conversely, pre-judging someone is something you do that shows up in the filter or barrier you have in your listening, which was created out of the assumptions you’ve already made about that prospect.

Here’s another way to distinguish between the two. When you are pre-qualifying someone, you are arriving at a conclusion that determines whether or not there’s a fit worth pursuing based on a defined set of criteria you uncover through the use of well crafted questions. You are solely focusing on the prospect, not yourself and what you have to gain or lose, to determine how you can add value or if there’s a match between the two of you.

Pre-judging said simply, is all about you. Here, you are relying on your faulty and costly assumptions, thoughts and beliefs to determine their needs and whether or not this prospect will potentially buy from you.

When you pre-judge someone, you’re making assumptions about them before you ask any questions or uncover many facts. Maybe you’ve judged them by their appearance, where they live, their type of business or industry, how they sound over the phone or a comment they made. In essence, you’re “already” listening and forming conclusions based on your defined set of criteria rather than the facts.

When you pre-qualify someone, you’re asking questions to uncover their specific needs and objectives, without making any assumptions. You are learning about the prospect based on the responses you hear from the questions you ask. You are being fully engaged and present in the conversation with that person, rather than in your own head forming conclusions or operating off your agenda. This way, you’re making a decision to pursue this prospect based on reliable intelligence instead of your overactive imagination. (Here’s another distinction: authentic fit vs. a pipedream. )

September is Customer Appreciation Month is for Hoover’s. In support of this, Hoover’s has identified a theme for each of the four weeks of the month which I’ll be blogging about. Here’s the schedule.

Wk 1: Prospecting (9/8-9/12)
Wk 2: Qualifying (9/15-9/19)
Wk 3: Presentation Skills and Closing the Sale (9-22-9/26)
Wk 4: Overcoming Objectives (9/29-10/3)

Now that we’re in week two, below are some qualifying questions you can use during the next conversation you have with a prospect. Remember, it’s not just any question but defined, well crafted questions that are going to act as the conduit to more qualified prospects and more sales.

While many salespeople would use questions that qualify their prospects to determine whether or not they are a viable candidate for their product or service, uncovering a true fit between you and your prospects goes much deeper.

There are actually two distinct types of questions: First, there are fact finding questions. These questions relate specifically to your industry and product or service. These fundamental questions provide you with the information you need to uncover whether this prospect is even someone who would purchase what you sell. These questions would uncover the following information. Do they currently have a similar solution you offer. Is your solution a complement or replacement to what they are currently doing? Is the company the right size, offers the right product or service, is the right industry, has the right type and number of employees?

Second, there are those decision oriented questions that move the sales process forward and motivate your prospect to make a decision or want to buy from you. These discovery questions will enable you to uncover how they go about making a purchasing decision, the cost of not making any changes as well as create the urgency for the prospect to make a decision.

Keep in mind when executed correctly, these questions will facilitate a natural conversation, rather than a “pitch.” As you read the questions that follow, remember, it’s a give and take. You’re not interrogating them, but having a conversation to learn how you can best assist them based on their goals and objectives, uncover the process they honor when making a decision and whether or not there’s even a fit.

Finally, look at these questions like a big buffet. Take what you like and what works for you and leave what you don’t.

Decision Oriented Questions

Earlier this summer, I was interviewed by Inc. magazine on the how to keep salespeople motivated, especially when they miss their numbers. Business owners and sales managers need to focus on specific parts of their sales process rather than just hammering on the overall sales goals.

In this Inc. story, entitled, Fighting the Sales Force Blues, read about two of my clients (Joe and Michele) who have taken a proactive stance to adjust to the current market conditions, rather than playing the victim or taking the ‘wait and see’ attitude.

Read about what they have done in response to the changes in their marketplace which has resulted in keeping them on top of their game and on top of their sales. Here’s what CEO’s, managers and business owners need do to stay on track and, most importantly, keep salespeople motivated in an uncertain economy.

Here’s the link to the full article on Inc.

Do you have a sales team of fearless prospectors? There’s not a company out there who can afford to have their top prospectors, hunters and rainmakers become a little gun-shy when looking to attract and develop new business.

So, are you aware of the limiting thinking you may be harboring towards cold calling and your prospects? When salespeople resist cold calling, a typical response from many sales managers is to provide additional training, role-playing, a revised presentation, or more qualified prospects to call on as the solution to improving cold calling results and productivity.

Granted, salespeople do report an increased level of confidence and a decrease in call reluctance when they have been provided with the right tools, processes, and systems. Unfortunately, these tactics don’t always eliminate the anxiety or level of resistance that salespeople experience when cold calling.

Perhaps the real issue is not tapping into the source of cold calling reluctance. Fixing the symptom without understanding the true source of the problem only results in a temporary solution.

Instead of focusing on strategies that only address the symptom, explore the source of your anxiety to permanently overcome the fear and resistance to cold calling; your beliefs surrounding cold calling.

Cold Calling Isn’t a Dirty Word

When I ask salespeople about their feelings or attitude towards cold calling, I hear the following responses. Compare your list to the following common responses:

Conversely, when I ask salespeople what they love about cold calling, what I get is complete silence.

Whatever you assume or believe about cold calling, your prospects, yourself, selling, and your career is exactly what you’ll manifest in your life.

I know this may challenge traditional wisdom and your current beliefs as well as stretch your perception and point of view. However, if you’re looking for extreme results, then it calls for extreme thinking and not just a change in what you do and how you do it. With the business community continually evolving, change is critical.

Salespeople have tendency to exploit all of the reasons why they don’t like cold calling or why they won’t succeed at cold calling. However, have you ever taken the time to develop the reasons why you will succeed?

To make this real for you, if you believe that cold calling is, “Forcing someone to accept something they don’t want, intrusive, annoying, manipulative, a waste of time, intimidating, scary, something I hate being subjected to myself, and so on,” that’s exactly what you’ll continue to experience every time you cold call.

If you believe that all prospects are a certain way (uninterested, shoppers, rude, are only concerned with price) then how do you think you are going to approach cold calling and deliver your presentation, whether you realize it or not?

Think about the type of prospect that you are going to be attracting and the kind of objections you’ll be hearing? Based on your current assumptions surrounding cold calling, prospects and selling, every new experience will now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Joy of Cold Calling

To combat this, consider challenging these assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones that would better serve you. For example, I love (or like) to cold call because:

When working with different sales teams, I always find it interesting that some salespeople attract the difficult customers. They then find themselves in a position where they have to negotiate price, have more cancellations or returns, or have to deal with prospects that want to review three separate proposals before making a purchasing decision.

Conversely, there are other salespeople who seem to effortlessly generate the best leads and get the desirable, loyal customers and repeat business.

This is not a coincidence. At some point, you need to ask yourself, “What role is my attitude playing in this? How is my thinking affecting my performance?” Once you can identify your current limiting beliefs surrounding cold calling, I’m sure you will see the answers to these questions staring you in the face.

I received this question from someone regarding yesterday’s blog and thought it important enough to share as it may be on your mind as well.
The question was, “How much time do I put aside for pre call planning?” Here is my response:

Since pre-call planning occurs before you begin to prospect, this is the time you put aside to recondition and realign your thinking to achieve a healthier outlook regarding this activity.

The amount of time you should spend on new business development is more of a function of how long it would take you to get into the proper mindset. While some salespeople may need fifteen or twenty minutes, others may need only a few minutes to get focused enough to begin prospecting or cold calling on the phone.

I’d suggest timing each degree of pre-call planning so that you will know exactly how much time you need to put aside before you actually prospect. As mentioned earlier, pre-call planning requires a distinct amount of time that you are carving into your schedule, which is separate from the actual time you are putting aside for cold calling or other prospecting activities.

Don’t Strain Yourself

When talking with salespeople who have prospected for a while, it seems that they remember how challenging it was to take that first prospecting step. This is still a common theme amongst salespeople who have to learn how to prospect to build their business. They tell me that taking the first step and making that first cold call is exactly where they freeze or get stuck.

Many salespeople define the first step as the first cold call they make. That is, the first time they are picking up the phone and attempting to connect with a prospect. However, the first step isn’t what you may think.

If you’ve ever honored a workout regimen, getting on the treadmill or hitting the weights probably isn’t the first thing you do. Instead, you ease into your workout by first stretching and warming up your body. Why? To avoid injury. Warming up lets your tight muscles know that they are about to be torn down, exercised, and challenged. Stretching and warming up your muscles makes you more limber and your body more responsive and open to what you’re about to put it through. It’s a great way to ensure you’ll get a good workout and most important, avoid an injury that can lay you up in bed for weeks.

The same holds true for prospecting and cold calling. Imagine that your pre-call planning phase is when you take the time to warm yourself up before the big game. View pre-call planning as your warm up for cold calling or other prospecting activities. The only difference is, the primary muscle that you are stretching and preparing for prospecting is your brain; that is, your mindset and the activities that require your focus and attention.

Pre-call planning encompasses the activities you engage in before you begin prospecting that involve action and intellect in order to achieve the maximum return on your prospecting efforts.

Pre-call planning is an essential step in your prospecting system that will enable you to plan effectively, get into the prospecting mindset, eliminate any fear or reluctance, boost your confidence, learn about your prospects, tap into your drive and motivation, and target who you are calling. Finally, pre-call planning will enable you to become limber and hyper focused on your objective. All of these activities are the preliminary steps you take to avoid injury or challenges during your cold calling, I mean, warm calling efforts.

The Five Degrees of Pre-Call Planning

Ken, a client of mine, called me the other day and told me that during the one-hour timeline he allocated each day for cold calling over the phone, he was only able to make a few calls. When I asked him to break down exactly what he attempted to accomplish in that hour, he shared with me the following tasks:

Without realizing it, Ken identified the five degrees of pre-call planning. Ken then shared with me that during the one hour he put aside for prospecting, it was taking him forty-five minutes just to prepare his targeted list of prospects to call, not leaving him much time for actual prospecting.

In other words, Ken was collapsing several other activities into one and calling that “cold calling.” In actuality, he listed five distinct activities that need to be managed independently.

The jewel here is be sure that each task or activity you engage in is broken down into its most simplistic and measurable form. In other words, if prospecting is one of the activities you engage in, it is not enough to simply list “prospecting” as an activity. As we’ve discussed, prospecting involves a variety of distinct activities. Therefore, prospecting, as defined by Ken, needs to be broken down even further.

Mapping your prospecting strategy, getting into the prospecting mindset, compiling your call list, returning or taking phone calls, and cold calling for new customers are five distinct and measurable activities that need to be managed separately when creating your schedule. If you find that you need to handle some of these activities at the same time, then make sure you have allocated enough time for each activity.

Additionally, each one of these activities calls for a different mindset. You’ll know if the activity you are engaging in needs to be broken down into other activities if it requires a different level of thought, skill, and focus.
You’ll know if the task is broken down into the absolute smallest denominator when asking yourself, the following questions. “How am I going to achieve that?” “What steps do I need to take to finish that task?” “What specific outcome will be produced?” If the answers to these questions open up another task, process, or strategy that would generate a unique end result then you’ll need to narrow down that activity even further. For example, compiling your target-prospecting list not only produces a different outcome than when you pick up the phone and make cold calls but it requires a different thought process, strategy, and skill set.

Another symptom that will let you know whether or not you can narrow down the task into a smaller denominator is this: If you block out a certain amount of time for an activity and you find that you are not completing it, there’s a chance that you have collapsed more than one activity into that block of time. Identifying each distinct activity that you engage in will enable you to be more realistic with the time lines that you allocate for each activity, making your prospecting efforts highly effective and more easily manageable.
In addition, this exercise will strengthen your ability to think in terms of detailed, measurable activities and tasks, rather than in vague, broad strokes. So, if you’ve ever been in a position where you have underestimated how much time a certain task or project would take, this process will also assist you in establishing more realistic timelines around your daily activities so that you can “get it all done” rather than constantly leaving tasks incomplete or overbooking and overcommitting yourself.

Here two final solutions to be mindful of when attempting to connect with your desired prospect.

Strategy #6: Get On Their Calendar

If you happen to be calling on a prospect that you have connected with in the past who has an assistant, try this approach. “Hi Jane, Keith Rosen here from Profit Builders. Mary and I have been playing the longest game of phone tag in history. If you have her calendar handy, can you please help me by scheduling in a five minute block of time that works for her so that I can answer her question regarding your sales training initiative?” You’ve now succeeded in scheduling a time to call a prospect when you know they are available and are expecting your call.

Strategy #7: The Back Door Approach

Here are a few more innovative ways to connect with your prospects that don’t require speaking to the concierge.

Call Before or After Hours: Call before or after a live person begins to answer incoming calls. Many businesses today have an automated voice mail system when the office is closed. The intention here is to get into their voice mail system and listen for the prompt that asks you to “Please spell out the person’s last name.” Once you do this, the voice mail system will often tell you the prospect’s direct extension before transferring your call. Now, when you call back during normal business hours, you can ask the concierge to “Connect you to extension 2345 please.” In addition, if you want to circumvent the concierge who refuses to patch you through to their voice mail, calling before or after hours provides you with the opportunity to leave a message with your prospect.

Return Receipt: This approach comes in very handy. When sending out an e-mail to a prospect, use the “return receipt request” option in the software you use to manage your e-mails. If the prospect opens your e-mail and sends a receipt, you not only know that they received your e-mail, but you also know when they have received it. This way, as opposed to trying to track down a prospect when they are at their desk, or checking their mobile device, you know exactly when to call on them, since they are now checking your e-mail! Obviously, this strategy only works if you are in front of your computer often enough to retrieve your e-mails as they are sent.

In an effort to combat market conditions, I’ve noticed an increase in cold calling activity within many organizations regardless of industry. Here are some solutions to be mindful of for you to use when you run into the barrier that may prevent you from connecting with your desired prospect. The elusive gatekeeper.

Strategy #4: Ask for Help

Now that you have the prospect’s name, you begin the initial steps of contacting the prospect. After several attempts, you still have not successfully connected with them.

Another avenue to revisit would be asking the concierge for help. Think about how you respond when someone asks you for help. Chances are, you do your best to help them. So, appeal to their humanity. Here’s a sample of the dialogue to use.

You: “Hi Jane, Keith Rosen here. We spoke a few weeks ago and you were kind enough to help me then. Well, here I am again in desperate need of your help. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Mary Johnson, but have not been successful in getting her to return my calls. I’m sure she is very busy and I certainly don’t want to keep filling up her voice mail with messages from me. Can you help? Any suggestions you can provide, whether it’s an alternative way to get Mary to return my call, a different way to contact her other than voice mail, or a better time that I should try to reach her would be deeply appreciated.”

You now have the opportunity to develop a relationship with the concierge and become the salesperson who gets preferential treatment that the other salespeople who are calling do not. Finally, you might find that once you ask for help, they will immediately connect you to the prospect!

Becoming friends with the concierge provides some immediate benefits that you can realize. As a matter of fact, you’ll be surprised how much insider information you can get. This includes the name of the decision-maker and their contact information, important information about the decision-maker and how to best approach and appeal to them, company politics and procedures, company status and timely news, internal changes, , initiatives, or challenges.

Connecting with them as a person rather than as an obstacle will make your cold calling efforts much less of an effort. So, acknowledge every concierge you speak with. It’s safe to say these types of calls are not the majority of calls they receive. Some are just downright hostile! After all, the concierge is often the first point of contact and in the hot seat when dealing with certain problems. With the barrage of calls that a concierge fields daily, a sincere and authentic complement goes a long way. You now have an internal advocate on your side.

Strategy #5: Work from the Top Down and the Bottom Up

Get your calls transferred over to customer service, technical support, accounting and attempt to get the intel you need from there.

In an effort to combat market conditions, I’ve noticed an increase in cold calling activity within many organizations regardless of industry. Here are some solutions to be mindful of for you to use when you run into the barrier that may prevent you from connecting with your desired prospect. The elusive gatekeeper.

Strategy #2: Ask a technical question:

Here’s another approach that would cause the concierge to happily pass you on to the person you are looking to contact. First, prepare a question that you know only the person who you are looking to contact can answer effectively.

If you sell printing or advertising, you can try this: “We’re putting some solutions together for you and wanted to know /discuss the (technical requirements for this application service.)”

Since these questions are typically ones that a concierge may not be able to answer on their own, they will often connect you directly with the decision-maker or the person in charge of that department.

Strategy #3: Use Humor

Typically, when asking for the person you want to connect with, a typical response from the gatekeeper may sound like this: May I ask what this is in reference to?”

Here’s a different way to respond:

You: “Of course! I’m a salesperson and I want to relentlessly hound them until they take my call.”

What You Have Accomplished: Lets face it. If you’re talking to a seasoned concierge, they can smell a cold call a mile away. Instead of dancing around this issue, address it head on, yet in a light and humorous way.

This brutal, honest approach will get you to the decision-maker more frequently than trying to manipulate, mislead, or sneak by the concierge. Instead, it gets right to the truth and intention of your call. Since the concierge is always on the lookout for sneaky salespeople, they will actually appreciate your approach. As such, this will diffuse the concierge’s reluctance to helping you.

Cutting right to the chase will actually catch the concierge off guard and often creates a laugh. At this point, the concierge would lower their guard and quite often connect you to the decision-maker or, at the very least, provide you with the information you need for your next call.

In an effort to combat market conditions, I’ve noticed an increase in cold calling activity within many organizations regardless of industry. Here are some solutions to be mindful of for you to use when you run into the barrier that may prevent you from connecting with your desired prospect. The elusive gatekeeper.

Think about your reaction to the word “gatekeeper.” What thoughts does it conjure up for you?

Now, think about the word “concierge.” What comes to mind? When you go to the mall and you need to find a specific store, who do you ask? The concierge. When you are staying at a hotel on vacation and are looking for directions, the hotel’s amenities, somewhere to eat or need tickets to a show, who do you ask? The concierge.

How good are you at making friends? Instead of “getting through the gatekeeper” how about “making friends with the concierge”? Now, doesn’t that just sound (and feel) better?

Consider this for a moment. The concierge secretly wants to help you. The only caveat is, you have to give them a reason to.

After all, if you try to sneak behind their back and get busted for doing so, you have succeeded in creating an adversary. Not only that but you’ve now fueled their justification as to why they need to screen all incoming calls! Now, when you need them in the future, it’s a safe bet that they probably won’t welcome you with open arms. Instead, focus on making the gatekeeper your concierge and internal advocate. Here’s how.

Strategy #1: Brutal Honesty that Complements
The old adage, “Honesty is the best policy” certainly holds true when trying to befriend the gatekeeper, I mean, the concierge. When calling to speak with your prospect or to find out exactly who the prospect is, try this approach in the following example.

You: “Hi, I can really use your help. I’m calling to speak with the person who is in charge of (software engineering/product development/ programming, etc) would that be you?”

Here’s What You Have Accomplished: Asking the concierge, “Would that be you?” or, “Are you the expert in that area?” comes across as a complement and makes the concierge feel important. As such, they are now more likely to give you the name of the contact you are looking for.

Be among the first to gain access to superb articles from fifty of the world’s leading sales gurus. Top Sales Experts (yes, I am one ) just launched this quarter’s E-book that I can offer to you for free! Download this amazing 144 page compilation. Click here now to download this PDF.

And here’s a quick update on what this team has planned in the very near future over at Top Sales Experts, because they fervently believe that collaboration is the way forward and intend to develop this team into the premier business collective, creating a global presence along the way.

From September, you can expect to find:

Plus a weekly radio show and finally, before the end of the year, we will be adding a complete library of online training sessions, designed and delivered by the expert team.

TSE’s aim has always been to create a one-stop shop for harassed business owners, VP Sales, Sales Managers, frontline sales personnel – in fact anyone seeking business related services, solutions, coaching and consultancy – and they are achieving that! I very much hope you enjoy their latest collaborative offering.

Here’s the link to download.

With all the talk about the economy heading towards a recession, I’m busier than ever. And so are my clients. So, what gives? How much of this is fact and how much hype? Either way, I’m certainly not disputing that it’s affecting how some business owners and companies are spending lately.

So, what tips do I offer to companies, salespeople and, more specifically retailers on how to weather the recession? The same coaching I deliver to my clients, which is keeping their recession blues at pay, enabling them to drive and close new sales, and most important keeping their mental edge.

‘Weathering a recession’ sounds like surviving a storm and waiting until it passes. The “wait and see” or “lets hope things get better soon” is putting retailers out of business every day. I see it in my community. Stores that were opened one week are closed the next. Sure, you can ‘batten down the hatches’ when the eye of the storm lands but keep in mind when you open them up, there won’t be any customers sitting there waiting around for you. Instead, here’s what you need to do.

1. First, get out of your own head.
Businesses are closing their doors not due to a lack of effort but because they are still attempting to sell, manage or run their business the way it was, not the way it is today. If your marketplace has changed, then you need to change with it. Friendly reminder, don’t get sucked up into what you’re hearing on the news every day. Turn it off if you have to! What is real for you in your business in your local economy? Get out of the type of mindset that keeps you stuck in obsessing on what you need to do to survive and focus on how you can thrive. Remember all those great business ideas you were going to implement; the training your wanted to take, the marketing you wanted to do, the team building you felt would surely to make a measurable impact on your growth and success but daily business responsibilities always seemed to take precedent? Now is the time to blow the dust of those ideas and start executing on them. This begins with a change of thinking, accompanied by a change of strategy and topped off with a strong dose of reality.

2. Get back to basics.
Do you remember when you first opened your doors and achieved some measurable success? Why were you successful in the first place? What did you do then that you may not be doing now or unwilling to do now? Get on the floor of your store, cold call, prospect, do some grunt work? You need to turn around your business, fast, so time is not a luxury. Therefore, if you think there are any activities which are beneath you, then you already have one leg of your business in the grave.

3. Actually learn how to sell.
No, selling for 30 years is not what I’m suggesting as a training platform. Experience is important but experiences doesn’t equate to engaging in the healthiest of sales techniques. I’d be willing to bet (and I’m not a gambling man) the majority of retailers out there have not been coached and trained to be a sales champion, do not have a defined sales process they consistently engage in and as such, don’t know how to truly sell. And by no means consider this an attack on the retail sector. However, given that the majority of daily purchases we make are at a retail level, this is what I’m experiencing both as an executive coach and as a consumer. The “I’ve been successful in spite of myself” theory would apply here.

4. Work your leads and earn a sale.
Just a short time ago, in many sales driven companies, your salesperson can have a pulse and still get a sale simply by your customers showing up and having the money to spend. We were fooled into thinking that, “Hey, since I’m bringing in the business, I must be a great salesperson.” In today’s business climate, the same people are now struggling to generate the results they were, realizing that the marketplace has duped them into thinking they were better then the really are when it comes to professional selling. It has been the economic climate that made many salespeople seemingly productive, rather than their skill set or the core competencies needed to truly become a high performance sales professional, regardless of economic or market conditions. With today’s ever evolving market, if you are selling, managing or running your business the same way you’ve been running it for the last several years, you’re overdue to reevaluate your philosophy.

If you sell consumer products or services that is a more substantial purchase than going to the supermarket (home electronics, furniture, bridal/wedding venders, travel, boutique stores, computers, home appliances, home furnishings, clothing/shoe stores, etc.) don’t let a potential customer walk out the door without collecting some data points and permission to check in. Learn to position yourself as your customer’s trusted adviser throughout their decision making process. Abandon toxic thinking and get beyond the fact that you can afford to let any potential customer walk away from a conversation, thinking they will actually call you back on their own accord. Earn the right to call each person who buys from you – a customer. It’s during times like these where you literally have to earn their business rather than simply be an order taker.

5. Get into action. Work with a coach.

12 Days to Launch! Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions

Confidence. It’s one of those key ingredients that needs to be present in our formula for success. If you look at anyone at the top – in business, in politics, in entertainment, in sports, one common denominator each one of these leaders possess is an unshakeable degree of confidence in themselves, in their abilities and in their beliefs.

Confidence makes up much of the fuel that drives us, the over-achievers, the dreamers, the visionaries, the driven, the passionate and those who simply want to be the best at what they do; the entrepreneur who’s looking to build a successful business, the manager who wants to empower his team and make them winners, the salesperson who’s looking to post large monthly sales numbers, the sole practitioner seeking to build a sustainable practice or the up and comer starting a new career and is looking to make their mark in order to ascend through the ranks within their company.

The challenge for maintaining an infallible, unshakable high degree of confidence is that for most people, it seems to be conditional. Rather than being absolute, most people’s level of confidence changes based on their situation and experiences. Sometimes it’s at an all time high. Yet, other times their level of confidence is shaken or challenged based on an encounter they had, a mistake that was made, a failure, or an inability to produce a desired result.

The myth surrounding confidence is this: The overall sense of confidence you have about yourself is based upon your experiences and what you produce. As such it will continue to eternally vacillate, as most people allow their internal condition to be dictated by their external situation.

In my article, The Secret to Building the Confidence of a Champion, you’ll discover the hidden power that we, as human beings have at our disposal but rarely do we tap into its fullest potential. I’m referring to the greatest power we all possess. That is, our power of choice and out ability to choose to be confident as an absolute rather than as a condition of circumstance.

You can read the full article here.

For more information or to register, click here.

I’m delivering my last public tele-seminar on Prospecting and Cold Calling this Thursday, entitled, Permission Based Prospecting. I say it’s my ‘last’ one on this subject for 2008, as my new book for managers, executives and business owners on how to transition from managing to coaching salespeople will be my focus for the rest of this year. Here’s the course description as well as the agenda for this 1 hour and 30 minute seminar:

Permission Based Prospecting™

Does this sound familiar? ‘If I could get in front of the prospect, the rest of the selling process becomes easier. It’s just getting in front of them that’s the challenge.’ The fact is most cold calling efforts are doomed from the start. Salespeople lose sales not due to a lack of effort but because they lack a prospecting system they are comfortable with and can trust to generate greater, consistent results. With more business conducted virtually and more sales being closed over the telephone, strengthening your telephone communication skills becomes essential to leveraging your competitive edge – or be left behind.

If you are prospecting the same way you have been for the last several years (including the ‘calling to check in, touch base or follow-up’ approach) or haven’t been prospecting at all, you’re simply making it easier for your competition to take away the new business you are working so hard to earn.

So, if you love to sell but hate (or don’t like) to prospect, then learn from best selling author and renowned executive sales coach Keith Rosen how to maximize your cold calling potential and boost your income by learning how to get in front of the right prospects in less time and create greater selling opportunities without the fear, pressure or anxiety associated with cold calling.

Agenda

Here’s the link for more information or to register.

I was recently asked what the top five things businesses and salespeople can do to attract more business and find more qualified prospects. Certanily something top of mind for every company. “Where do we mine for new business?”

One option is to outsource your lead generation or new business development efforts to an outbound marketing company. I have some clients who rely on this option with great success. They have found companies located both in the states as well as overseas, particularly in the Philippines where the hourly wage is certanily more competitive. Of course, outsourcing overseas comes with its on inherent risks and trade offs.

Another common option for salespeople is to mine through company websites and develop their own custom targeted call list of prospects. As you can imagine, while highly effective, it’s also very time consuming.

As such, many companies and sales professionals turn to third party solutions that provide lists of companies you can call on. These companies vary in both how they charge as well as the type of targeted data and information they provide. Some of these list providers offer very targeted and relevant data on the companies you’re looking to call on where the lists they provide can be broken down by industry, profession, size, years in business, position (i.e. CEO, sales manager, VP, HR, as well as their contact information) location even by number of employees. Here’s a short list of companies who provide this type of service.

www.idexec.com
www.goleads.com
www.salesgenie.com
www.netprospex.com
www.jigsaw.com
www.hoovers.com
www.dnb.com
http://www.listengage.com/emarketing.asp
www.maxprodata.com

Please note, I am not endorsing any of these sites in particular, just offering you several options that are available for business owners and salespeople who are looking to mine for specific prospects. I share these sites with my clients, as each site has their own advantages and disadvantages, and provide different levels and depth of data. It’s a pretty comprehensive effort to research the solution that works for each individual, as everyone needs different data points on each prospect.

Yet, at the end of the day, I’m always shocked and amazed as to why companies don’t leverage the selling opportunities that are right in front of them, without having to spend time and money on leads, call lists or outbound telemarketers.

Here are seven additional and highly effective ways to generate new prospects without having to spend a penny.

So, before you hire some outbound calling company or purchase your next prospect list to use for your cold calling efforts, I most certainly suggest that business owners leverage the first seven strategies I suggest above. If you find that your efforts are not resulting in enough new business nor brings in the volume of prospects you need to hit your goals, or if you simply find that time constraints and additional responsibilities are preventing you from generating new prospects on your own, then it would make sense to explore these additional lead/list providers as an additional complementary vehicle that will assist you in developing a targeted list where you can generate new prospects (or have someone do the calling for you).

Keep in mind, the positioning of each of these seven strategies is different and each requires a mapped out process and approach to achieve success and the results you want. Most salespeople unfortunately don’t spend the time creating their step by step approach nor do they fully leverage these seven strategies that are immediately available to them consistently, thus leaving new business on the table for their competition to take. (I cover this in my prior book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling, just fyi.

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #6. Do you prefer to hear “I want to think it over” rather than a “No”?

Determine why they really didn’t buy. The key is to get someone to speak to you openly. This can be difficult, since many clients feel the need to disguise the truth not to “hurt your feelings.” Instead, they use generic reasoning, such as “High price” or “Bad timing.” Get to the real reason by asking questions about their goals this year, problems they are facing, etc. This often leads to a conversation about the potential purchase of your product/service that you would never have gotten otherwise. Remember that there is usually one main reason why a customer will not buy. If you hear “I want to think about it,” chances are the customer hasn’t been given all the information that they need in order to make a purchasing decision. It is up to you to go back, uncover and fill in the areas that are missing. What is it they really want to think about?

Well, the votes are in from Top10SalesArticles.com regarding an article I had written which they were interested in republishing on their site entitled, Why Should I Talk to You? and it looks like your humble blogger’s article was named the 2007 Sales Sales Article Of The Year!

From the three hundred and sixty articles which received nominations during 2007, my article Why Should I Talk to You? was the winner.

I’d like to first congratulate all of the finalists for producing such excellent work, thanks to the Top Sales Experts adjudication panel for their dedication and commitment to this project and thank you all for your support in making this article #1.

Well, it’s back to writing more content for 2008. The first set of nominated articles will appear on top10salesarticles.com on Sunday January 6th, so be sure to come back and join them as they kick-start the 2008 competition.

I wish you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

I will be delivering a special free webinar that you can register for today. The date is approaching fast and details are below.

Date: August 1, 2007
Time: 10:00am PDT,

More Information or To Register Click Here

Permission Based Prospecting
Attract More Qualified Prospects – Close More Sales

Does this sound familiar? “If I could get in front of the prospect, the rest of the selling process becomes easier. It’s just getting in front of them that’s the challenge.” The fact is most cold calling efforts are doomed from the start. Salespeople lose sales not due to a lack of effort but because they lack a prospecting system they are comfortable with and can trust to generate greater, consistent results.

If you are prospecting the same way you have been for the last several years (including the, “calling to check in, touch base or follow-up” approach) or haven’t been prospecting at all, you’re simply making it easier for your competition to take away the new business you are working so hard to earn. So, if you love to sell but hate (or don’t like) to prospect, this program is your opportunity to maximize your cold calling potential and boost your income by learning how to get in front of the right prospects in less time and create greater selling opportunities without the fear, pressure or anxiety associated with cold calling.

In this session, Razi Imam CEO of Landslide Technologies will host this special event as I show you how to:

Strengthen your telephone communication skills.

Date: August 1, 2007
Time: 10:00am PDT,