“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.

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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.

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:

1. Leverage your talents to generate more qualified prospects and schedule more appointments in less time.


2. Get more callbacks.


3. Eliminate toxic cold calling strategies that sabotage your prospecting efforts.


4. My book will show you how to develop a permission based prospecting system that will enable to bring in more sales faster than you ever did before.

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.

1. First, introduce yourself. Identify who you are.


2. Next, provide the person to whom you are speaking with a compelling reason to speak with you. (What’s in it for them?)


3. Third, defuse their resistance. Create a pressure-free environment by getting permission to proceed with the conversation.


4. Then, guide them to your discovery/qualification step to get them involved and determine if there’s a fit.


5. Finally, determine the next step.

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

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.

Refine Your New Business Development Strategy to Win New Business

Use this checklist here

Do you prospect effortlessly and have a steady flow of new business? We all need more selling opportunities. To find them, we need to connect with more qualified prospects.

Sometimes new isn’t always better. Here’s an incredible tool I created years ago when I came out with my cold calling book. I’ve used this countless times to help coach salespeople and companies to develop and fine tune their cold calling approach and strategy to schedule more appointments with the right decision makers that will accelerate your selling cycle and ultimately close more sales.

Managers love this checklist because they can leverage this as a tool to help coach their salespeople and uncover the more elusive gaps in their follow up, warm calling or cold calling approach. Remember, coach the process, not the result.

Use this appointment setting and new business development checklist to discover what it takes to cold call or prospect like a pro and see if you’re set up for success or failure. The Prospecting and Cold Calling Tune Up is a checklist that contains all of the components needed to develop a masterful prospecting and follow up system that’s been proven to bring in new business, fast.

If your prospecting system does not contain the listed components, then you can find everything you need to develop a masterful prospecting system by clicking here.

This prospecting and cold calling checklist will help you identify what you need to refine or develop in your approach to retrain more customers and get into bigger accounts, set up more qualified appointments with decision makers all the way up the C-Level chain to the CEO, get more voice mails returned, set up a step by step prospecting and cold calling strategy that works, close more sales and help your salespeople fill their sales funnel with more qualified prospects.

Make it rain more than ever before. Adopt to the new rules of engagement and win in today’s economy. Tune up your approach here.

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.

1. You want the sale (appointment, demo) but you must detach from the outcome and have no expectation, since the sale is not the initial goal of prospecting.




2. You want the prospect to say “Yes” to taking the next step in your sales process but you have to qualify them first to see if there’s even a fit worth pursuing.




3. You want the prospect to buy from you but must learn to give value unconditionally, whether or not they buy or meet with you.




4. You want to deliver and push through your presentation but you must get the prospect’s permission even before you present.




5. You need to keep your eye on your objective, set your goals and plan your strategy for the future to determine the path to travel on but you must bring yourself back into the present moment during every prospecting conversation.




6. You want to make more money and achieve greater success in your career but you have to make the sales process about the prospect, instead of you, in order to do so.




7. You want to sell to each prospect you speak with but need to qualify them to see if you even want them as a customer. (Remember, if you want to build a business or career you hate, just find the people to work with who you just can’t stand.)

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.

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. )