Prospecting Call Crimes and Misdemeanors, Part 1

Salespeople commit a lot of crimes on prospecting calls, which put them in a disadvantageous position to even having a conversation with their prospect much less booking an appointment.

In part 1 we’ll address two of the more serious crimes salespeople make on their prospecting calls. Part 2 will address the misdemeanors.
Crimes (in order of appearance on a call)

1. HAYT-ing on people – think back on the last 10 calls received from salespeople. How many started with How Are You Today? Prospecting is a low trust environment. Until we establish our credibility, through a proper 30 second commercial, our prospect is unlikely to trust us enough to give us any response other than “send me some information and I’ll get back to you.” Businesspeople bond by getting down to business. When we get into the purpose of our call quickly and skip HAYT-ing on our prospect we’re more likely to have a positive call.
2. Just like you – you’ve probably heard, too many times, from a salesperson, “we work with people just like you.” The intent of that statement is to enhance credibility. What it does is set off the “SALESPERSON” alarm in the mind of our prospect. No one is “just like” us. We’re all special, unique individuals, but we love having a reference group. So, when we say, “we work with CFOs who are…,” when speaking to a CFO our prospect thinks, “oh, they work with others in my reference group. I’ll listen to them for a few more seconds.”

These crimes are common, but fixable through coaching and practice. Services like ConnectandSell and Gong (full disclosure – Sandler partners) give us extra insight because we can hear what our salespeople actually said on their call instead of relying on stories from our salesperson.

Follow up with part 2. 

Until next time… go lead.