“Hello?”
“Hi, Prospect! I’m Salesperson from Company! I just got your request for a quote and am calling because….”
Stop. This salesperson has already broken rapport with their prospect and they are less than 10 seconds into this “opportunity.”
When a prospect sends one of our salespeople a message through a specific mode of communication (text, LinkedIn, phone, email, app) they expect a response in the same mode of communication unless they specifically request a response through a different mode (e.g. “call me to discuss” sent via email).
Text is a horrible way to conduct a sales conversation, which has a lot of nuance and emotion tied up in it. It can be a great way to start qualifying a prospect if our salesperson leverages that text-based communication into a voice-to-voice or face-to-face interaction.
In practice, that response from our salesperson might look like, “Prospect, thanks for reaching out. I’d be happy to address your questions, but to ensure I’m not wasting your time the next step in our process is a 10 minute call to address a couple of questions and confirm if we keep talking. Below are two suggestions….”
Our salesperson’s hypothesis is that this is a real prospect who will put skin in the game (time is the “skin” in this case) so their experiment is suggesting a 10 minute call. If this prospect responds poorly (e.g. “answer my question or you will be dropped from consideration”) or not at all, our salesperson can politely decline to continue and/or add that prospect to a nurture campaign.
There are no magic bullets in sales so our salesperson’s initial response may not be accepted, especially if they are selling to technical individuals who want all interactions documented. A friend of mine once closed a sale with a very technical prospect who requested four times that my friend send a proposal before meeting until they finally relented and met with my friend first. At the start of their face-to-face meeting the prospect said, “why wouldn’t you send the proposal?” to which my friend responded, “if we work together, we’ll be doing a lot of face-to-face interaction. How could you tell from a piece of paper if you wanted to interact with me regularly?”
Should our salesperson be rebuffed the first time they suggest interacting by phone or in-person, looping back on “our process for creating successful outcomes for our clients and us is… if that doesn’t feel right for you let me know and I’ll close your file” typically gets a call booked with the prospect or there’s no response, which tells our salesperson everything they need to know about that “prospect.”
The suggestions above are easier to implement if our salesperson’s funnel actually looks like a funnel so if we notice that one of our salespeople has a bunch of magicians in their funnel that’s a coaching opportunity.
Until next time… go lead.
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