Redefining the Elevator Pitch: Creating a Successful “Cold Call”

cold_call

An elevator pitch is a short summary designed to simply define your company or product. As the name implies, it should be short enough that it can be delivered during the span of an elevator ride.

Why the brevity? The truth is that when you are “cold calling” into a prospect, ten to fifteen seconds is all you have to make an initial connection and get permission to continue the conversation. In light of this, it is critical that you can quickly establish trust and pique interest.

Today’s prospects are receiving so many incoming sales calls, that they are particularly wary of being “sold”. The old way of delivering your company’s message is no longer good enough.

Let’s take a look at how elevator pitches have traditionally been made and how they should evolve to become more effective in today’s selling environment.

The Old Elevator Pitch

The call starts with, “I’m Bob with XYZ Printing. How are you today?” 

The “clever” segue into the sales pitch, assuming we still have the prospect on the line, goes something like this.  “We’re the premier printing company in the area.  We’ve been serving the local market for over 20 years and have the most advanced digital printing equipment in the area.  Our specialty is quick turnaround and competitive pricing.  I’d like to set an appointment to meet with you to show you how we can save you time and money on your next printing project. Would Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning be better for you?”

Does that sound familiar?  It probably does and there are many problems with this approach:

  • “How are you today?”  Every telemarketer in the world starts the call by asking about the prospect’s “well-being.”  While this is an honest attempt at politeness, prospects know you don’t really care, so it comes across as insincere and makes you sound like a telemarketer.
  • The “compelling” pitch by the printing salesperson sounds like the other printing company that called the prospect yesterday.  They said they were the best in town and could save him time and money too.  Whom should he believe?
  • “Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning?”  How many times have we heard that over used alternative choice close?  Nearly every salesperson uses it.
  • The salesperson wants an appointment but doesn’t want to take the time to find out if there’s any pain.  This is the typical product pusher’s strategy and the prospect knows it.
  • The easy blow off that the prospect can, and often does, use is to say, “Just send me some information about it.”  And you know how sincere that request is.

The New, Improved Elevator Pitch

Never fear, there is a better way. Take a look at this new, improved approach.

This call starts with, “I’m Bob Smith with XZY Printing.  Did I get you at a bad time?”

If you get permission to continue, you’d say, “Thanks for taking my call.  Can I take about 20 seconds to tell you why I called, then you can tell me if we need to talk further?”

When you get permission, you’d say, “I’ll be brief, right to the point.  We’re one of the leading commercial printing companies in the area.  Typically companies switch to us because they’re upset with long turnaround times, concerned about the inconsistent quality of the final product or frustrated that their printer can’t offer any creative ideas to improve the job.  Are any of these issues for you?”

Or, you may want to give a specific example of how you’ve helped a competitor with a specific pain, something like “we recently helped [competitor’s name] save $2,000 per month on printing fees and reduce their turnaround time to 48 hours. Is this something that would be helpful to your business?”

If the answer is affirmative, you’d then go on to explore the pain further.

If the answer is negative, you could conclude the call quickly by saying, “Sorry to have bothered you.  Have a good day.”  And make another call.  Remember, you’re trying to find that gold nugget quickly and not waste time with people who are not good prospects.

There are many benefits to this approach:

  • Asking if you got him at a bad time is respectful of the prospect’s time.  (The overwhelming majority of the people we train say this tactic has been very effective despite the initial concern about making it too easy for him to say that he is busy.)
  • The “pitch” focuses on possible problems your company can address, thus begins the qualifying process quickly.
  • It’s different.
  • You won’t have done anything to destroy rapport.
  • You won’t sound like every other salesperson that calls.

Your ability to differentiate yourself in your initial call with a prospect will dramatically improve your success at developing new business. Try our new and improved elevator pitch for yourself – we’d love to hear how it works for you.

 

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Perspective on the Challenger Sale and Your Sales Process

challenger

The Challenger Sale has been a huge trend in the sales training industry in recent years, and one that has garnered its share of conversation and controversy. Co-authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson proclaim their ideas to be “the biggest shock to sales wisdom in decades.” However, much of their work is far from new.

Their key insight is that in order to sell successfully, salespeople must teach their customers something new about their business, providing them with unique ideas that improve the bottom line. Unfortunately, this approach is not new. It originated with Xerox nearly 40 years ago, and was again explored in a recent Harvard Business Review article by the Chasm Group suggesting sales people should start buying cycles with leading edge information that can give them an industry advantage.

Putting aside the fact that the Challenger approach is not new, how sound is this concept of insight-led selling? One thing to consider is that only a small percentage of buyers are Early Adopters, as John Holland wrote in his October 2013 article on “Aligning with 80% of Your Market”. To take an aggressive position with the mainstream or laggard buyers, and/or tell them what the focus should be on in improving their business will alienate many of them quickly. These types of buyers want to be nurtured and led to a decision that minimizes the risk for themselves and their organization.

Even more potentially dangerous is their recommendation that salespeople should be “assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.” From our experience, this is very bad advice, as buyers become distrustful of anything that reeks of a “hard sale” (for more on this, see our previous post on giving customers the OK to say “N0”). We work with sales organizations to enable them to use the way that they sell as a key capability, and telling is not part of that persona.

How else are we different? We teach proven techniques to help salespeople establish trust and uncover key customer pain points. Rather than telling your prospects what they should be doing, we encourage our clients to use illustrative stories and/or directed questioning to help customers tell you where their pain lies and how you can help them.

In addition to teaching selling techniques, we work with companies to develop a buyer-centric, end-to-end sales process and management reinforcement plan to ensure lasting revenue generation.

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Drive Revenue with Social Selling

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We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tom Martin, former president of Miller Heiman and 20+ year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry. During our time together, we discussed many of the big ideas pervading the space today.

Below, please find an excerpt from our conversation on one of today’s biggest topics – social selling.


John: There are a lot of trends affecting B2B salespeople, and one with a huge buzz is social selling.  Can you walk us through what “social selling” means to you?

Tom: You’re right John, social selling has a big buzz about it, and does not seem to be going away.  In most industries, sellers need to adapt to how social selling is impacting their sales process because of how it is affecting their prospect’s buying process.  Sales managers also need to adapt their sales training and reinforcement activities to coach their sellers in this new competency area.

John: Tom, tell us what social selling means to you. How can salespeople utilize social networks to improve their overall results?

Tom: When I think about what social selling means, I look at three different dimensions – three ways sellers can utilize “social” in their selling.

The first is listening. As Stephen Covey wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

Adapting this to social selling, the advice to sellers is simple: use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to read what your prospects are reading and writing … and then after you understand what is important then, and only then, should you start “talking” in the social world.

Another key for listening is another quote from Covey, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply”.

John: Interesting…that ties in nicely with Flannery Sales System’s methodology on how important it is to qualify prospects by listening and uncovering their pain before presenting solutions. You mentioned three dimensions. What are the other two?

Tom: The second is researching. While closely related to listening, I think the use of social tools for research is so critical for sellers it needs to be called out separately.  Typically this means using social to support their sales process, or opportunity and account management methodologies.

Researching also includes “searching & stalking” – and by that I mean searching out your friends (champions and coaches), and stalking your enemies (gathering competitive intel).

Finally, the third is telling. Only after you’ve understood your prospects by listening and researching should you start responding with your own social content.

John: This sounds very similar to how I would advise a seller to approach a sales call or meeting – seeking to listen and understand first and only then to solve the problems they have uncovered. Anything else we should know about social selling?

Tom: Some people start with social selling assuming it is the silver bullet they were looking for, and that all they need to do is post a few blogs and tweet once a week. These people inevitably end up disappointed.

I think about a concept I learned as an Advertising major – “impressions.”  It was said that it takes seven impressions for someone to fully ‘get’ who you are, what you do, and why they might need your services.

Adapting this to social selling means sellers need to consider integrating their social selling and traditional selling efforts to complement each other and achieve more impressions.  They can’t plan on a single tweet magically converting new prospects into opportunities.

One final Covey-ism for today, “Begin with the end in mind.”  To drive revenue and add qualified opportunities to the pipeline, your social sales message needs to be in sync with your overall sales message.

John: Any advice on integrating social selling into your sales process?

Tom: To create a lasting impact, you need to build social selling activities into your normal sales cadence – so set aside time each week to listen, research and tell across multiple platforms.  In business that typically means LinkedIn posts, blog entries, and Twitter, and possibly SlideShare and YouTube channels.

Stay tuned for more from my conversation with industry expert Tom Martin.

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Flannery Sales Systems Unveils our New Logo

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At Flannery Sales Systems, we help companies drive revenue through sales process definition, sales team training and management coaching and reinforcement.

We are proud to unveil a new logo which represents these three important parts of our business. Our customized three pronged approach is what makes us different from other sales training programs, and we believe you need all three in order to drive meaningful, repeatable revenue.

Check out our updated website to learn more about how our services can help your organization, or request a free, personalized consultation with our sales experts.

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Flannery Sales Systems in Washington, DC

Flannery Sales Systems traveled to the East Coast this month. In this video, John talks to us about his travels and what we have to look forward to in the upcoming FSS newsletter, namely an interview with sales thought leader Tom Martin as well as John’s perspective on the Challenger program.

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8 Tactics for Gaining Access to the Decision Maker

decision-makerOver half the problems encountered by salespeople are caused by their inability to gain access to the decision maker. Failure to be in front of the person with the ultimate authority to approve the purchase will, in every case, eliminate your ability to get a positive decision.  You will, however, get lots of stalls (“I need to run it by…”) and plenty of  “think it overs.”

Since one of your biggest challenges is to gain access to the decision maker, let’s take a moment to look at some proven tactics that will help you accomplish this difficult task and help you avoid spending your time with the wrong people.

  1. Assume it. Early in the sales call ask, “When am I meeting with the decision maker?” If you get some push back, you need to say, “I’m confused; why not?”
  2. Ask for it. Simply state, “I’ll need to meet with the decision maker.  Can you arrange the meeting?” (I’m confused; why not?)
  3. “Company policy.” “It’s company policy that we meet with the decision maker.”  (Maybe it isn’t, but maybe it should be.)
  4. Bargain for access. Some lower level folks who want to protect their “turf” or have an ego trip may deny you access until you’ve “proven” yourself. In cases like this it’s important to find out under what circumstances they would introduce you to the decision maker. When you’ve found that out simply state, “So if I understand this correctly, in return for proving to you that we can adequately address your challenges, you will introduce me to the decision maker. Right?”
  5. Justification.  “I need to understand the issues from everyone’s point of view. If I don’t understand what the decision maker’s issues are, my proposal may miss the mark. That’s probably not a good strategy for either of us, is it?”
  6. “Biggest concern.”  “My biggest concern is that I won’t be able to meet with the decision maker during this process and that might impact my ability to completely understand the company’s challenges and ultimately present a really good solution. Can we avoid that?”
  7. Peer to peer. “Our president (EVP) wants to come to the meeting and wants to meet your president.  Sorry, I have no control over this. Will you let the him know?” Obviously this tactic gets other people involved, but sometimes that’s important.
  8. Asking for help. People want to help other people. Use comments like, “I’ve got a problem and I need your help” or “I’m a little confused.” You’ll be surprised at how much mileage you get from this tactic.
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Why Flannery Sales Systems?

JohnFlannery3-12_152There are a lot of sales training courses out there – seminars, webinars, workshops, audio books, and more. So many, in fact, that it can become hard to tell one from another. And even harder to determine if any of them can really improve your sales performance in a meaningful way.

So, what makes Flannery Sales Systems different?

We’re not just another training program.

Training alone does not drive revenue. It’s the implementation of that training that yields results. Before we begin training your customer-facing team, we’ll work with your sales leaders to define or refine your sales process so there’s a clear understanding of how the team will reach its revenue goals. After training, we’ll help you implement a reinforcement plan that will solidify process adoption and equip management with critical coaching skills and tools for success.

We’re customized.

Everything we do is customized for your organization. We are not a one-size-fits-all methodology that you then need to adapt to your team and selling environment. Our training curriculum is developed specifically for your company. Your sales reps will leave our workshops with the process, tools and skills they need to drive meaningful revenue right away. In addition, we’ll work with your management team to define a reinforcement plan critical for ongoing process adoption and continued sales success.

We’re about results.

We care about results as much as you do. And because we do, we will help you measure your progress at each stage within your sales process. The end goal is to drive revenue, but what are the individual activities necessary to achieve that goal, and how do you track your improvement over time? We will ensure you have full visibility into your performance at each stage of the sales cycle and a clear understanding of how our services have positively impacted your bottom line.

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Melissa Clemens Joins Flannery Sales Systems

mel_johnWe’re excited to announce that Melissa Clemens has joined our team at Flannery Sales Systems.

Melissa brings the practical experience of running sales teams to our customers, along with the understanding of what strong selling skills look like. Most importantly, Melissa knows how to coach salespeople to their optimal performance, and effective coaching is the keystone of success for our customers. This, combined with her strong written and analytical skills, adds another layer of expertise to our team. It is a pleasure to have Melissa on board.

Prior to joining Flannery Sales Systems, Melissa spent over 15 years in various sales, marketing, professional services and entrepreneurial roles. Most recently, she spent 5 years leading sales organizations at Kleiner-backed Plum District and marketing automation start-up bridg.com, where she was responsible for all sales functions including hiring, training and overall revenue performance. Prior to that, she built and ran her own e-commerce company.

Melissa has her BA from Stanford University.

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Turning Your Go-To-Market Strategy into Tactical Sales Execution

map1When you open up your smartphone to access a map, you’ve got a particular destination in mind; where you want to go for dinner, a meeting, a certain address, or a landmark you wish to visit. There is a focus on the journey’s end, and you want to get there in the most efficient way possible. The map you access usually starts out with a 40,000 foot view of the landscape.

 

map2With the destination logged in, the smartphone then prompts you to input some more detailed information:  Where you are starting from; how you will be traveling- on foot, bus, or by car; and what mode of directions you would prefer, audible or inscribed? Once you have keyed in the basic information, the map application will zero in on your exact location and guide you, step-by-step, until you arrive at your destination.

1. Formulate Your Go-To-Market Strategy, and Align WHERE Sales Will Compete

A Sales Strategy is the 40,000 foot view of the vision or mission of an organization’s long and short term objectives. The strategy is carefully formulated by upper management to move an organization toward their specific destination. If, for example, an organization has the desire to increase revenue, a Sales Strategy for increased revenue may be formulated with the careful consideration of many different factors: assets, competition, the marketplace, margins, operational costs, the number of product lines, distribution, channels, value propositions, and plans for growth, to state a few.

We recently worked with an organization who wanted us to help them build a Sales Process to “get more sales now”! Their short-sightedness of only looking at the “close up” of the map gave them the misguided idea that their destination was nothing more than to get the reps out there selling better!  We were able to guide them through a Sales Strategy exercise, and THEN helped them build a Sales Process on what to do to execute their strategy.

2. Turning Strategy into Tactical Execution: Sales Process Illustrates the HOW

The principal component of a Sales Strategy is execution. Sales Process outlines the step-by-step, most efficient, customized directions to get to the final destination.  It provides information on how to get to the destinations in specific detail, based on selling skills.  This specificity enables the implementation of strategy by providing the following advantages to the entire team:

  • A common objective
  • A common path and language
  • Practical messaging tools based on the strategy
  • Skill sets that are tied to Process steps
  • Process Steps that are tied Pipeline Milestones

3.  WHAT To Do at Each Step Along the Way: A Clear Path

If you ensure that all sales reps and managers follow the Sales Process, you can outline expectations and more easily benchmark your sales team against common criteria, providing an excellent evaluation of the strategy at the rep level.  A Sales Process provides:

  • The specific instructions on what to do with respect to customer interactions
  • A measure of the skill of individual sales reps
  • An opportunity for focused skill coaching of reps by managers
  • A powerful reporting tool for leading KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) on benchmark performance against key outcomes of the Sales Strategy.

When determining your organization’s Sales Strategy, take the time to ensure your understanding of the entire landscape.  Then, implement a Sales Process that allows you to execute toward your objectives, with the ability to gauge your success along the route, and soon, you’ll arrive at your destination:  Success!

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A Global Perspective from European Leaders: The ELIA Conference Recap

 

ELIA Riga Apr 25 2014On April 24 and 25, I attended and delivered a Sales Process Workshop at the European Language Industry Association (ELIA) Conference in Riga, Latvia. ELIA is an international organization of professionals in the translation and location industry, bringing multi-lingual content to the world through the web, printed materials and simultaneous interpretations. There were 36 countries represented at the conference, which always makes for great conversation at the event and at cocktail parties and dinners. Here is a summary of the main topics discussed:

Closing the Digital Divide: Facebook Gives Back

The keynote speaker was Iris Oriss, who is in charge of all Internationalization and Translation efforts for Facebook’s multi-lingual platform. Iris’s keynote focused on Facebook’s dedication to closing the global digital divide, as only 2.7 of the 7 billion people worldwide have access to the Internet.  To close this gap, Facebook is supporting an effort called Internet.org, a consortium of companies who donate time and resources to get the web to the most remote reaches of our population.

The resource-based economy that we grew up with has now been replaced by a knowledge-based environment, and as knowledge spreads to a greater segment of our global population, how will your selling style adapt? Does this open new markets for you? Or perhaps increase the number of competitors in your space? Be prepared to answer the question and react quickly – it is happening now.

“The Who” Said It 1971: “Going Mobile” is the Direction

Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey were prophetic when they wrote and sang the song “Going Mobile” in 1971. Mobile devices have become the desktops of the 80’s. Do you recall the first desktop computer that you had? I felt like I was in the space age. Well today, mobile devices offer us more capabilities than ever before. As a result, our buyers are relying more and more on information that is pushed to them while they are on the go.

Mark Zuckerberg re-iterated Facebook’s commitment to mobile at the recent F8 Conference in San Francisco, saying the company will run mobile promotions on smartphones and tablets as it pushes to drive revenue (we like that phrase/ URL!) from a larger audience. So, as sellers, we must be ready to leverage mobile to deliver key insights and solutions. According to Robert Peck, an industry analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, this market may be worth $3 billion dollars in a few years.

All Customers are Unique (with the Same Challenges and Goals)

The Sales Process Workshop I delivered was attended by 16 professionals representing 7 countries, with at least 10 languages spoken among them (see picture). As you know if you’ve attended one of my programs, the focus is always on the customer. In this workshop, we worked together to determine the best ways to differentiate yourself by the way you sell.

Customers usually claim that they, or their customers/markets, are unique. In our workshop, we determined that business objectives and challenges are actually very similar, regardless of industry. What is not the same is the company’s culture as organizations represent many different countries and languages, and as sellers we must be prepared to address those nuances as we help companies meet their business objectives and improve their bottom line.

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