Post by guest blogger Carl Saxon, Business Development Associate, PointClear.
A great way to thwart a lead or an opportunity is to stop asking questions and get into your informational session as to why your product or service is the best thing since sliced bread. What should be a common practice is to listen to the prospect’s words closely and then ask the next best question.
At PointClear, we practice active listening skills and use these skills as a major component to provide successful handoffs to our clients. Active listening helps you to clearly identify the SITUATION and the PROBLEM so you can then ask the next best appropriate cause questions that lead to the overall IMPACT and NEED questions. When practiced properly this leads to a smooth handoff to your client.
A bad example would be as follows:
You call a prospect and they immediately give you a couple of “surface” pain points. As I mentioned in a previous blog, some associates (and yes I am guilty also sometimes) want to pounce like a cat on a ball of yarn. We are set to close and we then immediately put the sales (features and benefits) hat on. After a minute of overwhelming the prospect with facts we say, “Well, what I would like to do is put you in contact with one our product specialists.” Low and behold, the prospect has questions.
A couple of things wrong here. One—who cares what we would like to do, it is about them not us. Two—we failed to ask the next best question either to clarify the situation or problem and to ask implication questions to determine need or desire.
Why not ask “Can you tell me a little more about the problem?”, “What pains does this problem cause?”, “How is that problem affecting you and the organization?”, or “If you resolved that problem how would it create a healthier environment?”
This gives you as the seller more control of the conversation and helps prevent or limit objections from being tossed at you because they are too busy now overwhelming you with facts.
Now instead of saying, ”Well, what I would like to do…”, you can say, “Based on what you have said…” in a more authoritative role versus a timid appointment setting role.
Remember—relevant questions are key to success. Controlling the conversation makes for an easier handoff and allows the prospect to verbalize their needs. If the seller says it, it is not necessarily true. If the prospect says it, then it must be true. In a sales lead transaction, he who makes the most statements loses control. “There is a sale made on every call you make.” (Yes. I stole it from the movie Boiler Room.)
Post by guest blogger Carl Saxon, Business Development Associate, PointClear.
You are going through your normal day and it happens, somebody actually wants to hear what you have to talk about, so you begin to go through your three pain points. The contact says, "Yes, we are experiencing all of those problems." Your heart starts pumping because now you have someone who will listen and has some pain. Being the opportunistic closer you are, you naturally go right for the kill. Using whatever closing line you have created or have been taught, you schedule a call between the contact and the Sales Representative. You now think you have a sales lead, but you have no idea what their environment is at this point.
So you ask, "To what extent do you see this as a priority to resolve?" The contact explains that it is not a pressing issue; it has been like that for years and they have been able to handle it. You now have that uneasy feeling that your lead feels weaker. However, you press on and go for the kill before they bail as you feel the pressure of objection. You then ask, "What role do you play in the evaluation process?" The contact continues to let you down and tells you they are not really involved in evaluations or decisions but would be happy to give the information to their boss. There is still some chance to salvage this. Maybe they are able to influence their boss and you can turn this in to your supervisor as a lead. You ask, "How many employees does your company have?" Your heart is crushed because the number the contact has given falls well below the needed criteria. Fifteen minutes deep into the conversation you have wasted your time. A lead would have never been generated because of the qualifications, but it did not need an entire conversation for this to be determined.
What could have been done differently to determine if this was really a sales prospect? SPIN Selling when performed correctly can be very helpful. The Implication questions can reveal many answers in conjunction with the Need-Payoff. A couple of questions after the Situation and Problem finding could have helped determine the importance of resolving the issues. Finding out what they have done in the past could've helped also. How long has it been a problem? Why have they never resolved it? What would be the benefit of solving such issues?
Fact finding is key. It separates the pros from the amateurs, the lead generators from the appointment setters.
In sales it is always be closing. In lead generation I say always be qualifying. Time is of the essence so keep it moving!
I discussed outbound vs. inbound demand generation and prospect development in an earlier blog and identified three areas where building outbound relationships is critical: connecting with executives who don't embrace self-education, market coverage where the buying cycle is accelerated and complex internal buying landscapes.
In a June 11 post, Sales 2.0 Still Doesn't Replace Sales 1.0, Anthony Iannarino talked about Sales 2.0 lead generation and how its processes and technologies should act as enablers—not replacements—of Sales 1.0 personal engagement:
"Those who believe their business can survive and thrive with salespeople who cannot generate interest and obtain commitments using Sales 1.0 techniques is, quite simply, wrong. It is dangerous and it borders on criminal."
"The fact that Sales 2.0 may generate a lead or enable a conversation does nothing to improve the salesperson's ability to differentiate their offering in a crowded marketplace, to diagnose the ground truth of the lead's organization, to develop and understand the needs of the members of its 14 person buying committee, to develop the dissatisfaction necessary to create the rationale and the motivation for buying, to present the story of a better future together, to manage a complex change effort, to handle a major crisis when a deal goes south, to exercise the leadership to manage the delivery of what was promised, and to manage the outcomes."
I wholeheartedly concur, and I must add—as the buying landscape becomes more complex, the sales cycle grows longer and the buying investment increases—the value of Sales 1.0 expertise grows exponentially.
The Amazing Carnac ... is Back
Some of you may be old enough to remember Johnny Carson doing his Carnac the Magnificent bit. I'm borrowing on it for this post.
The answer to the question in the hermetically sealed envelope before me:
Go to college, get 10 years sales experience, get trained in SPIN Selling, Solution Selling and Miller Heiman and learn to converse with the C-level.
So what's the question?
What does it take to develop quality prospects?
OK, not as funny as Johnny, but I've made my point. If the sort of talent working on your behalf is temporarily employed, part-time, offshore and/or home-based, you probably aren't getting the results you should be.
Prospect development should be an integral part of your marketing and sales mix. Prospect development associates require more experience, more education and more sales and marketing expertise than most people think. Prospect developers should serve as a seamless extension of your company. Prospect developers don't memorize a script; they learn your offerings, messages and philosophies, industry segments and business processes. They speak your language and function as an integral member of your selling team. Amazing!
Outbound vs. inbound marketing—what's the right mix? 80/20 outbound? The reverse? A 50/50 split?
My answer: some of the time it depends, but the answer in one specific situation is clear.
Inbound marketing is simple conceptually. Distributed widely through social media, great content attracts interested contacts who digitally raise their hands in blog conversations, find optimized sites, and download white papers. Educating and qualifying themselves as they travel down an ideal company profile conversion path, they move to that point in the funnel where they are sales-ready buyers and warrant attention from a representative.
It sounds like the Holy Grail: a ready-to-buy lead appears just in time to hand off to sales. But it's not that simple.
First, let me say that I'm a firm believer in the value of inbound marketing. We work with clients and their prospects in high-growth technology, healthcare and business services sectors, and we incorporate inbound marketing components into their sales lead generation programs—as well as our own internal programs.
But inbound marketing isn't a panacea. The right outbound/inbound balance depends heavily on variables like company size. Indeed, recent surveys show larger companies continue to emphasize outbound marketing as shown in HubSpot's The State of Inbound Marketing 2010 survey of its customers.
The survey found large companies (50+ employees) spending 37% of their 2010 demand generation budgets on outbound marketing (telemarketing, direct marketing and trade shows) while small companies (1 - 10 employees) spent 15%. Priorities were reversed for inbound marketing (blogs, social media, SEO and PPC) with small companies spending 44% and large companies spending 31%. The survey points to the ability of small companies to level the playing field with using inbound marketing. I think, too, that large companies can't depend on longer time-to-leads cycles of inbound—they have to proactively assure market coverage and seek out opportunities for their pipelines.
OneSource's 2010 B2B Sales Pulse Survey also confirms the ongoing importance of outbound marketing among sales professionals who were asked to rank qualified opportunity sources on a scale of 5 (delivering the most opportunities) to 1 (delivering the least). The responses: outbound prospecting (3.7); website (2.9), inbound calls (2.6), email campaigns (2.6), events/tradeshows (2.5), social networking sites (2.1), direct mail (2.1) and webinars (1.8).
The survey also noted that 59% report sales cycles were either significantly longer or somewhat longer than last year. Heaven forbid that the self-educating prospect now driving the buying process is contributing to longer sales cycles.
But by far the most critical factor determining the right outbound/inbound mix is the type of solution offered. In an earlier blog, I described Complex/Long/High situations characterized by complex decision making processes, long sales cycles and high solution investments. This is where it remains critical to ground core strategies in outbound marketing.
Why?
Executive work styles and late adopters—Many C-level decision makers have not yet embraced—and may never—the role of self-education via social media. See another earlier blog on the chief executive of a large utility who finally responded positively on the 42nd touch and later signed off on a $1 billion deal for one of our customers. His was not a self-educating work style, and there was no way he was going to search blogs or websites to download white papers. He responded to a proven outbound methodology driven by an experienced prospect development professional.
Timely market coverage—Because inbound marketing generates contacts and supports self-education over a period of time, it's easy to miss opportunities that could be deep in the current pipeline. We consistently find 5% of the market in an active buying stage and narrowing the list of competitive solutions. Many times, we've interrupted these scenarios to secure wins for our clients. I might also point out that betting too heavily on inbound marketing providing 100% market coverage is a risk not worth taking.
Complex internal buying landscapes—Outbound marketing and its emphasis on personal, direct and regular contact with prospects assures correct assessment of decision maker roles and influence early on. Evaluation and buying dynamics are constantly in flux, and a personal relationship generated and maintained with outbound efforts provides immediate response to shifting prospect landscapes. Selling tactics can be immediately tailored to reinforce the laser-like relevance of a solution.
The return on Complex/Long/High wins is too high to place the care and feeding of potential high-value opportunities anywhere but in the hands of a skilled professional employing a proven outbound regimen of multiple touches using multiple media across multiple buying cycles.
For those of you engaged in Complex/High/Long solution selling, I'm interested in hearing your take. How are you balancing your outbound and inbound marketing spends? How is that working for you?
My favorite stories are about client successes. The best one of these is work we did for a global consulting company with BPO offerings across a number of verticals. On one project we deployed one of our people for a full quarter and they were tasked with making contact with the CFO at the nation's top 50 utilities.
Most people I tell this story to, particularly C-level and senior sales executives, feel that anyone contacting them as many as forty-two times would not only never get their business—they might end up putting us on the wrong side of a "nasty-gram"...
First, let me tell you what our associate actually did, and then how it worked out for our client.
A b2b lead generation touch cycle at the C-level frequently includes the following:
1. Navigation calls to confirm CFO contact information and administrative support (sometimes this can take as many as three contacts).
2. A series of attempts and discussions with administrators to first sell them on our client's solution and then sell them on helping us get it front of their boss (this could take up to another three contacts—and it does not always work).
3. Multiple cycles of contact that include calls, voicemails and immediate email follow ups—a cycle can include as many as six attempted calls, three voicemails and three emails over 10 business days.
4. On the last cycle of attempts (three or four cycles usually) our voicemail explains that we do not want to pester the individual we have targeted, that we would like to talk, but won't leave another message and the emails follow suit. Approximately 30 percent of all opportunities created for clients are as the result of a telephone call or reply to an email from our prospect.
Take the three navigation calls and add six more calls to the administrator, some calls early in the morning, lunch time and early in the evening to try to reach the decision-maker before and/or after hours—and three cycles totaling nine calls, nine voicemails and nine emails (and throw in a package sent overnight that contained a magazine with an article about our client's success with the CFO at another utility) and it does not take long to add up to forty-two touches.
So here is what happened:
1. The CFO called us back after the 42nd touch and said "don't stop calling me... you are my conscience. I have listened to and saved your voicemails and I have saved some of your emails and I want to talk to you—I have just been extremely busy. Call me back in two weeks on Tuesday at 10:00 AM and I will take that call".
2. Two weeks later we generated a high quality opportunity for our client.
3. It closed in six months for $1,000,000,000. Yes, a billion.
Is 42 touches too many? Hardly!
Of course we're biased here at PointClear, but we're proud of an article recently published in Selling Power magazine. Called Lists, Leads, and a Ladder to Success, the article details long-term PointClear client CenterBeam's experience with outsourced prospect development. Here's a summary:
Looking for qualified leads for the managed IT services that CenterBeam provides to midmarket companies, Sales and Marketing EVP and CMO Karen Hayward opted to outsource.
"We knew the only way to get CFOs in a targeted, precise fashion is over the telephone," CenterBeam's Hayward said. "We looked at doing it [prospect development] in-house, and it took five minutes to know that was a nonstarter for us."
After a first experience with an outside lead-management firm which Hayward terms "a disaster," CenterBeam chose to partner with PointClear. "Very few have the staff to have business-level conversations with our market," she said of Atlanta-based PointClear.
Karen noted in the article that employing advanced segmentation ... using call flows, not scripts ... relying on college educated, experienced associates ... leveraging multi-touch campaigns ... set PointClear apart in the selection process, and has helped San Jose-based CenterBeam grow steadily at an average rate of 34 percent annually since 2003.
We invite you to download the Selling Power article today.