The Real Goal Of Prospecting

It's 6 p.m. You've just arrived home from a hard day's work. You're rushing to make dinner and at the same time help the kids with their homework. The phone rings, and it's one of those dreaded solicitors. By now you've probably heard most of the standard opening lines. Here are some of my favorites:

It usually sounds as if they're reading from a script. Sometimes they get your name wrong. In many cases they ramble on about their products and services in a run-on sentence that rivals any in a James Joyce novel. When they finally do come up for air and you get a word in edgewise, they don't really listen. Wouldn't you agree that this isn't a great way to start a sales conversation?

Many agents tell me they're getting plenty of referrals and don't need to cold-call for new business. If you fall into this category, there's no need to read on. But if you want to grow beyond referral business, cold-call prospecting is a necessary means to that end. Yet there's a more effective (and honorable) way to do it than described above. It's all about your goal and your preparation for the call.

The goal of most phone solicitors is to sell you something as quickly as they can. They're taught to do this through pressure and manipulation. If they fail to convince you to buy whatever they're selling, they move on to the next 'victim.' They make literally hundreds of calls a day, and their success rate averages only 1%-3%.

It's important to develop rapport and gain credibility early in your relationship with the prospect. You accomplish this by creating the perception that you're sincere and demonstrating competence. How well do most phone solicitors do in the sincerity test? If your experiences are anything like mine, the answer is - awful! What are the odds that you're going to give them an opportunity to demonstrate competence? Slim to none.

The problem lies in the call objective. The objective of most phone solicitors on the first call is far too ambitious. Their goal is to sell you something, and to do that they must immediately introduce their product and make a whole set of assumptions about your needs. A much more realistic goal for the first call is to generate interest. By that I mean hearing the prospect say, 'I'm curious. Tell me more.'

You have to accomplish three things before you earn the right to discuss your products and services with a prospect:

• Be perceived as sincere and competent.
• Understand what the prospects needs are.
• Understand how your products and services can address those needs.

Research indicates you have only 10-30 seconds to gain someone's interest on the phone. This range depends on whether the call is to a home or a business. I don't think it's possible to cover these three items in less than half a minute. Do you?

So with this time constraint, how do you go about planning a call that will generate interest? As Stephen Covey says in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 'Begin with the end in mind.'

First, make a list of four or five services that your agency provides. Ideally, some of these should be unique. Try to be as specific as possible. Avoid subjective statements or generalizations such as 'provide the best service' or 'offer complete protection.' For example, let's say your agency has expertise in designing safety programs for manufacturing companies. These programs help to reduce workplace injuries, which ultimately reduces Workers Compensation premium costs by lowering the premium modification factor.

Next, for each service ask, 'What bad things are likely to happen to the prospect without my services?' Referring to our example, the 'bad thing' would be increased workplace injuries and higher Workers Compensation premiums. When you've done this for your four or five services, the difficult part of your call preparation is done. But before you put this information into a phone script, there are two additional questions you must address.

• What market are you targeting with your call? For a consumer call, your target market could be single-family homeowners or residents in a particular neighborhood. For a business call, specify the industry or type of business, (such as auto dealers, restaurants, or dry cleaners). For our example, it would be manufacturers.
• Whom are you going to call? For consumer calls, you'll ask for the head of household. For business calls, it depends on the size and type of company. For most small companies, you'd target the owner. For larger organizations, risk management usually falls within the finance department. Because I believe in calling high, we'll target finance executives in our example.

Now you're ready to write your phone script. The following is the format we recommend to our clients. Replace the words in bold italics with information specific to your agency and target prospect. In this case, the information reflects our manufacturing example.

Before we get into the specifics of the script, notice: Does it sound as if I'm trying to sell anything on this call? I don't think so. I'm merely asking if they're interested in learning more about a problem we've helped our customers in their industry to address.

Notice how I start the call. It's straightforward - who I am and who I'm with. Why do I start the next sentence with, 'You and I haven't spoken before'? When you mention your name, isn't it likely that they'll start wracking their brain to remember how they know you? This wording disarms that issue and keeps them focused on what you're saying. The sentence ends with a reference to their industry and how long you've worked with other companies in that industry.

In the third sentence I introduce the problem I hope they're experienced or are at least concerned about. I'm admittedly on a fishing expedition, but if I've done my homework, there's a high probability this issue will hit home. Notice the use of the words 'finance executives.' I'm trying to avoid the possibility of an insult. If I say 'risk managers' and the person I'm talking to is the vice president of finance, or I say 'VPs of finance' and the person is the CFO, I hurt my chances of building rapport.

The final sentence is a statement, but it implies the question 'Are you interested in learning more?' It's also grammatically incorrect, because it ends with the adverb 'how,' but our research has found this phrasing to be more successful in accomplishing our call objective.

Even if you're a relatively slow reader, this script passes the 30-second test for a business-to-business call. It would have to be shortened somewhat for a call to a homeowner.

Again, the goal of the call is to generate interest - interest in continuing the conversation, either on the phone or in a meeting. Either way, you move closer to alignment with the prospect.

At this point many people ask what to do if the prospect says, 'I'm not interested' or 'I don't have that problem.' This is where you use your brief list of services your agency offers and related issues the prospect is likely to have without those services. You'd choose one of these issues for your phone script. The others become a menu you can offer if the prospect doesn't bite on the first one. The dialogue would go this way:

If you get a 'no' to all of the issues on your list, politely end the call and move on to the next prospect. If you designed your phone script and menu carefully, however, you stand a good chance of beating the percentages of the average phone solicitor.

A final word of advice: Good scripts are essential to success in cold calling, but make sure you get comfortable enough with them so they don't sound like scripts. That way you'll avoid sounding like so many other cold callers.