I love it when readers challenge my b2b sales prospecting phone-use tactics. It brings out my best and provides me an opportunity to share tactics (hands-on, how-to’s) b2b sales professionals can use to master the sales prospecting process. Not theories but successful techniques tested on the street.
How do you, the sales professional, determine whether the person on the other end of the phone is being truthful? Your questions and how you ask them will reveal whether you are speaking with a liar or a potential buyer. Asking these questions on the phone will eliminate wasted face-time sales calls.
Professional Pollsters and Marketing Researchers who use the phone know the answer and so should you. They ask shielded questions. Actually, the same question, worded differently and asked once, twice or three times during the same phone interview.
I’m a great believer in having my 5-6 Qualifying Questions documented on a form I refer to as a CPQ (Call Planner Questionnaire). In fact, the CPQ is the lynchpin accountability tool I encourage sales managers and small business owners to use to make certain their sales team members are turning in legitimate expense reports at week end.
You may recall from past blogs my statement, “You are making a Social NOT a SALES CALL if you do not have 1 completed CPQ for each face-time decision-maker appointment.” None of us in sales were hired to make social calls. We aren’t paid for visits - ONLY CLOSED SALES! There should be 1 CPQ for each completed face-time sales appointment. This is RULE Number 2 of my Power Prospecting Formula.
One of the ‘key’ questions asked early on during the Qualifying Phone Follow up Calling Sequence should answer the important question:
Answering these questions strikes at the very heart of my Power Prospecting Formula. In 1967, when I began my formal sales career with NCR selling computers to the hoteliers on Miami Beach, I often discovered decisions to purchase equipment were made at the holding company HQ office, seldom at the local hotel property. My sales proposals were accompanied by the local managers’ purchase request and mailed to a distant decision-making office, far removed from Miami Beach.
Today, more than ever before, determining who signs the checks locally is critically important.
Many times, when I have conducted my Qualifying Phone Follow up Calling Sequence, I have discovered I’m speaking with an ego-centric ‘decision-maker’ who replies, “I make the decision!” Then, when I ask a variation of the same question later on during the same phone interview, their answer conflicts with their first reply.
Ah ha, a liar versus a buyer!
As a rule, I will not keep an appointment with a prospect to fails my shielded questions test. How can I believe anything else that person will tell me at our face-time appointment?
Am I being too sensitive? Am I placing an X on the door of a potential prospect? No! In fact, those few times when I have kept the face-time appointment with a liar, I have wasted my time on non-prospects. I don’t have the time or patience to meet with people who don’t respect me. When someone lies to me, they don’t respect me!
This shielded questions technique works especially well for commercial and industrial telemarketing sales. In 1987, I developed a CPQ scenario for an industrial sales software vendor. Elaborate product information kits were mailed, in advance, to all inquiries. Yet, fewer than 8% of these elaborate product information kits resulted in sales.
Two CPQ Questionnaires were designed and tested. The first CPQ narrow-focused an inquirer’s: urgency, decision-making-process, including who in the company by name and position was seated on the Software Evaluation Committee and whether the committee had a ‘funded budget’ to thoroughly research, conduct field trips to vendor installation sites prior to creating a short list of the three most capable solution providers. The ‘funded budget’ shielded questions and answers separated the curious from the serious.
The second CPQ Questionnaire was used after the prospect received the basic information kit which was one quarter the length of the original elaborate product information kit. The telemarketers asked the prospects specific questions about the software architecture and platform. Questions which could only be answered if the prospect thoroughly read the basic information kit. Both CPQ’s included multiple shielded questions.
Almost 8 months to the day the dual CPQ Questionnaires were implemented, conversions to sales were averaging 19-24%.
I’d be shocked if most of you aren’t using a CPQ type document, either printed or screen-displayed. However, if you aren’t using shielded questions, make some changes; add a few and you are sure to improve your conversion to serious, not curious decision-making prospects.
In Chapter 7 of the September edition of my How to Get Face-Time with People Who Buy What You Sell ebook (also called the PowerProspecting eBook) I detail how to design the ideal CPQ. Also, how to skillfully use my best secret weapon: The Columbo to forever eliminate wasted face-time sales appointments! CLICK on Purchase eBook Now. CLICK on Home Page. CLICK on View FREE Minibook. Remember, you have a 1 Year Money-Back Guarantee to test my Formula.
So, what works for you and your sales team? How do you filter liars and buyers?
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I enjoyed your post because too many salespeople are so anxious to “close” for an appointment they never qualify the opportunity. You can’t make money going on unqualified appointments but too many reps do just that every day. Great advice to salespeople.
Thanks
Nick