Sales outreach is on my mind. We are launching a new product, Capture! and today, two of our junior reps reached out to me for advice. Why? I am a phone animal. I break call accounting systems, wear out wireless headsets and I’d blow the curve for the average rep. I have fun on my calls and have learned, failed, explored and developed techniques to get 9 out of 10 call backs.
At this point in my life it is not a set of techniques, but a way of thinking. It is now part of me. However, I wasn’t always this way. It took years to cultivate the skills, to act with intuition, to do without thinking, to blink. Back to speaking of new people…
Working from home today, I got a call from Chris, a new sales representative at RingLead (for those who know me, I recently accepted the position of Acting CEO @ RingLead). RingLead is a specialist in helping to Dedupe Salesforce. Chris was on speaker phone and he had another “Chris” with him. They wanted to bounce ideas off me. They developed a call plus email campaign.
New campaigns are not simple to execute. You must A/B test and adjust as you work through the initial campaign. We did a great job in recruiting and these guys were prepared. After bouncing a few ideas around, they were ready to go. Why is a CEO spending time doing this? In this case, I just built and delivered a new product where I am the subject matter expert (Capture!).
The knowledge needed to be transferred throughout the organization. Besides, I am good at it and I enjoy doing it. Eight minutes (yes I timed it) of time spent coaching these new reps in the right direction can have tens of thousands of dollars of impact in the long run. The ROI is there.
This is an important distinction that most organizations miss. The manager is not necessarily the trainer, nor the coach. I am not the manager, nor the trainer, but a few minutes of high-impact training can make huge impact if used strategically. Write this down.
Back to my new sales guys. Now they are ready. In fact I can see they are making calls now. Not 30 second calls, but four, five, eight and twenty minute calls. This means they are engaging. Capture is going to be big! What 5 bits of advice did I give them?
- Sales is a numbers game. ok duh, Donato, no big secret there. Everyone talks about this.
- Every call counts. This is less talked about. Some dismiss this, yet they are dead wrong.
- Every call affects your attitude Even less talked about. This is where the leader exceeds the manager. Managers rarely talk about this, leaders do.
- Attitude is everything. No, really. This is where the coach exceeds the typical leader.
- Put a marble on your keyboard What the heck?
It is simple. If sales is a numbers game, every call counts and affects your attitude (and attitude is everything), then you must control your attitude. You do that by putting a marble on your keyboard. Get it? Blog over, fat lady sings and I now I get to press “Publish” If I lost you, watch my video (I’ll explain it).
In addition to my video if you are facing reluctance in picking up the phone, my friend Connie Kadansky is the “Call Reluctance Coach”. Her material is top quality and can be seen at: http://exceptionalsales.com