Problem: Jason was new to the company and was trying to develop his territory. He didn’t lack enthusiasm and was making his objective of 100 cold phone calls a day. He felt pretty good about that since he saw others make far less. But still, he was not making nearly enough appointments to keep his pipeline filled and wondered how he was ever going to achieve his income goals if things didn’t change.
Problem: Jenny came to sales training class one morning and asked the class to assess what had gone wrong on a sales call that she had made the week before. She was frustrated that she had spent 45 minutes on one call with no results. She explained the call in detail and after a short, but very focused Q & A, it was determined that the “suspect” she had spent her time with was not a good prospect after all. Jenny reluctantly agreed, but said that this happened more than she liked, and lamented that “some prospecting calls are just a waste of time.” With that admission, she received much sympathy from some class members who agreed with her perspective on prospecting. Jenny admitted that her prospecting activity had declined in recent months and that she was no longer the leading salesperson in her region.
Problem: The following frustration was shared with me by a salesperson the other day. “I reached out to 57 potential prospects this week and only 8 of them gave me the time I needed to tell them what I do. The rest of them said they were busy and didn’t have time to talk. I have been taught that prospects are concerned that salespeople will take up too much of their time so I always ask if they have a few minutes to talk. What do I have to do to earn a minute of time?”
Problem: One of the measures of successful salespeople is the number of referrals they get from customers and others. But most salespeople do not get nearly enough referrals to keep them out of the cold calling business. The sad truth is that they don’t ask for referrals, and prospects normally don’t go out of their way to provide referrals to salespeople that don’t ask.
Problem: Most salespeople certainly don’t get enough referrals and often the referrals they do receive go nowhere. How many times have you called a referral, failed to get through to the gatekeeper, and left a message that never gets returned? Perhaps you’ve even gotten through to the referral, only to be met with a cool response? We all know that referrals are the best source of new business, by far, so why does this happen?