Leave the Hang-Ups To Us

Webinar - 7 Reasons Not to Manage the Complex Sale in Leads

Miss our webinar: 7 Reasons Not to Manage the Compex Sale in Leads? You can see and hear the presentation at the following links:

View the PowerPoint slide deck here

Listen to the webinar audio and view the presentation here

Please take a minute to endorse Amy’s idea for a Dreamforce breakout session.  It only takes a few clicks!

Promote Amy’s idea for a session covering this topic of Leads and the Complex Sale at the next Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco this November: http://dreamforce.ideas.salesforce.com/people/amykeuper/articles

If you have any questions, comments or feedback regarding our webinar or Initial Call you can contact us at bvishanoff@initialcall.com.

Social Networking Snafus - What do they mean for you?

by Colleen McCarty, VP Talent & Organization Development

What is your organization's policy toward Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media? Lately it seems I'm hearing more stories about Social Media mishaps:

• A friend who works for a major rental car agency saw a video posted to Facebook by two employees left alone in the branch. The video clearly shows that they were in their place of business, goofing off and vocally wondering if their boss would see this (yes, since they were Facebook "friends" with their boss and their boss’ boss).

• A North Carolina judge became Facebook "Friends" with an attorney. Not unusual, except this attorney  happened to be the attorney for the client on the judges’ current case. Via Facebook they posted several messages referring to various aspects of the case. Hmmm, even a layperson can see the problem here. You can read more here.
  

Perhaps the stories above have you shaking your head and recalling the motto that "common sense isn't so common" but still wondering what do they have to do with you?.  
 
Well consider the example of the public relations executive who tweeted:

    "True confession but I'm in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say 'I would die if I had to live here.'"

The executive was in town for business with his client FedEx. FedEx employees saw the post and were not pleased with the public disparagement of their hometown of Memphis. Not pleased to the point where they wrote a scathing letter in response which you can read here.
 
Since Sales is all about networking, we frequently "friend", "link" and "follow" our clients and prospects. And while the venue seems casual, your team is frequently representing your organization in a public, or semi-public forum. Are you comfortable with what is being said? Rex Stephens offers some good suggestions here. Use these suggestions as a starting point for talking with your team. The challenge is to use social media to strengthen client relationships and increase sales without getting into hot water or worse!

Extreme Social Marketing

by Catherine Brown, President

Many thanks to my friend, Jay Horne and his friend - the amazing trainer Giovanni Gallucci - for their class that came to Oklahoma City on April 21.  Extreme Social Marketing was not just about social media theory; I am proud to say that I learned a few things that I began using immediately.  

One of my new skills is searching for topics on Twitter so you can connect with people who may be asking about things that interest you.  (Go to search.twitter.com and type in your key words.  It's a little more confusing if you want to search by a geographical area but if you want to email me at cbrown@initialcall.com, I'll tell you more.)  This is pretty great.  I've been answering people's messages and expanding my network with this search ability.  Another lesson I took away from the seminar is how to use the website ping.fm.  Creating a ping account was very easy (really!), and with this, you can do all of your status updates at one time.  So, I can write one message, and it will automatically update LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all at once without my logging in to those sites.  While it's not particularly onerous to log in to only three sites today, I can see that ping would be particulary great for people who use YouTube, Flickr, and even more social media sites on a regular basis.  If you are lucky enough to have one of these classes come to your area, I encourage you to attend.  If not, email me and I'll tell you the short cuts that I learned.

Check out the the website to see if an Extreme Social Marketing workshop is coming to your area.

Oh, bother!

by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

We at Initial Call specialize in representing companies with a complex sale which, by definition, is harder than the average sale.  And by “hard” we mean hard.  The ever-increasing “opt-in” mindset poses real challenges for businesses who want to expand sales beyond the scope of their current social network.

Pursuing target accounts remains a vital part of most sales operations.  Cold-calling is a tried and true method of reaching someone you believe would benefit from what you offer.  If only you can reach them, then you can solve their problem—maybe one they haven’t even defined yet. 

The problem is that we are all culturally wired to resist uninvited contact.  Looking honestly at our own thorny reaction to unsolicited communication helps clarify why sales and marketing are so difficult.  If we won’t accept someone’s call or email, how can we expect them to allow ours? 

What a fine line we walk!  We must strike the balance between rightly reaching out to new individuals to grow our business and unintentionally irritating folks who hang up on us or unsubscribe thinking, “I don’t know who you are and I didn’t sign up for this.”

Ironically, most businesses employ outbound marketing yet are themselves locked down tightly against any kind of cold-calling or email campaign.  Their phone systems are “press X for X” labyrinths without any human beings and their networks reject all email as spam.  Since a primary lead generation goal within the complex sale is to qualify accounts, not to bother anyone unnecessarily, the problem of unwelcome communication would in fact shrink if getting market intelligence were easier. 

A prospect actually gains time by investing time in a call or email to self-qualify in or out of the target pool.  He finds a solution to a need or wards off unwanted future contact.  By devoting just a few seconds to listen to the pitch, the prospect can achieve both his and the caller’s goals: determining whether it makes sense to talk further. 

Adherence to The Golden Rule would smooth the seller-buyer relationship. Thoughtful and tempered prospecting would be met with courteous and understanding replies.  Sales empathy and marketing civility—ahhhh, a dream?

Given the reality that we can’t easily change prospect behavior, scheduling highly-qualified, VP and C-level meetings is hard.  Your success hinges on breaking through company defenses with a smart message delivered by the highest level talent possible, which is where Initial Call excels.

7 Reasons Not to Manage the Complex Sale in Leads

Has one of these scenarios ever happened to you?

• A contact at one of your existing clients visits your website and downloads a document which creates a new Lead in your system. You are mortified when your marketing department sends your client an introductory email and follow-up call as if they were a new prospect.
• Two of your sales representatives independently follow up on new Leads. Because the associated company names were entered differently in your system, your representatives are unknowingly calling into the same prospect.

It's a sales manager's nightmare, but it is avoidable if you know how to tame your CRM. If you have experienced the challenges of tracking the complex sales cycle in Salesforce.com and you've been frustrated, you are not alone. The beauty of this CRM is that you can make changes to optimize the tool for your company's unique sales cycle.

Download our whitepaper: Entropy in Salesforce.com: 7 Reasons Not to Manage the Complex Sale in Leads to find out more about how to avoid these problems, keep your CRM organized, and your sales cycle running smooth. Then join in the discussion or ask questions right here on our blog.

Twitter

by Colleen McCarty, VP Talent & Organization Development

I really am feeling my age. I'm not an early adopter but I'm usually far ahead of the Average Joe, but Twitter has me stumped. Why would anyone be interested in what I have to say this moment? However, in the spirit of full disclosure, I resisted Facebook for about six months. Even wrote a blog about why I liked LinkedIn better than Facebook. Truth be told, now I love them the same but for different reasons (much like you love your children equally but each has their unique strengths).

But back to Twitter... like a third child, can I love it too? I've learned never to say “never” but I have my doubts. Do I have time for all three? Can I justify the time for all three? I decided this time I will really try Twitter before making a final decision.

In a few days I have learned:

• Twitter is fast, real fast. Send out an update or “tweet” and someone will respond. Pretty surprising given that I only have three followers. Oh, I just checked and now it's four! Now it is six!

• Twitter is about broader networks than just friends or colleagues. Perfect strangers will follow you, conversely, you can follow anyone you like. I only know two of my followers and I'm still wondering why the rest have  followed me (and am I right to feel pressure to entertain them?).

• Still working on learning the lingo. So far I've learned # (use this to make your tag/term more searchable) and @ (precedes a username), RT (retweet, similar to forwarding email) and OH (overheard) are a few I'll need to practice using.

So I'll be testing Twitter further and evaluating Twitter for work, fun and family. I'd love to know how others are using it and do you have any tips!

The Real Cost of a Lead

We received a lot of feedback when this article appeared in our newsletter, Initial Thoughts, last week. In case you missed it, we've republished it here. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

Do you know what your real lead cost is?  This deceptively simple question can challenge your preconceived notions about how to evaluate marketing programs and sales partners.  It is common to weigh the cost of a campaign activity or a vendor's service in isolation, but the only way to accurately calculate a true meeting cost is to capture and compare all of your expenditures, from technical tools to the labor it takes to represent what you sell. 

Wise marketing and sales organizations want to have the lowest lead cost possible, so the price of outbound calling is a natural concern. When we are discussing our services with prospective clients, we are often asked what our meetings cost.  This number varies among clients and is determined by two things: the nature of what our client sells and the title of the decision maker.  Historically, our clients' average meeting cost has ranged from $800-$3,000.  Given the complexity of our prospect's sale, we can usually provide a ballpark meeting cost.  We have found that no matter what number we share with a prospect, once this question is on the table, the conversation takes an interesting turn.  Some potential clients find the estimated appointment price very reasonable while others balk. 

When we speak at Initial Call about "average meeting costs," keep in mind that almost all of our work is cold-calling.  So, the price of our meeting will reflect what it takes to qualify a target from scratch without marketing support--essentially the time it takes to navigate to the right buyer and uncover whether the target company is a fit.  A prospective client who is taken aback at the price of our sales appointment may be thinking that other means of finding opportunities are less expensive.  While that could be true, assessing the real cost of a lead requires one to consider ALL expenses included in generating and qualifying leads.
 
In the complex sale, we believe that most companies will find that their lead cost simply averages "$x,xx" regardless of the various activities employed to bring in prospects.  This means that if your cold-calling meeting price is $1,800, your lead cost for qualified inbound leads will be comparable if you consider the marketing activities that you employ on a regular basis: website optimization, email campaigns, direct mailings, trade show exhibits, etc.  Even if you do not have inside sales help today but your outside reps are cold calling, that lack of support is costing you something.  Probably something big. 

Obviously, certain activities may make more sense for your business than others.  For instance, you might never use direct mail or attend trade shows.  What we are saying is that it is unlikely that you will find a magic bullet--just one vehicle for generating business that costs exponentially less than another.  A company with a specialized software solution whose outbound-calling meeting cost is $2,000 will probably have to spend in total the same amount of money on other activities to generate one lead.  Their lead cost averages $2,000-no matter what methods they employ.

Naturally, everyone wishes that the cost of winning new business were lower, but truly driving down the net cost of a sale is very difficult.  Initial Call's theory is that most company offerings will ultimately settle at a relatively stable cost-per-lead.  Real reductions in the actual dollar figure, if any, are likely to be incremental.  What can vary within the lead cost is the outlay on any one particular activity.  For example, if we are able to call warm leads, the price of our meeting will be lower, but creating warm leads means investing in marketing somewhere else.  Once your business is established, rarely is the option to simply spend considerably less overall.  The question is, in reality, where to spend the money. 

Outbound calling isn't right for every sales organization, but it makes sense when you sell to a narrow audience and want to pursue target accounts.  As you evaluate the price of contracted inside sales support, be sure to weigh the real comprehensive costs of all other options for bringing prospects into your pipeline.

What Makes Someone Good at Lead Generation?

by Catherine Brown, President

This last week I participated in our Initial Call Sales Manger training via conference call.   Although we were discussing specific strategies for getting into large companies, the conversation turned to individuals sharing with one another about recent phone calls they had while prospecting for clients.  Listening to the examples that our Sales Managers gave of recent conversations they had while prospecting prompted me to ask myself the question, “What makes someone good at this job?”  Put another way, “Why are some sales people better than others at generating good meetings?” 

There are, of course, many answers to these questions.  There are a whole host of qualities necessary to be good at generating sales leads.  Tenacity, courage, limited fear of rejection, professionalism, the ability to communicate succinctly what you are selling…These are all important qualities.  However, I have concluded that an often overlooked quality that is important for success in producing high quality sales leads is personal warmth. 

A dictionary defines “warmth” as  friendliness, kindness or affection. 

I am not sure you can really teach someone to be warm.  I think true warmth is inherent in some people.  Sure, you can make small suggestions here and there so people sound nice,  but it is difficult to maintain a personality on the phone that’s not really true to who you are.  If you are warm, your prospects sense that you are open and listening. Warmth communicates sincerity.  No one likes to feel “sold” on the phone, and a person who communicates warmly usually finds out what they want to know from the prospect on the phone just by being nice.  The warm inside sales rep can turn a cold call into a discussion while they are busy being themselves. 

Jim Logan and Ford Harding both have written articles talking about other implications of how good inside sales people do their jobs through listening and good manners.  I appreciate being reminded that character qualities matter in those whom we hire, and both of these articles speak to this topic in different ways.  I hope you are encouraged to keep these qualities in mind while doing your job of selling,  managing, and prospecting for business.   

Catching Up On Reading

by Catherine Brown, President

As the year has progressed, I have added more and more newsletters and blogs I want to read to my list of “to dos.”  I find that there are quite a few good sales and marketing consultants whose regular communication I like to follow.   I recently reread Mary Sullivan’s article Maintaining Sales Momentum in a Recession- or Whatever This Is.  Her five principles are timeless and timely:

a.       Narrow your target markets

b.       Rethink pricing

c.       Fine tune your messaging

d.       Engage your customers

e.       Focus on existing customers

If we could do these all the time!  I have had recent success with number 1 that I thought I’d share.  Since September 2008, we have been reaching out to companies to whom we have spoken over the last year and a half or so, writing individual letters, notes, and calling them individually.  I have been reminded (and admittedly a little amazed at) what a focused approach really does. We are taking our own advice and it works!  Initial Call has recently begun work with a couple of companies that we have talked to for a long time.  Timing is everything. It wasn’t the right time before but now it is.   I hope you have a happy new year; we are excited for January!

The Art of Recruiting the Right People

by Colleen McCarty, VP Talent & Organization Development

Initial Call counts itself fortunate for the simple fact that we are actively looking for good people to join us. Since the news is full of stories where the converse is true, one could assume that our Recruiting Team is enjoying a lighter workload. But in a world where “be careful what you wish for” is all too true, our Recruiting Team is working harder than ever. True, sourcing resumes has gotten a lot easier than in years past, and we are receiving record numbers of resumes in response to the few ads we are carefully posting. But with lots of resumes comes lots of reading to carefully review that the people we talk to have the right skills for our clients' needs. Especially hard is screening out the number of people that clearly need work, any work, and are willing to do anything. Many people think they can do this work, but rare is the person who thrives on the challenge and has the level of professionalism we require.  Recruiting wades through the stacks of resumes looking for individuals who love cold calling, who genuinely enjoy the challenge of getting through gatekeepers and voice mail to finally reach the right decision-maker so they can generate interest in less than 120 seconds. And while perhaps a few more of those special people are looking for work now, finding them is just as hard as it ever was.