Subscribe

Eliminating Cold Call Terror

by Kim Peek, Publisher of Ad Genius

A new AE comes onboard and veterans immediately begin razzing him. The old joke surfaces, “When I was a new AE, they handed me my list. It was four inches thick. They called it the Yellow Pages.” The new AE’s eyes bulge. His brow beads with sweat and we can almost hear the music from Jaws playing as the AE thinks, “I’ll be eaten alive!” Cold Call Terror has set in.

If you’re an AE who despises cold calling, understand that it’s a necessary part of making sales. If you’re not making contact with new clients on a regular basis, you’re not providing enough value to your employer. If you want to improve your results, listen up! Wendy Weiss, author of Cold Calling for Women, has some advice for you on Overcoming Cold Call Terror. (For the men out there, don’t let the book’s title scare you off. These tips are for you too!)

The most important thing to remember is: JUST DO IT. To be successful, you have to make the calls. Weiss advises, “It’s not life or death. It’s just a phone call. Nobody’s going to die if they say no to you. You just make another phone call.”

Often, we are our own biggest obstacle to success. “There are the facts,” Weiss says, “and then there are the stories we tell ourselves about the facts. The facts are that you need to generate new business. You’re going to pick up the telephone and call your prospect and you’re either going to reach them or not. If you reach them, you’re going to say what you have to say. They’re going to say what they have to say, and that’s it.”

“Then, there’s the story we tell ourselves. The story is, ‘I’m interrupting them. I’m bothering them. They’re going to be annoyed that I’m calling. They probably already have another vendor. They don’t need what I’m selling. They’re going to be angry at me.’ That’s the story. So what people want to do is replace the story that doesn’t help them with a better story that suits their purposes.”

To be successful at cold calling, you want to put a new spin on the mind games you’ve been playing with yourself. “You can choose to believe that you are interrupting your prospect, that they don’t need what you’re selling, or you can believe that they will be delighted to hear from you and that you’re going to have a great conversation,” Weiss says.

It’s also important to understand the goal of the phone call. According to Weiss, many people do not get what they want and hang up the phone disappointed because they never asked for what they want. Always pick up the phone with a goal in mind. Is it to get an appointment, to follow up, to gather additional information or to close the deal? Know what you want and then ASK FOR IT!

What about calling Mr. Big? Do you have the confidence to pick up the phone to call him? Don’t be intimidated. Weiss advises, “Don’t make your calls with the feeling you are less than. Come from a position of power and equality.” Recognize that you are the cable advertising expert, and Mr. Big is the expert in the products or services that his company offers. You are on his level because you each hold different areas of expertise.

If you’re a newer, less experienced AE, and you really don’t have confidence in your abilities and product knowledge, remember that your company is the expert and any expertise or information you lack is available from the team of experts back at the office. “The new sales representative can feel that comfort level in knowing the company is behind them. Once they are more experienced and have that expertise behind them, they can transfer that and feel they are personally the experts,” says Weiss.

Managers can help the process by offering encouragement, training and serving as a resource to help the AE move forward. Have a plan, write your script, rehearse. Then, dial the phone with the confidence to ask for what you want!

With a little planning, you won’t be eaten alive. Instead, you’ll catch the big fish and live to tell about it!

For more information and cold calling tips, visit www.wendyweiss.com.

Gain Lifetime Customers

by Kim Peek, Publisher of Ad Genius

On a recent Sunday night, I attempted to order a pizza. I called Pizza Joint #1, and was hung up on three separate times while trying to place an order. Still hungry, and having not successfully placed an order, I called Pizza Joint #2, where an unenthusiastic teenager took my order and told me to pick it up in 30 minutes. I arrived within 30 minutes, and after waiting another 10 minutes, I took the pizza home. On Monday, I decided I should contact the manager of Pizza Joint #1 to tell them that they had a problem. Their employees were hanging up on customers! Imagine my surprise when the manager did not even act as if he cared. Talk about taking care of customers! I used to be a good one!

Clients everywhere are quick to complain about the poor economy. They cancel ad schedules as they moan about consumer spending being down. They throw their hands up in despair: no one is coming into the store with money to spend.

I would like to suggest that the economy is only part of the problem. These days, the economy is to blame for all our ailments. It’s a convenient excuse for sales plans gone awry. While it is true that the economy has slowed, our country is at war and people have lost jobs, it is also true that there are lots of people with cold, hard cash to spend.

The problem retailers need to address is, “Why are people spending their money elsewhere? Why are they not shopping at my store?” The answer? It just might be customer service. In most businesses, customer service, the customer experience, is lousy. Customer expectations are so low, it takes very little to make large gains in customer loyalty. Treat a customer just slightly better than the other guys, and you’re on your way to having a long-term customer. It’s sad, but true. Just think of the impact true customer service would have on the bottom line if everyone in the organization believed customer service was their job.

Customer service is not only for front-line employees. It is everyone’s job to keep the customer happy (well, more than happy, ecstatic, surprised and amazed). Some say that customer service departments should be abolished and replaced with Thrilled Customer Departments. To merely satisfy a customer is to strive for mediocrity. In Seven Power Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty, author, Paul R. Timm, Ph.D. says that the following ten turnoffs account for 97% of all customer dissatisfaction.

Poor guarantee, or failure to back up products.

Quality not as good as expected.

Price too high for value received.

Slow service or help not available.

Business place dirty, messy, cluttered.

Low selection or poor availability of product.

Inconvenient location, layout, parking or access.

Lack of courtesy, friendliness or attention.

Employees who lack knowledge or are not helpful.

Employee appearance, mannerisms.

Timm says that a typical company will lose 10-30% of its customers each year because it turned them off. “Any time a customer must complain, it is an inconvenience that should be made up for, if possible,” says Timm.
It’s time that retailers take responsibility for the factors they can control. A company that wants to turn its business around must begin to think about thrilling customers, providing top-notch information and a remarkable customer experience. Only then, will customers spend money in droves.

Getting over the Fear Factor

by Kim Peek, Publisher of Ad Genius

Your manager asks you to role play in a sales meeting. Your sales director wants you to give a presentation to 50 advertisers. Your LSM sets aside time in a sales meeting to practice overcoming objections.

What’s your response? Do you A) run for the door B) look at your feet, slump down in your chair and hope no one notices you? C) sweat bullets D) jump to your feet and cheerfully accept the challenge.

If you’re like most people, your response is A,B or C. In fact, most people say their fear of public speaking is greater than their fear of death!

Fortunately, with a bit of work, the fear can be programmed out of your system. It’s all a matter of eliminating your emotional response.

If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve argued a point with a client and then thought of the perfect response once you returned to the office, you’ll understand how this works. When you react to criticism or comments and take them personally, you allow your emotions to control the situation. You may feel as if you have been attacked, or panic because you don’t have the answer.

“If your heart is pounding and your emotion is high, your intelligence will be low,” says Blair Singer, author of SalesDogs. The answer is to drill your responses to objections, to see how quickly you can answer them, until you have no emotional response to the questions.

As a sales manager, Singer would make up flash cards with objections. AEs would time themselves to see how long it took to respond to the objection.

Singer took this approach to help AEs increase their confidence and take the emotional reaction out of the success equation. If a person has confidence, they can stay in the conversation. Their fear goes down and their ability to keep conversations going jumps dramatically. Singer says that once this confidence is gained, an AE can actually begin to look forward to the objection and “keep the little voice in your head from freaking out.”

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut. The answer is to recondition yourself to react logically, rather than emotionally, and the best way to do this is to desensitize yourself in a safe environment. Practice your responses with your sales team or a trusted friend until you can easily respond without panic or nervousness setting in. Your newfound confidence will allow you to resist the urge to argue your point and will help you look at the objection as an opportunity to clarify or gain a better understanding of the client’s needs. Singer says the real reason all great SalesDogs handle rejection well is because they are used to it. Most people are terrified of rejection and try to avoid it at all costs. In contrast, an AE with the SalesDog mentality will live the life of her dreams because she is able to take risks and endure confrontation.

Whether it’s responding to client objections, picking up the phone to make an introductory call or giving a presentation to a room full of clients, there is one common element: the fear is greater than the reality. To get past the fear, practice, practice, practice and then practice some

more. Eventually, you’ll begin to respond, rather than react. You’ll feel as if you are carrying on a conversation, rather than defending your product or beliefs, and you’ll look forward to speaking with your system’s most challenging clients.

“I can honestly tell you that if you train diligently in this subject, your life will change,” says Singer in SalesDogs. “Not only will your sales increase, but you will find that the quality of your relationships will skyrocket. Most people have no idea how much their internal subconscious fears and concerns affect their conversations, actions and relationships with others, both at home and at work!”