Everyone is Calling Your Prospects

The daunting cold call. A process that, if handled correctly, shouldn’t feel overwhelming—though it’s easy for salespeople to overlook that everyone, not just their competitors, is reaching out to their prospects.

Although we actually don’t like to refer to it as cold-calling, because literally calling someone cold is ineffective, but I’m probably preaching to the choir here. You’ve got to have a process in place to show your company’s value up front before, during, and after the actual call.

Along those lines, Mirren’s Brent Hodgins wrote a post titled “Why Your Calls Don’t Get Returned” and it provides some great baseline reminders about the initial reach-out to prospects. (If you’re not familiar with Mirren, they’re a boutique training and recruiting firm, specializing in new business-you can find them here.)

The post is now down, but I can tell you my favorite takeaway:

Prospects get calls from salespeople all week long. In fact, not just from your competitors but from printers, magazines, radio stations, television reps, and other assorted marketing properties looking for their weekly handouts.

This should be etched into your brain before ever reaching out:

Everyone is calling your prospects

You’re just one in a long line of people calling on your prospect, so you’d better differentiate quickly and be respectful in the process.

We tell out clients that their New Business Director has 5 seconds to 2 minutes to capture the attention of the prospect they’re reaching out to.  So if you don’t say some relevant or compelling right out of the block, you’re lost.

I interview marketers in an interview series called “The Marketer’s Edge” and at the end of every interview I ask marketers to tell me the advice they’d give to companies trying to knock down their door.  90% of the time it’s all about being real and being relevant.

So keep it real and warm them up!