The Challenge……..

Why You MUST Qualify Your Appointments

 Whenever I’m running my cold call training or appointment making courses, I’m usually asked the question “Andy, should I attempt to qualify my appointments, or should I just make as many as possible, no matter what the quality?”

Now if you ask the question to a group of salespeople or sales managers, they’re usually divided – some say that they won’t turn out for an appointment unless there’s a genuine interest or opportunity there, whereas the rest say that they’ll take any appointment that’s going!

Now whilst I realise to a degree it is going to depend on your marketplace, your industry, your average order value, your geographic target areas, the length of your sales cycle etc, there are some basic “truths” that you can apply no matter what your situation.

I do understand the need to book appointments (and the pressure from bosses to do so), but I firmly believe it’s crucial to qualify any appointment you make! By the way, this isn’t an excuse for the lazy salespeople out there to give to their bosses – “well, Andy said….…” I mean I still want the same number of appointments, just make sure they’re qualified properly!

I’m sure anyone who’s been in face-to-face sales at some point has had the experience of turning up for an appointment when the person you’re meeting doesn’t really know why you’re there, had forgotten you were coming, or worse still – wasn’t even there when you showed up!

Surely this has to be a “warning flag” of how much value they placed in the appointment in the first place?!

And while I realise that sometimes a salesperson can generate a sale at a meeting from “nothing”, this becomes more difficult the higher the price you are asking, the more people it involves and the more you are selling a “service” rather than a “product”.

Here are some reasons why qualifying your appointments properly might be a useful idea for you……

1. It makes the face-to-face selling part much easier.

If you’ve taken the time to qualify the appointment properly over the phone, you’ve already found out some of the prospect’s potential needs and identified areas to explore through questioning at the meeting. This should mean that at the meeting, your questions are more relevant and are of more value to the prospect.

2. It raises the prospect’s perception of you.

The more you qualify properly, the higher the perception of you in your prospects eyes. Unlike the usual “desperate” salesperson they come across, you’re not going to waste your time (and often your manager’s time) chasing half-way across the country to a meeting with someone who turns out to have no need for what you offer, nor turn out to be the real decision maker anyway! Not that you’ve had that happen to you in the past…have you?

3. It reduces the risk of a cancellation, a “no show” or an “I forgot”.

I realise that sometimes people do genuinely forget, but if this is happening to you on a fairly regular basis, then either they are avoiding you, or they didn’t see enough value to even put it in their diary! Not the best start to a sales call, is it? How many more times does the average salesperson need this to happen to them before they’ll learn?

4. You can find out if they are the real decision maker or not!

You’d be amazed how many salespeople have meetings with people who can’t decide! Unless this is a defined part of your sales strategy (and you have a long sales cycle with lots of people you need to influence), this is pointless! You might be looking “busy” in the short term or be hitting your meetings targets, but when it comes to your sales figures, you’ll be somewhat short.

5. You’ll be making the best use of your time.

Your personal time management is crucial in sales. You only have a certain amount of time in which to be as effective as possible, so don’t waste it! The time you’re spending in meeting with the wrong people who have no need for your product or service could be better spent prospecting for new business, or preparing for your crucial appointments (you do prepare for your appointments, don’t you?)

Listed above are 5 good reasons why you should take the time to properly qualify your appointments. You should also have an idea of the criteria you’re going to use to qualify them too. If you get the appointments made for you by an in-house or an external telemarketing team, it’s even more important that you set the criteria by which they qualify your appointments! Otherwise, you’re losing control of a vital part of your sales process and hampering your sales effectiveness into the bargain!

Because sometime we find it difficult not be nice and very polite on our calls, don’t we? After all we’ve been told for years “the customer is king” haven’t we? Yet we often don’t realise how this could negatively impact on the perception of our cold calls.

Let me give you an example…..

On my Cold Calling Workshops, I always find out what strategies the delegates are currently using, in order to give me a “gauge” of where they’re at and what we can potentially tailor and improve.

This is a phrase one of the delegates had been using previously (bearing in mind he was already through to the decision maker).

“I wonder if you could possibly help me?”

No, No, No, No and No! This is wrong on so many levels!

Now I know some of you are thinking “What’s wrong with that?”.

The challenge is because we’re brought up to be polite and we’ve been brought up with phrases like “the customer is always right”, “look after your customers – or someone else will” and “always make the customer feel important”.

Now I’m not neccessarily disputing these phrases (and some of the are good advice) but don’t forget, we’re on a cold call here! The decision maker hasn’t been expecting our call, so we’re probably interrupting them on some level. Therefore our first few words are crucial to the success of the call.

When I was training the European cold calling team of a Global IT company out in Munich earlier this year, their VP of Sales said to me “Andy, if I receive a cold call, they’ve got 15 seconds – after which I decide if I’m putting the phone down or not!”. Now I don’t know the exact figures across industries, but I’d be prepared to bet that it would be fairly similar as to the first initial impression and how your call is perceived.

Now, most salespeople tell me they want to be viewed as different to their competition, to be seen as an equal, as powerful and consultative “value added” suppliers who can add value to their client’s businesses. However, they then make calls that sound EXACTLY like their competitors!

And if we truly want to be seen as powerful, as equals, as consultative people that can add value to our clients businesses, do you think opening phrases like “I wonder if you can possibly help me?” to decision makers achieve that?

I didn’t think so! The impression transferred when you use phrases like that is more like “oh no, another market research call!” or “here comes another junior salesperson to waste my time”. Is this achieving our obective? I think not!

We want to appear senior, authoratative, confident and like we know what we’re talking about – but we’re coming across in an entirely different way aren’t we?

In those vital first few moments of the cold call, if you come across as junior, weak and unimportant, don’t be suprised when senior decision makers treat you as such!

And do we think that decision makers are paid to help us out? Or give us “a few moments of their time?” How much value is there in that sort of call for the decision maker – pretty much none at all I’d say!

If you’re getting responses like “speak to my secretary” or “the person you really need is…” (only to find out later that this person was really the decision maker” or “send information” – or an even harsher response – that’s a clue that the decision maker doesn’t perceive us at their level, so isn’t treating us like an equal.

One interesting question to ask yourself is “Do I sound like a decision maker when I cold call, or just another salesperson?”. If your answer is the latter, are you really suprised at the responses you’re getting? If you want to be perceived as powerful, consultative and on the same level, then at least sound like a decision maker or someone of that level would do!

If the prospects you’re calling seem to perceive you the same as your competition – saying stuff like “we’re happy with who we’re using”, “we’ve got an agency/company we use for that” or the more blatant “you guys are all the same” then there’s a clue that you’re using the same approach as your competition! If we want to be perceived as different, we have to have a different approach don’t we?

Andy’s Top Tips For Getting Better Responses From Decision Makers

Tip No 1 – Sound like a decision maker, not a salesperson

Tip No 2 – If you want to be perceived as different, use a different approach to your competition

Tip No 3 – Converse with a decision maker on their level, using things that will interest them, instead of telling them what your product or service does

Tip No 4 – Prepare and practice a compelling opening that will engage decision makers, not bore them