I was recently reading a post from one of my favorite bloggers, Pat Flynn, entitled “Cold Selling Sucks – 5 ways to Build a Relationship With Your Traffic“. Pat’s blog, Smart Passive Income, is interesting because he is one of the few bloggers to be so upfront about the income he makes and from where. I love the transparency, but even more I enjoy going along with him for the ride as I see what works (i.e generates revenue). Plus he seems to really work hard and enjoy what he does – I’ve learned a lot from his posts.
So when I read his “Cold Selling Sucks” post, even though it was focused a bit more for the online world I really enjoyed it as it applies to all sales and sales people.
Pat defined “cold selling”, similar to “cold calling”, as “when someone tries to sell something to a prospective customer who does not know that person and was not expecting such an interaction.”
I can’t tell you often I’ve seen & heard sales people do this very same thing, and if truth be told I’ve made this mistake myself. You pull a name from a database and call them up, and when they answer give them your “pitch”. Cold Selling. Brrrrrrr…did it just get chilly in here?
Nah, just the icy response from the person on the other end of the phone.
Pat has some great points for overcoming this, but they were a little more online focused so I’ve paraphrased and revised them a bit to make them a little more relevant to enterprise software sales (what I do). And guess what…they work amazingly well in my world of sales also!
I find that in sales anytime you go into a “cold selling” or “cold calling” situation the only way to consistently pull real revenue out of these “leads” is to follow steps like these.
1) Build a relationship:
Fight the urge to pitch immediately, instead why are you calling? Did they download some info or attend a tradeshow? Go for the softer approach and ask them a question you really want to know the answer to. Have a real discussion and start to build a relationship.
2) Encourage discussion:
This builds off #1 above. If you do most of the talking they are going to be looking for ways to get away, if you let them lead the conversation then you’ll gain more time.
3) Be responsive:
If they do give you a chance to provide something (be it information, a demo, a meeting etc), then do it immediately and quickly! This is your chance to audition and show them how you will be as a partner.
4) Get connected:
When they send you that LinkedIn invite – take it! Join appropriate user groups. Speak to as many people in your market that you possibly can. The more connected you can be to your market and customers the better off you will be.
5) Encourage mini-transactions:
You don’t have to hit the grand slam to win the game. While a large “enterprise” deal feels good and looks good on paper, this is the hardest type of deal, with the longest sales cycle, to make happen. And it has a major drawback – it’s only a single transaction. Often it makes sense to break up this large deal into many smaller deals. The larger deal may look better on paper, but closing multiple smaller deals can often be easier and is a much better way to build a strong vendor relationship with your customer. In essence multiple sales “train” the customer to think of you when they need a solution and be delivering consistently you build trust. That only happens over time and with more than one transaction.
Remember, cold selling applies to more than making cold calls, and when you have to sell cold you can always warm it in with the “relationship” microwave!
