Call-Based Appointment Setting

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

Properly Identifying Your Best Prospects

Last week both of these emails were sent to me by Dunlap Marketing customers. 

“I just wanted to give your team a quick shout out. I just got off a call with the TMRS and they are a perfect fit for our platform, the appointment was set by your team. I know your guys are working hard and I want them to know how much we appreciate the help. Keep up the good work and thanks for everything!”
J W
Account Executive – Texas

“Great one Mike! Thank you. We looking forward to connecting with this prospect.  They are exactly the type of company we want to call on.”
M R
Global Manager

Both messages were the result of properly planning call campaigns in advance of implementation.

While there are many elements of properly planning a call campaign, there are three worth reflecting on:

1st – Knowing Who To Call

To have a successful call campaign, we have to know who the best companies are that need to be called. This is the only way for there to be a “perfect fit”.  With a 15-minute Q&A session between you and us, we can typically determine this answer.  If we can’t, we will model companies that you say are great customers, and we will build a profile of like-minded companies.  As part of this process, we usually factor in annual revenue ranges, employee count ranges, geography, and industry classifications.

2nd – Knowing What To Say

After we identify who to call, we hone in on what to say. This looks like crafting a call message that efficiently communicates your services. This often is a “to the point” approach, using as few words as possible. It includes knowing who the decision maker is, or identifying who this person is.

A common strategy is writing a message where we ask high-quality probing questions, and when favorable answers are given, we do not try to be the expert with follow-up responses. Rather, we ask to schedule a meeting so the prospects can talk to you, the expert.

3rd – Proper Training

Once we have a list and a call message, we train and prepare our staff to professionally represent you while making prospecting phone calls.  These are employees who work inside our West Houston office and who have experience making B2B phone calls.  A unique skill we foster within our team is the ability to be tactfully persistent, while calling with a smile.

Summary

The second half of 2023 seems to be taking shape as challenging for business development. With high interest rates, inflation, global conflict, and political parties that have difficulty working tighter, this might become a time when going back to the basics is healthy.

Maintaining or growing our businesses is necessary, going back to the basics and fundamentals of adding new customers might be the best game plan for the balance of this year.

We are happy to brainstorm ways to do this with your sales team.  Feel free to let us know if you have an interest in talking.

Mike Dunlap – President

Phone: (281) 496-9870 x140

Email: miked@dunlapmarketing.com

Implementing Multiple Call Attempts when Prospecting

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

(And Our Favorite Dating Analogy)

How many dates do you go on before you get married? I would be willing to bet that 97% of the time, it takes more than just a few.  We asked this question in an article written in 2015. It’s interesting because now more than ever, I am confident that the strategy of multiple call attempts (or multiple “dates”) works better than ever when making prospecting calls and ultimately, closing sales (or “getting married”).

Prospecting And Dating

The art of selling is a lot like dating, courtship, and ultimately marriage. It takes patience, persistence, and respect.  It takes time. 

  • Patience – Be ready and willing to stay in touch with a target prospect until it becomes time for them to enter into the buying process
  • Persistence – Be tactful and consistent with follow-up, leave voice mail messages if your call is not answered, send emails, and make more follow-up calls, all with the intent of staying at the front of your prospect’s mind when the time comes and they are ready for a conversation
  • Respect – Time, space, and money are all things that people hold closely; respecting these three things is critical for any relationship to thrive.  Be present and available, make sure your prospects know your intentions, but don’t overdo it to the point you drive them away from you

The Numbers

Many sales experts believe three percent of sales are made on the second contact, ten percent are made on the fourth contact, and eighty percent are made on the fifth or beyond contact. Note, these numbers may not be exact, but we believe they accurately reflect typical sales behavior.

In the business-to-business prospecting campaigns that Dunlap Marketing does, it is very common for us to make at least eight call attempts* before we start feeling the early indications of list saturation. The fact is, being tactfully persistent is required if you want to speak with the people who make decisions. 

*As a footnote, in this example, list saturation does not suggest you are completely finished calling on a target list of prospects after eight tries. It simply suggests that you let the list rest for a period of time, then start working it again.  After you let the list rest, be smart about how you apply the “respect” content mentioned above.

Only ten percent of salespeople make more than three contacts. 

Forty-eight percent of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.

Again, these numbers are believed by many respected business leaders and I believe they reflect common salespeople behaviors.

Sticking With It

In Dunlap Marketing’s B2B prospecting experience, we have learned that just because someone is not easy to connect with, does not mean they are uninterested in what we’re calling about.  The game of numbers works well in our favor if we call enough records enough times over a duration of time.  When we stay on plan, we will accomplish our goals without wearing out our welcome. So, how many dates should a couple go on before getting married? Two? Four? Twelve? One hundred? You tell me!  As a father of three daughters, I will take the higher number of options.

5 Tips to Increase Success on Prospecting Calls

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

While conducting a recent team meeting, I asked the staff to share their thoughts on what it takes to have successful prospecting calls. The result of this question lead to a handful of outstanding tips, which prompted me to write this article so I can share them with you. 

According to the Dunlap Marketing team members, their five top prospecting call tips are:

  1. Listen carefully to the prospect’s tone and behavior, then adjust your approach to match
  2. Try holding the prospect’s attention long enough to deliver the intended message
  3. Get the prospect interested enough to start talking
  4. Keep calling, do not give up
  5. Be polite and grateful

Listen carefully to the prospect’s tone and behavior, then adjust your approach to match

In my early days of selling, this was called “mirroring the prospect”. I believed and saw this technique work in the early stages of my career, and I continue to see it work now.

You might ask yourself – how can I mirror a prospect I can’t see?

If the prospect answers the call, but sounds like he or she is in a hurry, consider talking a bit faster and tell them, “I know you are busy so I am going to quickly get to the reason for my call”, then do as you said you were going to do. 

The objective is to match your tone and talking speed to that of your prospect.

Try holding the prospect’s attention long enough to deliver the intended message

This notion of holding attention long enough to deliver your message reminds me of writing call scripts. Call scripts should be short and to the point. Your prospects are busy and were not waiting for your call. Because of this, keep in mind that you should be grateful they took your call and avoid making them feel like you’re wasting their time. 

A good way to cut back on time spent on the front end of your conversation is to consider not asking the prospect how they are doing or how their day is – often this falls into the category of wasting time.  Rather, as an ice breaker, use a friendly and engaging voice and speak with a smile on your face. You might be surprised how this approach not only saves you time, but also yields better results.

Get the prospect interested enough to start talking

This goes hand in hand with holding the prospects attention, mostly because if you can get them talking, you have likely caught their attention. In most instances, the best way to get someone talking is to ask them a question. 

Before you can ask a question, I feel it is important that the prospect knows why or what you are calling about – make this brief and get straight to the point.  Once they know the purpose of your call, you ideally want to ask a probing question that identifies a pain or deficiency within their current situation.  In our office, we have a goal of asking this initial question inside the first 15-20 seconds of the conversation. Your approach here is to get your “foot in the door”.  Do not feel like you have to push yourself all the way in, just get your toes in, especially if you represent a longer sales cycle offering. 

Three probing questions you can try using are:

  • Does your current provider ____?
  • Does ____ present a challenge for you?
  • If there was one thing you can improve, what would it be?

Keep calling, do not give up

Tactful persistence is the key to success. 

If your call goes unanswered or your voice mail is not returned, it is not good to assume your prospect is not interested. Chances are, it simply means your prospect is busy and has more pressing issues to deal with.  At some point in time, your offering will become important to them.  Your job is to stay engaged so you can learn where they are in the buying cycle or life cycle of their current situation.  You want to identify trigger dates so you know when to turn up the intensity to have constructive conversations.

If you have difficultly speaking to the decision maker during early stage prospecting, try connecting with other people in the company in an effort to learn about their current situation, future timing, and satisfaction level. This information can be uncovered by different people inside one company – not just your top contact person. And most importantly, these nuggets of information will help you gauge your future timing. Capture this information and set follow up reminders in your CRM to call back accordingly.  Even more, ask for email addresses and send periodic emails that contain relevant information.  Be disciplined with your follow up tasks.  Over time your efforts will pay off.

These habits are most critical for salespeople who manage smaller, more finite-sized prospect lists.  The smaller the population of who your prospects are, the more tactful persistence will pay off for you and your prospecting efforts.

Be polite and grateful

Always make your prospecting phone calls with a smile on your face.  Some of my staff are outstanding at speaking to a prospect as if the person is right in front of them.  This is a gift. 

Be respectful and do not be afraid to call your prospect back if they tell you they are very busy.  Politeness and gratitude require you to have faith that the game of numbers is in play – and if you play the game properly, you will get your fair share of opportunities.

If you force a conversation, the likelihood is you will compromise quality outcomes (in our office, we prioritize quality outcomes over quantity of outcomes).  The more you force, the more disappointment there will be down the road when implementing next steps.

If you feel like you need to be forceful, consider asking the prospect for a better time to call back.  Record this information in your CRM and call them back at that time.  If they do not answer, leave a voice mail and try again later in the day or the next day.  It might not be easy to get them back on the phone, but keep trying.  When you do connect, chances are better that you have a more productive conversation.

Being polite and grateful often go hand-in-hand with tactful persistence. Tactful persistence is most rewarding when you are also polite and grateful.

For more information on successful prospecting, feel free to reach out to me at miked@dunlapmarketing.com or call at (281) 496-9870 x140.

What is Good Call Frequency?

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

Tactful Persistence is the Key to Success

How often should you reach out to a target prospect?  

This is a question we are asked a lot when setting up an outbound telemarketing campaign.

The answer depends upon several factors:

  • Is this a first-time interest in the conversation with the person or company?
  • Is there a known need?
  • Is there a known relationship?
  • Is the prospective company a high-value target for you?

For Dunlap Marketing, making multiple attempts is an important contributor to our success.  Mostly we reach out by making phone calls with the reinforcement of sending one-on-one emails and voicemails.  With calling we balance the number of call attempts over a duration of time.  Time becomes a good friend.  Over time you can call early in the morning, late in the morning, early in the afternoon, and late in the afternoon.  Mixing up your call times gives you a better chance of connecting.

The “How To”

Apply good common sense to call frequency. You want to avoid your target prospect feeling that they are your only prospect.  You have other prospective companies to develop, so find a balance between spending time with other quality opportunities. 

Back to persistence, this is an important trait to have because persistence is often necessary to reach the person you need to speak with.  Decision makers are very busy, and guess what, they are not waiting for you to call them.  It’s no secret that people are often difficult to speak with.  Our belief is you have to earn the opportunity to speak with them, and tactful persistence is often required to earn the opportunity. It is important to trust the fact that just because you are unable to speak with the person, does not suggest they are uninterested. Often, it just simply confirms the fact that they are busy!

To specifically address the question: how often should you reach out to a target prospect – with first time campaigns, where the prospect data file is not huge, it’s common for Dunlap Marketing to start a campaign with the agreement of making 5 call attempts over a 4 to 6 week period of time.  As a general rule, our belief is it’s good to penetrate the list by making multiple call attempts if possible.  It gives you a more accurate feel of what the quality of opportunities is going to look like. 

This represents just the tip of the iceberg based on call frequency.  This type of campaign can rest for a month or two, then you can start calling into it again.  Unless you spoke to the right person, the likelihood is no one in the company will ever remember you called in prior times.  On the other extreme, with campaigns that we have been working on for years, it is very common to see appointments that we set today as having 50 or more call attempts over the past few years. 

If a prospect is important to you, do not be afraid to be tactfully persistent with trying to make contact.  However, it is very important that you do not over call and always be courteous to everyone you encounter while navigating to the right person.  To state the obvious, when you finally do reach the right person, be prepared!

The Exception

When done properly, tactful persistence is almost always a good trait; however, when you have a larger prospect database to develop, it may not be as necessary to practice persistence, as with smaller data files.  The larger the file, the more you can play the game of numbers, meaning, there will commonly be a segment of your target prospects that are more likely to answer their phone.  The larger the file, the more you can skim the top of the list, connecting with those who are easier to connect with. 

You may find that you are successful in filling your pipeline by making 2 or 3 call attempts.  Take advantage of this if you can.  As you develop the prospect list over time, you will find the level of challenge will start increasing as it relates to connection rates.  This is very typical.  The offset is you do a better job of saturating the list.

Ultimately…

A byproduct of skillfully working through your target prospect list is you can create multiple silos of categories.  You can prioritize your silos by who may have short-term interest, mid-term, long-term, or no interest at all.  This is all very good information to know as it helps you determine how to spend your time moving forward.

Part of the value of tactful persistence is it allows you to be creative with keeping your name in front of target prospects and how you integrate other marketing methods to communicate ongoing.  This all becomes beautiful marketing and it will generate terrific results for you.

In closing, this article brings to mind two of my favorite sayings, both of which I firmly believe in relating to how we live our lives and how we conduct business:

  • “Tactful persistence is the key to success”
  • “You never get a second chance at a first impression”

Both sayings significantly play into the intent of this article; work hard, be patient, do not give up, and always respect others.

You can contact Mike Dunlap at miked@dunlapmarketing.com or call him at (281) 496-9870 x140.