Dunlap Discussions: Prospecting Tips from the Pros

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

Are you in sales? Do you dream of closing deals left and right? Do you dream of growing your customer list and increasing your sales?

If yes, you’re in the right place.

We interviewed our team of appointment setters to learn their top tips and advice for prospecting, getting through to the decision maker, and scheduling appointments. And by the way, on average, our team has more than 15 years of experience in the industry…so they know a thing or two about a thing or two!

Join us for our new series, Dunlap Discussions: Prospecting Tips from the Pros! In today’s post, we will cover our team’s tips on preparing to make prospecting phone calls and trying to connect with the decision maker.

Preparing to make prospecting calls:

The two biggest pieces of advice from our team are

  1. Review your script/message and other supporting material
  2. Practice what you plan on saying

Being familiar with the message you will deliver and how you plan on delivering it is a key part of strong communication. Not only will it help you feel more confident, but it will help you sound more confident, too.

When someone answers your call, you only have a few seconds to make a first impression. If that first impression is not positive, there’s a good chance your call will end with CLICK. Confidence, proper preparation, and a “smile” in your voice will set you up to have a great first impression.

Connecting with the decision maker:

Getting past a gatekeeper is no easy feat – especially a gatekeeper who is good at sniffing out distractions that might not immediately benefit the decision maker.

Even though it’s tough, it’s a necessary task. Many decision makers have one (or multiple) gatekeepers, especially at large companies. When this is the case, it becomes your mission to get through the gatekeeper so you can connect directly with the decision maker.

Our team has a few tips on the matter:

  1. Build rapport with the gatekeeper and remember that they are just doing their job, like you’re just doing yours. With this being said, you don’t want people to get frustrated with you because you’re doing your job, so don’t get frustrated with gatekeepers for doing their jobs. The gatekeeper can usually be an asset to you, but you’ve got to have a foundation of good-will in place.
  2. If it’s available to you, use the decision maker’s name; if it’s not, try to determine it early on. Often, being able to utilize the decision maker’s name will give the gatekeeper a sense of comfort with you and increase their trust in what you’re saying. If you’re still in the discovery phase and don’t yet have the correct name, do your best to find it. When you do, take note of it and use it moving forward.
  3. Have a short and precise introduction of yourself and your company. Don’t be a stranger! Tell the person who answers the phone who you are – but don’t take up too much time with your introduction! Remember, you only have a few seconds to make your first impression. You don’t want that impression to be “this salesperson is only in it for him/herself”. Rather, you want the impression to be “this salesperson is calling from ___ because ___.”

Come back next week for part 2 of Dunlap Discussions: Prospecting Tips from the Pros where we’ll cover the next phase of a call – speaking with a decision maker and asking for an appointment.

Four Reasons Daily Prospecting Will Increase Your Bottom Line

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

Question: How can you get the best results from prospecting?

Answer: By making it a daily habit.

Here are 4 reasons why daily prospecting will benefit you, your sales team, and ultimately, your bottom line.

  1. Prospecting keeps your pipeline full
    • There’s no denying it – inbound leads are usually warm, move through the sales cycle at a favorable pace, and are the lowest hanging fruit in terms of prospects. Unfortunately, for a salesperson who is trying to grow his or her portfolio and increase their number of clients, relying solely on inbound leads is usually not sustainable. There just are not enough of them. A great way to prevent your lead list from running dry is to incorporate a mixture of both inbound and outbound-generated leads. Prospecting = outbound leads. Outbound leads = a full pipeline.
  2. Doing a little prospecting each day keeps the task manageable and prevents it from feeling “too big”
    • Which would you rather clean – one dirty dish or a sink full of dirty dishes? Cleaning one dish is much more manageable than a sink full of them. But, when you stack that first dirty dish in the sink, it becomes tempting to continue stacking and stacking, up until the sink is filled and you have no other choice than to tackle all of them. Wouldn’t it feel better to keep the task small and manageable? Prospecting is no different. By doing a little bit of prospecting each day, you avoid letting the task grow and grow until it feels like a big, time-consuming undertaking.
  3. Repetition will keep your prospecting skills sharp
    • What our parents and coaches told us growing up is still applicable in our adult lives – practice makes perfect. And while “perfect” isn’t necessarily attainable, continued practice will only make you better. Prospecting daily will make you a better prospector – it’s as simple as that.
  4. Consistent prospecting will give you a leg up on your competitors
    • Spoiler alert: just like the thought of prospecting doesn’t make you jump for joy, it also doesn’t make your competitors jump for joy. In fact, tasks that we don’t want to do often get pushed to the bottom of our to-do lists. And we all know what happens to tasks at the bottom of our list – they end up not getting completed! This is a trap that many people inadvertently fall into – and chances are, it’s a trap your competitors fall into. If you want a leg up on your competitors, do not allow yourself to fall into this same trap. Set yourself apart from what others are doing and get ahead of your inbound leads running dry by prospecting every day.   

Prospecting is a tool that will take your sales success from average to great. A little bit of prospecting each day will grow and compound, leading to your future success. In the words of Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect, “Small choices + consistency + time = significant results”.  

Decision Maker VS. Decision Influencer – Who Do You Talk To?

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

Teleprospecting for New Business Opportunities

The epitome of early-stage business development is making your very first teleprospecting calls into a new prospect list.  As you have likely experienced with B2B business development, at the beginning of the nurturing process, it’s highly unlikely to make a sale during your first few interactions with a prospect. Sure, “right place at the right time” scenarios happen, but not frequently. However, an outcome that is more likely to occur is identifying companies that will soon be in the market for your services. Because of this, it is wise to set your expectations as “getting the sales process started” when engaging in early-stage business development.

A conversation we have almost every time we build a campaign for a client is:

Who do we need to talk to?

Most commonly, our clients’ response is:

The decision-maker!

But, is this always the best approach for getting your sales process started? Our question then becomes:

Is it realistic to get the decision maker on the phone?

Usually at this point, our clients start scratching their heads…

Typically, decision makers are difficult people to get on the phone – as a general rule of thumb, the larger the company, the more difficult it is to reach the decision maker. If the objective of your cold calling efforts is to get the sales process started, and if a mid to long-term sales process is common, why not increase your likelihood of having a productive conversation and broaden your reach to include decision influencers.  These are people who may not be directly involved with the decision making, but are knowledgeable about future plans, and likely have a measurable contribution to the future decision.

In our experience, decision influencers are more willing to take phone calls and are more available to offer insight into the company’s future plans.  Because this is early-stage business development, a major goal in a conversation is to identify future purchasing plans.  It’s too early in the process to ask for a decision to be made – you are simply trying to determine the timing of future plans. 

We use this analogy frequently inside our office:

If you are on a first date with someone, is it normal to talk about wedding plans, or should you spend time getting to know each other?  Should you learn what the likes and dislikes are of the other person?  Should you learn about their needs? 

Over time, as you nurture a relationship, you then, start talking about the serious topic of a long-term commitment.

It is perfectly acceptable to start building a relationship with the decision influencer.  During this journey, you will be able to learn more about the likes and dislikes of the company, and what the important elements are that you can build your sales strategy around.  There is a lot to be learned, but do not lose sight that you still need to ultimately connect with the decision maker.  If you are successful at building trust with the decision influencer, chances are, they will introduce you to the decision maker.

In summary, this approach is most beneficial when your target prospects are large companies with layers of people.  If you are cold calling into small and mid-sized companies, keep working to connect with decision makers as well.

7 Steps to Implementing a Smart Calling Program

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

What is Smart Calling?

A smart calling program incorporates the discipline of making prospecting sales calls with a plan. It’s having a targeted approach and a game plan that will guide you to a desired outcome.

A smart calling program has a plan that utilizes a known process that you can trust.

7 Steps to Your Smart Calling Program

The following are seven steps, developed by our team, that you and your team can follow as you prepare your own smart calling program:

  1. Data Records: clearly identify the businesses you want to call 
    • Common starting points are utilizing either a current customer list or an idle customer list
    • If you’re building a fresh list, common list-building criteria are: 
      • Specific industry categories (such as SIC codes)
      • Specific company sizes (revenue and/or employee count)
      • Defined geography
  2. Identify the Decision Maker: know who the right person is you want to talk with; if this information is not available to you, know the proper title and/or department – in today’s environment, it’s also helpful to find out if this person is working in the office or remotely
  3. Messaging: prepare a message that is brief, quickly gets to the reason for your phone call, asks good qualifying questions, asks about current satisfaction levels, and defines their future plans
  4. Utilize Technology: have a data-capture tool, such as a CRM, that allows you to efficiently document the valuable information you gather, a tool that allows you to define and schedule next steps, and might allow you to send follow up emails
  5. Train: be properly skilled to make the phone calls, roll play, and practice.  Record your live calls and listen to them and have peers listen to them  
    • If you are new to making business calls, don’t feel like you must be an expert – you do not.  Prepare yourself to answer basic questions, and this will get you much further than you think.  Remember, these calls are the beginning of the sales cycle, not the end
  6. Schedule: develop a schedule for making your smart calls and enter these times in your calendar. Create a schedule that is reasonable and achievable, then follow your plan and be patient
  7. Commit: trust your plan. If you do the work, you will start to see the results

If you follow the above steps, you will be implementing a smart calling program with a smart plan – a plan that is targeted specifically to a group of companies, some of which might become your future customers. There are common industry phrases that describe this type of work such as cold calling, telemarketing, teleprospecting, or lead generation. No matter what you call it, when it’s done properly, it is an excellent way to fill your pipeline with qualified prospect opportunities.

We live in odd times right now.  Normalcy is something that people are looking for, an example of this is human-to-human conversation.  With all of the bells and whistles that can come with sales and marketing, sometimes the simplest thing to do is call and have a conversation.

Dunlap Marketing has been in the business of building and conducting smart calling programs since 1996. Over the years, we have developed a process that we utilize with every client we serve. For more information on our programs, email Mike at miked@dunlapmarketing.com.