GenSourc

Monday, August 23, 2010

Gatekeeper Tips

Among all of the roadblocks faced in the sales process most would arguably agree that the GATEKEEPER is one of the biggest obstacles. Charged with the responsibility of carefully screening calls, gathering information for their boss and, in many cases abruptly forwarding your call to lower level staff, the GK can be your best friend or worst enemy.

So, the question is how is the best way to hurdle these barriers?


Here are some tips:


  • When the GK is open to learning more about the reason for your call but not willing to connect you to the DM (Decision Maker) get the GK involved and engaged. Tailor your presentation on how you can help the GK. If they ask for information send a hand written note/envelope- - better chance to be opened! Follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn to see what topics and what individuals they are following. Be polite and ask for their advice. Do your research, be prepared and be genuine at building your relationship! Executed properly will get you a plug to the DM and on the calendar!

Ex- If you sell insurance products the value to the GK may be all of the administrative tasks associated with health care, payroll and HR are handled by the vendor- thus saving the GK multiple hours of administrative work. Be creative!

  • When the Gk is stone cold and not very receptive the challenges are a bit more complex. How about sending the GK and the DM a handheld tape recorder with a customized greeting and invitation to meet. Always send two recorders with two separate recordings customized individually. Follow this up with a calender invite or a creative and fun greeting card to both the GK and DM. The DM's card can even have a picture of him/her on the front of the card..This will get their attention!

Don't let the GK stop you cold in your tracks. Remember the movie "Wall Street"? Bud was persistent, creative and personable with the QUEEN of all GK's and finally got in to see the MASTER behind the 20 foot tall double doors!

Monday, August 9, 2010

Call Metrics- Old School Vs. New School

Sales teams are often measured by complex metric systems designed to shed light on both team productivity and overall results. This criteria often includes daily call quantity, duration of calls, appointments set, and other micro-measurements.
The logic associated with this ideology is consistent high call activity leads to more meaningful conversations,increased appointment setting rates and more closed deals. In the past, this model was functional when executing a B2B prospecting campaign....Not so much the case in today's 2.0 environment.

Gone are the days of ripping through a random list of prospects with little to no knowledge of whom the prospects is, what they do, how decisions are made and what push button issues are important to the decision committee.

High level performance in today's "new school" world is far more a result of careful deliberation and efficiency!

Deliberation requires deep mining each call via social media networks,blogs, connections on linked'In, Jigsaw, and the like,for information that builds a case to support a solution. Dialing for dollars and hourly call metric reports are less relevant than in the past! The rep who diligently plots and plans their calls will be the rep exceeding quota. (90-100 high quality dials will net greater results than 150 unqualified low quality dials).

Efficiency requires following the old adage " working smarter not harder". According to the The Insidesales/M.I.T. study,
rather than dialing during low production calling hours (11AM-4PM), reps should be allocating valuable "pay time" call hours to time blocks that yield the best contact results (8Am-10Am & 4-6PM). The remaining hours spent on prospect nurturing, phone/face to face appointments, presentations and administration tasks.

A stalled economy, greater access to more information for decision makers and multi-tiered buying committees have all contributed to the lengthening of sales cycles. The result? Sales organizations must quickly adapt,access and implement multi-media prospecting methods to fully engage decision makers and close more business.