To a certain degree, your success in the new year depends on whether you start the year on fire and produce a kick-ass January. First month, first week, first day. Pedal to the metal. Balls to the wall. Pick your favorite cliché – any of them will work. Just make an impact beginning on day one. Rinse and repeat.

A Broadway Lesson

In December, we saw the Broadway performance of, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”

My wife and son are huge Harry Potter fans but I could always take it or leave it. (My wife and I swap perspectives for James Bond.) I had no expectations for the show other than being fairly certain that a three-hour show would be way too long for me.

The live, on stage magic, I mean wizardry, was on display from the beginning of the show and while they didn’t make cars or motorcycles appear and disappear like David Copperfield does, people did vanish and reappear right before our eyes. We were very close to the stage and still couldn’t figure out how they did it.

In other words, from the opening minutes of the show, the cast reached out, grabbed us by the throat, and didn’t let go for three hours.

From Broadway to Selling

Quickly grabbing your audience’s attention is a hallmark of a great show, concert, speech, or movie, something salespeople could learn to do much more effectively. The reality is that on a first phone call, salespeople usually come across as boring, stiff, abrasive, dry, immature, scripted, or otherwise undeserving of anything more than a 10-second conversation.

Delivery

It might be helpful to explore six of the reasons why most salespeople sound so dreadful on introductory or cold calls.

• Boring: On their intro calls, most salespeople focus on their product and/or company, and not about their prospects. The result is an introduction that the prospect can’t wait to end.
• Stiff: For some reason, some salespeople try to sound like news broadcasters on their calls. Why would anyone want to speak with one of them?
• Abrasive: Salespeople have a tendency to rush the call to get it over with. The problem with rushing is that the faster they speak, the more abrasive it sounds.
• Dry: When it comes to sounding dry, technical salespeople want their prospects to be aware that they are first and foremost subject matter experts, making them the biggest offenders in this group.
• Immature: I’m being nice. You’ve received phone calls from this group of unprepared morons who, if you interrupt them or take them off script, become completely helpless and useless.
• Scripted: One of the reasons to work from a script is so that salespeople can stay true to the desired messaging. But reading, memorizing or bastardizing a script is mechanical and turns people off, not on.

Unfortunately, most cold calls start with long pauses, a tip-off that the call was initiated by a robo-dialer. Then the caller begins their script and doesn’t take a breath so you have to wait a while before you can get them off the phone. While I’m kind and patient with professional salespeople, the scripted, mechanical morons don’t get any of my time because they don’t respect me or my time. Expect most prospects to feel the same way.

Magic

The real magic occurs in the first 10 seconds of the call, before the script, prior to positioning statements, and when a salesperson can simply have fun! When the first 10 seconds are fun, the rest of the call is easier because the prospect is already engaged. Example: after you introduce yourself and hear the a half-listening and half-not listening call response, you can say, “It doesn’t sound like you were expecting my call!”

When the salesperson has a magical beginning to the call and follows it up with a relevant and timely positioning statement locked and loaded for engagement, calls can more easily be converted to meetings.

Successful Calls

A salesperson can be successful using the phone to call and schedule meetings when they combine:

• Magical phone presence (described above)
• Powerful positioning statements
• Listening instead of talking
• Prospect and issue-focused two-way conversations
• Identifying an issue or opportunity

The majority of salespeople suck at this. Many are no longer expected to prospect because the company has a team of BDRs doing it causing most salespeople to have forgotten how to prospect.

The Stats

According to the data from more than 2.5 million sales assessments by Objective Management Group, 63% of salespeople are strong in the Hunting Competency. That doesn’t seem so bad because salespeople score higher in the Hunting competency than the other Tactical selling competencies. There are 21 Sales Core Competencies. You can see the data broken down by sales percentile for all 21, see how they differ by industry, and even compare your company to others in your industry. Click here.

Those stats I just shared don’t tell the entire story.

There are two groups of salespeople in the Hunting data:

• Those who are on a sales team that was evaluated. We can call this group veterans, established, seasoned, experienced or, account managers, and as I have come to recognize them, complacent. Only 40% of this group has Hunting as a strength
• Those who are applying for a sales position at company. This includes terminated, laid-off, voluntarily exited, positions eliminated due to mergers and acquisitions, and brand-new salespeople. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that 71% of this group has Hunting as a strength.

Hunting is like a muscle and when it isn’t used, it atrophies. That’s why so many existing salespeople suck at Hunting and more candidates applying for sales positions have it as a strength. They know they’ll have to hunt.

Summary

“If I had to schedule new meetings to fill my personal pipeline, I would make those prospecting calls myself. I don’t want to conduct a discovery call with a prospect that somebody else spoke with.”

One of the most common problems we solve globally, is sales teams with half-empty pipelines, ineffective BDRs, and salespeople who refuse make cold calls. Is it any wonder why win-rates are so low and quota attainment is so low?

As always, if you need to address any of these issues, we can help.