*The following is an excerpt from Mark Bishop's book, The Trusted Seller; the foundation for the What Buyers Want sales training program. Contact us for more information.
Persistence is HUGE. In fact, you could argue that a sales rep could get in the door simply by staying in the buyer's face, never taking 'no' for an answer and hounding the buyer until a meeting is granted. But I wouldn't recommend it.
This technique may be effective in gaining time on the buyer's schedule. However, your chances for an eventual long-term relationship increase dramatically if you can demonstrate your persistence without ticking off the person you want to win over.
You can't develop top-of-mind awareness with a buyer unless you provide frequent "reminders" that you exist. The very best salespeople have enviable relationships with buyers for a number of reasons, but all of them had to get in the door first. They accomplished this task, in part, through their persistence in communicating with the customer. Here are a few things to consider:
Out of sight, out of mind. In general, I recommend that you make contact about once every two weeks in the earliest stages of prospecting, unless follow-up or buyer interest demands more frequent contact. Then, after you've developed rapport with your buyer, reaching out to your buyer once every couple of months should be adequate to maintain top-of-mind awareness if the timing for a purchase wasn't quite right when you were prospecting.
Regardless of how you choose to contact the buyer, the point is that you've got to be persistent about reminding him that you exist. Otherwise, you'll never be the first who comes to mind when the buyer has a problem that you could solve!
At the tone, leave a message. Numerous sales reps share the same beef with voice mail: It's impersonal... it's difficult to present a mini sales spiel without customer feedback... plus, it doesn't work because the buyer doesn't call back anyway. Well, if your prospective buyer frequently travels, attends a lot of meetings and spends much of the day already on the phone, you may not have much choice other than to leave a voice message.
Consider voice mail an advertisement. It's an ad that makes the buyer aware of who you are, what your company does and what you can do for the buyer. Effective voice mail messages help get the buyer's attention and generate the awareness you must have to get in the door. A few tips to keep in mind:
Whatever you do, don't leave a message that sounds like this:
"Hi, I'm Tommy Talker from ABC Corporation. The operator told me you're the person in charge of buying printing for your office. I just wanted to give you a call and introduce myself so you could keep us in mind next time you need any printing. If you could give me a call at 123-456-7890 when you have a chance, I'd love to talk more with you about what we do."
Guess what – no dice. As a buyer, the minute I hear that you got my name from the operator, I know that you haven't done any homework at all to assess whether my organization would use your products or services. I don't know you, (and sometimes, I don't even know your company), and I don't know why I'd want to take the time to call you back.
Give the buyer something to work with. Let him know who you are, what company you work for and a sense of why it may benefit him to invest the time in calling you back. Like other buyers, I return calls to people who make a legitimate claim on my time.
Change the channel to keep it fresh. Naturally, everyone has a preferred method of communication – some prefer the phone; others choose email; still others prefer face-to-face interaction. When prospecting, your best bet is to cover all the bases.
Your preferred method may be the phone, but if your buyer prefers email, the two of you will never hook up. A few things to keep in mind:
Until you know for certain how your prospect prefers to communicate with you, it's best to cover all your bases by changing your method of contact. Plus, by changing communication vehicles, it's a great way to demonstrate your persistence without becoming a pain in the ass. Two voice messages, a follow-up email message, a customized package sent via snail mail and another two voice messages "touch" the buyer differently than do six virtually identical voice messages.
Here's an interesting observation about salespeople who leave unsolicited voice-mail messages for buyers: If the buyer doesn't return the call, only half of those salespeople will make a second attempt to reach the buyer.
In fact, this behavior is predictable enough that it actually helps memanage my time as a buyer. I intentionally "fail" to return the first call or two from a prospective new vendor. I want to see who keeps calling back because that tells me who really wants my business. Those who really believe that we have something to talk about always try again. The others don't.
Did you realize that buyers also use salespeople's "callback attempts" to derive information other than to assess which vendors really want the business? When a sales rep calls back a few times, it's frequently evidence that he has done enough legwork to suspect a good fit for his products or services; plus, this persistence also suggests the salesperson may be diligent about handling after-sales issues.
One study of top-performing salespeople across a broad spectrum of industries found it typically takes an average of five contacts (via phone, letter or email) to get an appointment with a prospect ("10 practices..." 1996, 2). If you want time on the buyer's schedule, give yourself a shot. Call back. Show the buyer you're interested.
Yeah, it may seem like that sometimes. But there's a good reason. Think about the buyer's environment for a minute. Like most professionals in today's business climate, a buyer is ridiculously busy. In a buyer's world, however, the job itself demands that he make time for current and new vendors.
From the buyer's perspective, this task becomes a bit easier when dealing only when serious vendors. That's why a number of buyers adopt strategies that help them separate the serious from the not-so-serious sales reps. Here are just a few:
One of my best buyer friends told me once: "As a rule, I never return a call from someone I don't have an ongoing business relationship with until they've tried to reach me three times." When I asked his reasoning, he said, "Simple. When they call three times, I know they really have something important to talk about."
Until you are a respected part of the buyer's business, you need to work with buyers on their terms. This means you should identify what guidelines they may have adopted for seeing sales reps – and then adapt as necessary to accommodate the buyer's schedule.
Two thoughts on what NOT to do. First, don't ask for a response from the buyer every time you make contact. Asking for a reply each time diminishes the impact of your message. When you request action from a buyer, you're asking the buyer to give up his time. Your goal with making contact repeatedly is to achieve top-of-mind awareness, not to become a pest. Trust me; the buyer knows you want the business. After all, you've demonstrated this through your persistence.
Secondly, abandon your efforts if the buyer tells you to buzz off or provides other, more subtle clues, such as "Leave me alone, you parasite! I'm calling the state attorney general's office when I hang up here. Quit calling me – enough is enough." There's a level of persistence with sellers that is respected or even admired. In other cases however, there's a level of unreasonable persistence that can only be defined as pest-like.
We've wrapped up our work on getting the buyer's attention. Are you with me so far? When you demonstrate every one of these four behaviors you'll achieve the first milestone (getting the buyer's attention) that's required before you can build the business relationship. A buyer who receives a relevant, targeted message from a persistent sales rep who consistently exhibits purpose will become aware that YOU are the link to products/services that may benefit the buying organization in some way.
That's when you get your shot to really talk with the buyer. When you earn time on the buyer's schedule, that's how you know you've gotten the buyer's attention, created awareness and achieved the first milestone in the business relationship. Then, it becomes time to work toward achieving the second important milestone: developing rapport with the buyer.
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