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Marketing

Are You Still Cold Calling?

Ravi Mathur
Sep 2011

During a meeting last month with one of the agencies, seeking business from us, I realized that the sales person has nothing to offer except asking some routine questions and going back with a polite assurance from my side “we will get in touch with you, when required”. I am sure he would have left thinking that he had a new account in site. But I on the other hand did not even keep his business card at a proper place to connect later.

Isn't it the story of lot of sales people in B2B place, where they make so much of an effort to get a meeting going and fail to understand that in spite of several meetings why the success rate is so low. Any seasoned sales professional will give you the correct answer “you have not researched enough about the company before meeting”.

That is true! But it is easier said than done. How do I get the information?

Are you as a sales person still using the sales techniques, which were discovered decades ago? The market scenario has changed completely and has changed for good. Just ask yourself, how many people had Laptops, Internet, Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook 10 years ago. May be few! But today almost every professional is on it, not only from his workplace, but even on the go from his mobile phone and tablets. The question is what role these things are playing in our sales process today, if they are available and so important.

You have a choice between, spending time with receptionists, junior executives etc. to seek information versus reach the right person in first go, calling the prospect with generic introduction versus hitting the hot buttons in the first call, asking the customer what he needs versus telling him what you believe is his need, ending a sales call with mere continuation versus ending the call with a new beginning.

What differentiates the first from the second sales person is the intelligent use of various social networking sites and Internet. Unfortunately 8 out of 10 sales professionals fall in the first category. Let me tell you how you can also be a modern tech savvy sales person.

First, do you have an account on www.Linkedin.com, if not; you are trying to fight a battle with a stone in a nuclear weapon era. You are missing connect with one crore professionals in India which are growing at a rate of 76% annually. If at all you have an account, how many connections do you have and more importantly how many of those connections are from your school, college, company and customers. Obviously the higher connections you have from the last category, the better are your chances of being connected with your prospects.

Linkedin offers some incredible tools to reach your customers, e.g. “Advanced People Search”, where you can search people by name, company, industry, job title, city, country and above all keywords. You may reach the right person in a click. Not only that, you can get to know his previous jobs, his other connections and find a common connection between both of you to get an introduction. To go further you can read the recommendations of your prospect and understand a lot about him. It can also be used for complementing your customer, at an appropriate time. Never forget to send your prospect a Linkedin connection request after your first call.

No, this article is not about Linkedin. Though Linkdin is one of the most powerful tools available, which you can explore, there are some other sites and tools as well, which can be of great help. One such tool is tweetbeep by Twitter, which help you to track any discussion happening around the world on the topic of your choice, you can track a company, a person, a topic etc. Google Alert also offers this, with a difference. Set up your alerts and let the information flow to you, instead of you reaching out for the same.

Another amazing site is Insideview.com, which gives you complete information about company business, turnover, key people, their contact info, their Linkedin profile etc. at one place. There are several other sites, which can help you in prospecting, getting information and identifying hot buttons, some of them are hoovers.com, zoominfo.com, netprospex.com.

An hour spent searching the net and social media sites can increase your chances of getting an appointment and closing it successfully many fold. As they say “The more you sweat in practice the less you bleed in battle”.

For more, join the group B2B India Sales at

http://www.linkedin.com/e/tabn8z-gqicv1x0-1z/vgh/4016246/

(For queries write to ravi.manisha.mathur@gmail.com)

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