The CRAP Report

I’ve blogged before about my love for the Cobra Kai from The Karate Kid, but today I want to share with you my admiration for Mr. Miyagi.  You remember him, right, Daniel LaRusso’s pseudo father/mentor/karate teacher?  What I love most about Mr. Miyagi was his dedication to not only teaching Daniel Okinawan style karate, but it was his dedication to Daniel as a person.  Yes, he was willing to teach him karate, but he was going to do so all while making Daniel a better person.  As the movie goes on, you can see Daniel’s transformation from a fearful victim of bullying to a very confident young man.  You know, when you think about teleprospecting and lead generation, it’s our jobs as people who manage BDR’s to make them better, too, and one of the key things we need to teach our BDR’s is confidence.

Mr. Miyagi, played by the late, great Pat Morita, was the handy man of Daniel’s apartment complex.  After getting beaten up at a beach party, Daniel asks Miyagi to teach him how to fight.  Miyagi agrees, but with one condition, that Daniel do as he is instructed and without question.  Through a series of chores, including waxing cars and painting fences, Miyagi teaches Daniel how to defend himself, all without Daniel’s knowing.  For me, one of the best parts of the movie is when Daniel is balancing himself on the bow of a rowboat and having an exchange with Miyagi on learning how to punch.  Daniel’s “a-ha” moment comes when Miyagi asks him if he thinks he is training to fight, to which Daniel says, “no.”  Miyagi asks him why he trains then, and I just love Daniel’s response, “So I don’t have to fight.”  He’s built confidence into a boy who got the crap kicked out of him in front of the girl that he likes.  We’ve got to do the same with our BDR’s, and there are three ways I think we can do that: 

1. Teach them everything you know about the technology/services they’re calling on.
2. Explain the differentiators between their technology/services and the competition’s.
3. Give them room to practice, practice, and practice.

First, if you’re going to make sure that your BDR’s are as confident at teleprospecting as they can be, you’ve got to teach them everything you know about the technology/services that they’re calling on.  Sure, they need to be held accountable to learn that information on their own, but there is nothing like having that one-on-one training.  Hear me now and believe me later on this one – if you’re a bad trainer, get someone else to do it, but do it nonetheless.  It’s okay if you don’t have the time to do it mano-y-mano, but the point I’m trying to make is that they need training.  Hell, do your BDR’s one better, and as soon as you’ve finished training them on everything you know, bring in someone who knows even more than you and have them train the BDR’s, too.  The deal here is that, if knowledge is power, power can bring confidence.  The more your BDR’s know about the technology/services that they’re calling on, even if they don’t have to use it on the phone (and they shouldn’t, that’s sales’ or sales engineering’s job), the fact that they know their product inside and out brings confidence.  I’ve seen this in myself when I made teleprospecting calls and I see in my BDR’s.

Second, in order to help your BDR’s become more confident on the phone, explain the differentiators between the technology/services they’re calling and the competition’s.  Let them take all of the information you’ve trained them on about what it is you (or your client’s for those outsourced teleprospecting firms) do, and now share with them how you differentiate yourselves from everyone else.  You want to know how to discourage your BDR’s?  Tell them that your technology/services really doesn’t have any competition.  Wait until they get on the phone with a prospect who says (and they do say), “How are you any different than what I’ve already got?”  Telling them to tell prospects that, “Well, we really don’t have any competition, so we’re totally unique altogether,” is going to frustrate a prospect.  Build confidence in your BDR’s by helping them understand every possible objection that could possibly come up during a teleprospecting call.

Lastly, and this one is huge in building confidence especially in a rookie BDR, but give them room to practice, practice, and practice.  I’m talking about role playing here.  I can’t say enough good things about giving your BDR’s the opportunities to fall on their faces in a safe environment.  Are they going to do it on the phone?  Of course they are, but the fall is less painful if they’ve had the chance to practice prior.  Make sure you throw everything at them during role playing sessions.  Change things up and pretend to pass them to several different people in one organization.  Bring in some of the more senior sales folks and have them help run the training session.  If the old adage is true, that practice makes perfect, make sure that your BDR’s have the chance to build to perfection.  Role playing gives a BDR the chance to showcase all they know in front of the ones that taught them, and then get feedback on where they went right and where they went wrong.  If you’ve outsourced your teleprospecting efforts, please make sure that you take time to role play with the folks making calls on your behalf.  Your sales qualified leads are depending on it.

If you’re going to have an effective B2B lead generation machine, make sure that it’s a confident one.  I’m sure there are other ways to help instill confidence in your BDR’s, but I feel like if you can get the three from above down, in the long run, you’ll actually be building better sales people.  Your benefit from that could be exponentially greater!

So, how do you build confidence in your teleprospectors?