The CRAP Report

If you’re somewhere close to my age (35) you may remember a brand of toy cars called Micro Machines.  Micro Machines were pretty much what you’d expect, they were smaller versions of what was considered a normal toy car in the 1980’s.  Micro Machines were basically mini-Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars and they were pretty popular at the time.  The one thing that I remember most about Micro Machines was their commercial’s spokesman, John Moschitta, Jr.  Now, by name alone you probably don’t know who this guy is, but if I told you he was the speed talking voice-over announcer for stuff in the ‘80s, you’re probably nodding your head saying, “Oh yeah – that guy!”  John Moschitta, Jr., according to his Wikipedia entry, held the Guinness World Record for speed talking at 586 words per minute.  That is crazy!  I think it’s great that Moschitta, Jr. was able to find his niche in life in terms of using his talent to do commercials and voice-overs, but I’ll tell you this – he wouldn’t have made a good teleprospector talking that fast!

A teleprospector, or business development rep, who could talk at the speed of Moschitta, Jr., just wouldn’t really find success in B2B lead generation.  Sure, we need BDR’s who are comfortable talking to prospects, just not at that speed.  Your in-house team of lead generators, or your vendor’s team, needs to know how to talk, sure, but more importantly, they need to know how to get your prospects to talk.  You see, it’s one thing to know how to hold a conversation.  Pretty much anyone can do that.  To get a prospect talking and giving your BDR’s information to qualify sales opportunities, that’s a whole other ballgame.  I think if your BDR’s, or the BDR’s who are making calls on your behalf through your vendor, are going to get your prospects talking, they need to be able to do three things: 

1. They need to ask smart questions.
2. They need to ask open ended questions.
3. They need to listen, listen, and listen!

Since the typical target of a teleprospecting campaign begins high, at the C-level, we can agree that those folks are pretty intelligent.  So first, if you want prospects to talk to your BDR’s, then it stands to reason that they need to ask smart questions.  They need to take the time to really understand the technology or the services that their qualifying for.  They need to take that understanding (or their manager needs, too) and use that as a lens with which to understand a prospects need or pain.  Better understanding, better comprehension of how their technology or services solve business problems allows for the ability to ask smarter questions to their prospects.  Look, I’ve been on my fair share of projects where, at their start, I didn’t really grasp the technology that my client was offering.  My questioning skills were at pretty remedial levels because I was afraid to ask deeper probing questions for fear that I wouldn’t be able to hang with the prospect, conversationally speaking.  Now, as those projects aged, and I had made more dials and had more conversations and spent more time with my client understanding their technology, my conversations with prospects improved.  I was able to ask smarter questions; questions that, as Pete Gracey talks about in part two of his eBook Driving Marketing ROI, gets our prospect telling us things we want to hear from them.  Smarter questions = questions that have been forged through the refining process of better technological/product services understanding.  They are questions that give the prospect the hint that your BDR’s know what they’re talking about.

Second, and this is about as basic as it gets, but your BDR’s need to ask open-ended questions.  Let’s all take a trip in our time machines and go back to sixth grade English class for a second – open-ended questions are ones that illicit a response from someone greater than a one word answer.  We’re not looking for “yes” and “no” type questions here.  Your BDR’s need to have, at their disposal, as many open-ended qualification questions as you can put in front of them.  If the goal is to get a prospect talking, what good does it do to have an order taker on the phone qualifying your sales opportunities?  “Got this OS?”  “Don’t you want to save money?” “Do you have money to purchase?” “Are you feeling (insert business pain here)?”  You get the drift.  Maybe in late ‘90s you could have an order taker, but not today.  Spend some time with your BDR’s and develop some great open-ended questions that give your prospects the chance to spill their guts of all of their problems that (hopefully) your technology or services can solve.  It’s so critical that your BDR’s get this one right, folks.  A conversation full of open-ended versus closed-ended questions is the difference between a fully qualified sales opportunity and an opportunity lost.  Here is a list of 30 good open-ended questions from Just Sell that your BDR’s should be using today.

Lastly, if your BDR’s are going to get prospects to talk, they need to listen, listen, and listen.  If everything in real estate hinges on location, location, location, “listening” is its teleprospecting counterpart.  I’ve been on the end of phone conversations listening in to BDR’s who just wouldn’t shut up and let the prospect talk.  They’d spend the majority of the time interrupting the prospect with how our clients could do this for them, and how our clients could do that.  Interrupt a prospect, who by the way, is cursing him-or-herself for actually picking UP your BDR’s phone call, and they’re going to close down faster than ANY restaurant next to Jay’s on Route 28 in West Bridgewater. Yes, it’s a geographical reference, but trust me when I tell you, as soon as their having their Grand Opening, they’re having their Grand Closing.  A couple of weeks ago I asked you if your BDR’s were listening to your prospects, and you can check that out here.  My point here, though, is that if your BDR’s are too busy interrupting your prospects, they’re sending a message that says, “I’m really just in this for me, not to help you.”  Let your prospect feel that for a minute and you’ve lost them.  If your BDR’s are listening, that means they’re giving your prospects time to talk, and THAT, my friends, is what we’re after here – talking prospects.

If you want your prospects to talk with your BDR’s, they need to ask smart, open-ended questions, and then listen.  If your BDR’s are doing that, congrats!  If not, shoot me an email and we can talk about fixing that.