The CRAP Report

I bet most of you are probably like me – you’ve made countless numbers of cold calls, warm calls, and “Good-God-please-pick-up-the-phone” calls.  And probably just like me, at some point in your teleprospecting career, you’ve used tips and tricks to get a prospect talking with you.  Some work, some don’t.  Regardless of what was successful for getting your prospect talking, getting them to understand why they should be talking with you is paramount.  How do you go about doing this?  How do you take those few precious seconds after saying, “Hi, this is _____” and actually get a prospect to talk with you?  For me, I think it’s all in having a prospect understand why they need to talk with you.

I’ve worked with a bunch of clients who are really good at describing what they do.  They understand the pains that their solutions solve and they have a really good handle on why their target audience wants to talk with them.  If you’ve got your own inside sales prospecting team, or maybe you’ve got a vendor finding sales qualified leads for you, you’ve got to make sure your BDR’s have that messaging down.  Prospects need to understand why they need to talk with them if they’re going to have success passing quality sales opportunities over to your sales team.  The way I see it, there are three ways you can help your BDR’s (and your prospects) out in this area: 

1. Help them understand a prospect’s pain.
2. Help them understand how your solution solves it.
3. Help them to shape their messaging by leading with value.

First, to help your prospects understand why they should talk with your organization, help your BDR’s to understand a prospect’s pain.  This is teleprospecting 101, I know, but because of its importance it needs to be stated.  If your BDR’s do not understand what business pains your target audience has that your solution/service can solve, you’ve got a lot of work to do.  Your BDR’s should be able to understand, at different decision making levels, the pains that each level experiences.  Why might a C-Level prospect be kept up at night about a problem that your service/solution solves?  Her Director?  His Manager?  The end user?  Lots of folks out there have problems – especially your prospects.  Ensuring that your BDR’s understand their problems is going to help them to better qualify prospects, and in turn, pass better sales qualified opportunities.

Second, help your BDR’s to understand how your solution solves your prospects pains.  Its good if your BDR’s know what pains your target market has; its great if they can articulate how your solution/service solves said pains.  What does your solution do for a company?  Why does it make them a better organization?  These are questions that need to be answered for your BDR’s, and answered in such a way that they are able to relay it simply to your prospects.  With greater understanding comes greater levels of conversations with prospects, and the more substantive conversations that they have with prospects, the better your qualified leads will be.  The better the lead, the greater the likelihood that it hits pipeline and closes.  Pete Gracey talks more about this in part one of his eBook, Driving Marketing ROI, and you can read that here.

Lastly, help your BDR’s to shape their messaging by leading with value.  Your BDR’s understand business pains across multiple management levels, and they understand how your product or service alleviates those pains.  Make sure that when they actually get a prospect on the phone, they’re leading with the value that your solutions bring.  No feature dumping…God please, NO feature dumping.  Nobody wants to get a call from a BDR.  There, I said it.  But NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY, wants to get a call from a BDR who’s verbally puking on the phone about all the bells and whistles that his/her product has.  Help your BDR’s (or your vendor’s BDR’s) by working with them to created messaging that leads with your value.  Your prospects will appreciate it!

By following the above steps, you’re letting your prospects understand why they should speak with someone in your organization when your BDR’s call.  When you prospects have better clarification on that, I’m betting that your lead production will increase.  Good luck!