The CRAP Report

My colleague Lindsay wrote about shifting teleprospecting strategies this week, and it got me thinking…

I realize I may be alienating any readers who are not fans of the Boston Red Sox with the following analogy, but what can I say?  I’m a Masshole!  Seriously, though, maybe this happens to your favorite baseball team, so just try to substitute the Sox for your team, and David Ortiz for the player on your team this happens to.  If you notice, when David Ortiz is up to bat, the opposing team typically “puts the shift on.”  The entire infield shifts over to right, because that is, more often than not (when its not a home run) the location of where Ortiz tends to hit the ball.  Other teams in baseball have realized this, and in turn, when Ortiz is up to bat, the players shift position.  In the same light, your teleprospecting team (or manager for that matter) needs to know when to “put the shift on” when your sales prospecting efforts may not be as effective as they should be.

There have been many projects that I’ve worked on when my client and I have determined that we needed to shift strategies for a teleprospecting campaign that was not yielding as many leads as we both believed it should have.  If you’ve got an outsourced sales prospecting team qualifying leads for you, or if you’ve got a team of your own in-house doing that, make sure they know when its time to change directions for a telesales effort that may not be as successful as you think it should be.  Amongst many ways you should (or your BDR Manager should) know when to “put the shift on,” if you answer any of the following three questions with a “no,” then I’d say its time: 

1. Are you targeting the right individual?
2. Are you making enough attempts?
3. Is your messaging as simplified as it can be?

First, are you targeting the right individual?  This may seem like a simple question, or that it has a simple answer, but its one that needs to be asked regardless.  If you’re not sure that you’re targeting the right person, and your teleprospectors report back to you that people have no idea what they’re talking about on the phone, I’d say its time to rethink who you’re targeting.  I’ve worked with folks before who believed that their target audience was in the Operational side of an organization, yet when my BDR’s called them, nobody knew what the hell they were talking about.  They would get pushed over to the IT side of the house, and have people interested in why they were calling, but my client would say, “Well, what about Operations?”  They needed to be told it was time to “put the shift on” with the Operations side – we needed to target IT because IT understood my BDR’s and actually wanted to talk with my client.  I know that it goes without saying, but you’ve got someone making teleprospecting calls for you and passing you sales qualified leads, you’d better be targeting the right person.

Second, are your BDR’s making enough attempts into the prospect base?  This is huge, man!  Just because you’ve got a team inside making dials or you’ve got a vendor doing it, doesn’t mean they’re making enough dials for you.  If you’re not seeing the production that you think you should be, find out if your BDR’s are trying hard enough.  Remember, though, I’m not solely speaking about “calls.”  We’re in the digital age right?  Hell, if you’re reading this you know how to use a computer.  We’re ALL more likely to reply to an email than we are to pick up a ringing telephone.  Emails count here, folks.  You should be able to trust your inside team or your vendor to know when the output is not at a level indicative of the leads that you expect to be receiving on a monthly basis.  Just think of what five extra calls and five extra emails per day might get you?  At the end of just one week, we’re talking an additional 50 attempts into your prospects, or an extra 200 per month.  That is huge!

Lastly, you’ve got to ask yourself if your messaging is as simplified as it can be.  For some of you reading, this may be tough due to a complex solution, but you’ve got to try.  As someone who’s actually made teleprospecting calls before, I know that a prospect doesn’t have a lot of time to talk.  If I have to spend the majority of my 30 seconds with them trying to explain my client’s complicated solution, I’m dead in the water.  Your BDR Manager should be responsible enough to you to tell you that the messaging needs to be simpler.  If there’s a lot of product dumping in your teleprospecting script, put the shift on my friend.  Your BDR’s are LUCKY if they get 30 seconds from a prospect.  Make their job easier by helping them to formulate a script that is as easy to understand as your technology allows.  Spend some time with the reps on the phone and listen to what they’re actually saying to prospects.  Does it even make sense to you?  I’ve received prospecting scripts back from clients before that were several paragraphs in length, and it always amazes me that they think a BDR can get all of that out without being hung up on.  Then, when I have the BDR read it back to them during a role play, the light goes on in their head and they understand that the BDR sounds ridiculous trying to say all of that gobbledygook.  Put the shift on if your messaging can be made simpler.

So as I said, there are other ways you can “put the shift on”; these are just a few.  Make sure, though, if you’re not seeing the output that you believe you should from your teleprospecting efforts that you ask yourself the above questions.  What else am I forgetting?  Oh yeah, go SOX!