Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent your day with family and you’ve had your fill of turkey and bad football.  Hopefully you’ve also had the opportunity to reflect on things you’re thankful for.  While the typical stuff comes to mind for me – my wife and my son, their health and happiness as well as the same for my extended family, the usual is really no less important.  Every year that I spend with my family makes me truly more thankful that they’re in my life than the year before.  On a more professional note, there are a number of things that I’m thankful for as well, and what a better day to share them with you than today?

There are a lot of things that get taken for granted on a day to day basis that I think deserve some recognition today.  Maybe you’ll agree with me, and see them as things that you’re thankful for, too:

1.  I’m thankful for the BDR’s at AG Salesworks.  Hey, for the most part, The CRAP Report is as free of a sales pitch as it can be, but on this one I need to share a little bit.  I work with some of the hardest Business Development Rep’s in the industry.  The BDR’s at AG are not only a great group of people, but they’re great professionally speaking, too.  They care about our clients and they care about honing their craft.  They make a boat load of calls and pass fully qualified sales opportunities that our clients are happy about.  I’m thankful that they take their jobs seriously and when presented with tough tasks, they always rise to the occasion.

2.  I’m thankful for the CRM solution that we use, Salesforce.com.  We’ve used it since day one in 2002 and I’ve liked using it ever since.  Now this is not a commercial for Salesforce.com; you may be thankful for the CRM that you use and that is great, too.  Salesforce.com has allowed me to help my reps manage their lists, help my clients to manage their lists, and its given me and my colleagues the ability to run reports and manage our team’s metrics in ways that an excel sheet would just make mind-numbingly time-consuming. 

3.  I’m thankful for our clients, both past and present.  I’m thankful that they recognize and see the benefits of highly targeted teleprospecting campaigns for their sales efforts.  I’m glad that they choose us to work with, and I’m thankful that the technology that they bring to their respective markets makes people’s lives easier.

4.  I’m thankful for my colleagues.  I get the opportunity to work with people, every day, who I consider great friends.  They’re the best, and they make me better with each day I work with them.

5.  Lastly, I’m thankful for the folks in the B2B Sales and Marketing community.  People like Richard April, Mike Damphousse, Trish Bertuzzi, Brian Carroll, Ardath Albee, Robert Lesser, David Meerman Scott – these are all folks that have made an impact in me, both on how I do what I do, but more importantly, why I do what I do.  I hope that someday I’ll be able to help them like they’ve been able to help me.

There you have it – some things that, as Thanksgiving 2009 comes to a close, I’m very thankful for.  I hope you’ve all had a great holiday and had the chance to stuff yourselves!  Now, what about you?  What “professional” things are you thankful for?

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!

Last week I started a four part series on why the people managing your teleprospecting team need to be a little bit like each of the four members of The A-Team.  On Thursday, I shared with you how your BDR Manager needs to be a pilot for their team, a little over the top, and quick thinking like “Howling Mad” Murdock.  On Friday, I explained why your telesales manager needs to be a “master of disguise,” resourceful, and focused on your customers like Face was.  In addition to all of those qualities, your BDR Manager also needs to know when enough is enough, how to keep your troops in line, and how to be a fix-it man.  Today, it’s all about the meanest, toughest, Mohawk-headed badass of The A-Team, B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus.

B.A. Baracus, played by Mr. T, was many things to The A-Team.  He was certainly the toughest of the bunch, as well as the meanest (hence the nickname “Bad Attitude”).  B.A. was also The A-Team’s go-to mechanic.  B.A. was MacGyver with muscles.  Whenever the team needed a tank built out of a ’57 Chevy, some sheet metal, and a box of bananas, somehow B.A. was able to make due.  And in a fight!?  Forget about it.  B.A. took on all the bad guys he could, barely leaving any for the rest of the team to tackle.  You may have yourself an in-house team developing sales qualified leads for you, or maybe you’ve secured a partner to do your B2B lead generation.  What you need, though, is to make sure the person managing that team is a little bit like B.A. Baracus.  Not so much with the Mohawk hair cut and gold chains (though that would be fun!), but more so like B.A. in the following three areas: 

1. They need to be like a mechanic.
2. They need to be a disciplinarian.
3. They need to know when to say “no.”

B.A. was The A-Team’s mechanic, and as I stated before, could make you anything you needed vehicle-wise, as well as drive it.  The comparison here is that your BDR Manager needs to be like a mechanic – they need to be able to diagnose a problem, as mechanics do, and fix them.  Your teleprospecting manager needs to be able to tell when a campaign is not running like it should be.  They need to be able to analyze all the parts of the teleprospecting effort and not only pinpoint where the problems are, but then also have the know how to actually fix the problem.  Does the problem stem from something simple like not making enough dials to generate enough interested companies into a pipeline, or is it something complicated, like trying to figure out buzz words that resonate with a really niche prospect base?  Maybe the problem comes from sending out a bunch of mailers that never reached their intended audience, and so you need to make smarter dials to actually find that audience, or maybe the problem comes from, as I talked about in my first blog entry, a product that nobody really wants.  Regardless of the problem, your teleprospecting manager needs to be able to evaluate the situation and fix the problem at hand, much like B.A. would do with any mechanical issue The A-Team had.

It was no secret that probably one of the greatest strengths that B.A. brought to The A-Team was his fighting prowess.  The bad guys never wanted to mess with B.A. (would you!?).  In a similar fashion, your BDR Manager needs to be a disciplinarian when a disciplinarian is called for.  I’ve spent the last nine years working in a telesales environment, and while there are certainly times for fun, there are times when things need to be serious, too.  There have been times when I’ve had to give people verbal warnings, written warnings, and even terminate employment because of performance levels.  It’s not a fun part of the job, but if you’re going to have a great BDR Manager, they need to know how to run a tight ship and be a disciplinarian when needed.  As much as I would like everybody to be buddy-buddy in the office, a manager can’t afford to be that way.  B.A. was able to lay the smack down when The A-Team needed it, and so should your teleprospecting manager.  Figuratively speaking of course.

Lastly, if you recall from the old TV show, B.A. was afraid of flying.  He never wanted to go anywhere by plane and he wasn’t afraid to tell the rest of the group.  That never stopped them from drugging his milk so that he would sleep through the plane rides, though.  In the same manner, your BDR Manager needs to know when to say “no.”  Let me flesh that out a little bit more for you:  I once had a client who wanted my team to drive attendance to a seminar that they were having, along with finding them sales qualified opportunities.  I had no problem with this as it was going to generate additional revenue to add the additional headcount for the event optimization.  My client, on the other hand, didn’t understand why their teleprospector couldn’t do that at the same time they were qualifying leads.  They wanted my BDR to find seminar attendees and qualified leads at the same time.  That’s a no-no in my book.  If you shift the focus of a BDR from lead generation to adding on the responsibility of event optimization at the same time, your lead production plummets.  I know this because I’ve learned from my mistakes.  In that instance, I had to know when to say “no.”  I was not going to have the BDR do both, because I knew it would come at a cost, and that cost was too great in my book, as I was going to be evaluated by that same client for lead output.  Your BDR Manager needs to know when to say “no” for productivity’s sake.

Well, that’s three A-Team members down, with one more to go.  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s entry, where I’ll share with you why your BDR Manager needs to be a little more John “Hannibal” Smith.

Let me recount a favorite movie scene of mine for you…

The Terminator: I’m a friend of Sarah Connor. I was told she was here. Could I see her please?
Desk Sergeant: No, you can’t see her she’s making a statement.
The Terminator: Where is she?
Desk Sergeant: It may take a while. Want to wait? There’s a bench over there
The Terminator: [looks around, examining the structural integrity of the room, then looks back at him] I’ll be back!

The next thing you know, SMASH!  A car drives right through the front of the police station!  Adaptable man, adaptable!  In the movie of the same name, The Terminator, played by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, was easily one of the most adaptable movie villains of all time.  Sent from the future to assassinate Sarah Connor, the mother of the Terminator’s future’s protagonist, the Terminator stops at nothing to accomplish his goal.  I want, and you want, teleprospectors who are adaptable like the Terminator.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this movie before, or maybe at least one of the several sequels that it has spawned.  During the course of the movie, there are several occasions when the Terminator is being thwarted from his primary objective, and he just keeps on coming.  He lands on earth with no clothes, he doesn’t care, he takes them.  He needs to find ONE woman named Sarah Conner, so he hunts her down using the phone book.  Whatever is thrown his way, he adapts to it and moves on.  I want my BDR’s to be just like that.  If you’ve got an in-house team or maybe a vendor partnering with you to generate qualified sales opportunities, you want that, too.  They way I see it, there are three ways your teleprospecting reps need to be adaptable: 

1. When they’re blocked by a gate-keeper.
2. When they’re told by a prospect that there is no interest.
3. When its time to shift on to another project.

When BDR’s are blocked by gate-keepers, they need to be adaptable.  They need to be able to tell the tone an administrative assistant is taking with them and determine whether or not they are going to reach their desired outcome, which is talking with a decision maker.  While they’re on the call, understanding because they’ve sensed the tone being taken with them, BDR’s who are adaptable are already planning their next move to get to their goal, which is in this instance, speaking with the person responsible for making decisions on purchasing the software/services that they’re generating leads for.  Like the Terminator, they know they’re not going to take “no” for an answer.  It may appear that way to the gate-keeper, but appearances aren’t everything.

You know you have yourself an adaptable BDR when they work around a prospect who’s told them that there is no interest in what they’re qualifying for.  Now, I’m not mixing “pushy” with “adaptable” here.  Great BDR’s are able to LISTEN to (not just hear) why a prospect isn’t interested.  BDR’s who are adaptable know their solution/services enough to know how to pose questions to prospects that get them talking, and get them talking about the pains that they’re experiencing.  For example, one of my best clients provides a talent management solution for one particular industry, and they do it well.  Actually they do it extremely well.  They’ve got over 1,000 satisfied customers, of whom 99% are willing to take reference calls.  When my BDR’s talk to healthcare organizations who have no automated solution in place and are told there’s no interest in automating, so they adapt to that answer.  They poke and prod in all the right places until they get the prospect talking about why their manual process is such a pain in the ass.  They know how to work around an answer that they don’t like just like the Terminator driving his car through the police station.

Lastly, when its time to shift from one project to another, great BDR’s adapt to that change.  They see this as a challenge and a time to learn something new.  You don’t have to worry about them putting up a stink because their last project was puppies and ice cream and this new one is not.  They adapt to their new project and don’t miss a beat production wise.  They put in more calls because they understand they’ve got to build a pipeline of interested accounts, and to do that means putting in extra effort.

If you’re wondering whether or not you’ve got yourself a great teleprospecting team, ask yourself if they’ve got this quality down.  If they do, that’s great!  If not, stay tuned to…I’ll be back!

I hate being sick.  I know I’m not the only one out there who does, but I just want to get that out of the way.  Regardless, back to blogging!

So, last week I shared some thoughts with you on whether or not your sales prospecting vendor was listening to you and whether or not your business development reps were listening to your prospects.  Today, however, I want to ask you if you’re listening to your teleprospecting vendor?  If you don’t have someone providing your sales organization with qualified opportunities, maybe you’ve got a team doing that in-house for you, in which case, I would pose the same question.  They need you, you know, if your project with them is going to be successful or not.  No B2B lead generation provider is an island!  So what about you then?  Are you listening to your teleprospecting team?

I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the most successful teleprospecting campaigns that I’ve managed had at least one thing in common – a client who listened.  It is the rare project that succeeds where a client is not really “all in” with us.  I could never understand why someone would want to acquire someone to generate sales qualified leads for them, yet never really participate in the process.  Look, I’m not saying that I want a client to do our job for us, certainly not.  I do need them to listen, though.  There are, however, three questions you should be paying high levels of attention to from your teleprospecting team: 

1. Can you help us with your list?
2. Can you listen in on calls with us?
3. Can you help in closing the loop with sales?

First off, you’ve got to answer the question of “can you help us with your list?”  Your vendor shouldn’t be looking for you to give you the Glengarry leads, but at the same time, you should be able to provide a framework around the contents of your list.  I’ve worked with several clients who were quite good at segmenting out which lists our teleprospectors should be calling into and what product they should be qualifying for.  Conversely, I’ve worked with several clients who just threw lists at me and said, “here, you sort it out.”  Help your vendor or inside team when they ask for your help in managing their list.  The biggest, and I mean BIGGEST, help you can give here is to make sure that if you’ve given lists to them, that you’ve scrubbed the list of your current customers and companies that are not a good fit for you.

Second, answer the question, “can you listen in on calls with us?” with a resounding, “YES!”  I’m in awe every time I ask a client to do that and they tell me that they don’t have the time.  Really?  You’ve got the money to invest in teleprospecting, yet you can’t find a couple of hours to listen to how your message is being delivered to the masses?  This one is huge, folks.  If your vendor or inside folks ask you to shadow on calls with their BDR’s, do it.  You need to do it because you can course correct any messaging that is a little awry, and you need to do it because if lead production is not where you want it to be, you can listen in on live prospecting conversations to find out why.  You need to do it because your spending money on it, and every hour spent by a BDR hunting for your perfect prospect is a direct factor in seeing your Marketing Return on Investment (mROI).  Whether you’ve got a vendor acquired or an inside team, listening in on teleprospecting calls is a must.

Lastly, when your vendor or in-house team asks, “can you help in closing the loop with sales?” you need to.  In cases where you’ve got a vendor making your teleprospecting calls, you really need to lend a hand when asked.  Your vendor should be able to handle closing the loop themselves, but we know how sales reps can be when we’re looking for their feedback.  Typically, they’re too busy giving demos, meeting prospects, or putting proposals together to do so; however, to truly see your mROI, you need their feedback.  Your sales folks are only going to respond to vendors so much as they’ve been bugged and bugged to do so by someone on the inside, and for better or for worse, that inside person is you.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve hired someone else to find sales qualified leads for you or you have your own team doing so in-house, make sure you’re listening to them when they’re asking for your help.  The more you’re involved, the better the results; and that’s what we want after all, right?

So, if you’ve been reading The CRAP Report now, you know that I’m typically writing for folks that may either be looking to outsource their teleprospecting efforts or that may have their own internal sales prospecting team.  I’m also writing for folks that are looking to improve their Business Development Rep’s, be they a vendor or an in-house team.  Oh yeah, and my Mom.  Today, though, I really want to speak to those folks who’ve outsourced their sales opportunity generation efforts.  There may be some take-aways for others, but if you’re working with a vendor who is finding sales qualified leads for you and your sales team, this one’s for you.

Like the title says, I’m asking if your teleprospecting vendor listens to you.  I guess I need to be a little more detailed here, right?  You’ve spent A LOT of money outsourcing lead development and because of that, I’m hoping that you’re getting what you’ve asked for.  There are three key areas that you should be focusing on getting what you’ve paid for: 

1. Does your vendor share YOUR definition of a qualified lead?
2. Do they target your key prospects?
3. Are you getting access to the BDR’s calling on your behalf?

First off, does your vendor share YOUR definition of what a qualified lead looks like?  There have been many blog articles lately about making sure that Marketing and Sales share the same definition (see here and here for examples), but in this instance, you and your vendor had better share that same one, too.  This one is obviously the most critical.  During the initial implementation phase, my suggestion to you is to spend as much time hashing out with your outsourcer just what you feel a qualified lead looks like.  If all you care about is understanding a prospect’s business pains but your vendor’s BDR’s are qualifying for budget, something’s amiss.  I can’t stress this point enough, in fact, for those of you reading that are going to outsource and have not done so yet, get your “qualified lead” definition straightened out first.  Ensuring that you and your outsourced sales prospecting vendor share the exact same definition of what a qualified lead looks like is going to save you headaches in the long run.

Second, do they target your key prospects?  Did your vendor listen to you when THEY qualified you?  Do they know your target audience?  They’re making dials every day on your behalf, so make sure that you know that they’re calling the prospects you want them to.  A good portion of this problem can be alleviated if you come to the table with a list that you want them to call into (my colleague, Craig Ferrara, talks about putting lists together, and you can read his thoughts on that here).  If you already have a focused list, then there really may not be much to worry about, however, I have worked with clients in the past who want us to put lists together for them.  That’s okay, but make sure you review the list before giving the green light to make calls.  Nothing is more embarrassing for a BDR than calling a client’s customer because the client didn’t review the prospecting list and remove their name from it.

Lastly, are you getting access to the BDR’s calling on your behalf?  People who are making calls under your company’s banner should be made available to you, and pretty much whenever you want to talk to them, within reason.  I use the caveat of “within reason” because if you’ve outsourced to an expert, you shouldn’t impede their time on the phones too often.  Getting the opportunity to sit in on calls with the rep working for/with you will tell you all you need to know about whether or not your vendor has listened to you.  You’ll be able to pick up on all of the tweaks you’ve made to your messaging and make sure that what you want to be said to prospects is being said.

While I imagine that most outsourcers do a good job at these, you should keep the above three questions in mind regarding your relationship with your lead gen vendor and whether or not they really listen to you.

Look at the definition of the word “resilient” and you’ll learn that the word means a few things, but of particular interest to me, and to teleprospecting, is “recovering readily…from adversity.”  When I think of the attribute of resiliency, I think of Det. John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, from the “Die Hard” movie series.  Forget the fact that the guy keeps coming back from one film to the next, if you just watch the first one alone, the guy is the personification of resiliency.  If you’ve never seen “Die Hard,” here’s the spoiler warning.  Stop reading if you don’t want to know the plot.  So, John McClane goes out to the West Coast from New York to spend Christmas with his wife.  Upon arriving to his wife’s Christmas party, German terrorists enter the party and take everyone hostage.  What the hell does this have to do with B2B lead generation and teleprospecting reps in particular?  Keep reading!

Listen, if you’ve got an inside team of Business Development Rep’s making targeted outbound dials for you to qualify sales ready opportunities, you WANT them to be resilient like John McClane.  If you’re paying to have someone qualify leads for your sales team, you NEED those BDR’s to be resilient.  Why?  When it comes to sales and the sales process, nobody but NOBODY comes up against adversity like a BDR.  Whether it’s making straight cold calls (which, as I’ve told you before, is not dead), or following up on trade show lists, webinar attendees, or white paper downloads, their job is not easy.

I once had a client tell me that a “no” from a prospect was just as good as a “yes.”  I don’t know what friggin’ planet he came from, but it was clearly not a planet that understood sales.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get what he was saying, that a “no” was good in that you’d never have to call that prospect again and could move on to another one that may say “yes,” but I don’t know if he’d ever been on the BDR side of a teleprospecting campaign.  I’d love to tell my clients that every name on their lists (be they warm or cold) are going to become qualified opportunities for their sales team, but that’s not the case.  Incidentally, anyone who does tell you that, lies.  My BDR’s would LOVE for that to happen, but you know what happens more often than not?  People hang up on them.  People yell at them.  People tell them how to do THEIR jobs.  You know what my BDR’s do?  They dust themselves off from each and every one of those difficult calls and pick up the phone, because they’re resilient; because when it comes to sales, they overcome difficulty and adversity better than anyone.

One by one, John McClane takes out the hostages who’ve overtaken the Christmas party, and saves the day.  Like John McClane making his way through Nakatomi Plaza, I want (and YOU want) BDR’s who are going to face rejection head on.  We want them to be unfazed with the objections they hear on a daily basis.  We need them to pick up the phone, after a terribly rude prospect has told them to stick it where the sun don’t shine, smile while dialing the next prospect, with a “Yippee-kiyay mother-f@%#er!” type of attitude. 

If your BDR’s aren’t doing that, let’s talk about how they could be.

Alrighty, well – here we are:  The last installment of my comparison of lead generation and the classic movie The Breakfast Club.  Last Wednesday I began my tour through the Saturday morning detention crew with Andrew Clark.  Andrew, being the athlete of the group, represents the scope of a sales opportunity, because as an athlete is susceptible to pains, so the business profile should be full of them.  Last Thursday, Claire Standish, the princess, correlated with budget, and last Friday, John Bender, the tough guy of the group, represents the tough people you have to sell to, the decision makers.  Yesterday I spoke about Brian Johnson, the brainy kid of the group and his relationship to a lead’s timeframe.  Today, we finish up with the isolated member of The Breakfast Club, Allison Reynolds.

Allison Reynolds, played by Ally Sheedy, wasn’t even supposed to BE in detention that day.  She was there because she had nothing else to do.  She spent the majority of the first half of the movie in silence.  The other characters would try and talk with her, and she would just put her head down on her table.  I believe that the elusive Allison Reynolds is therefore analogous with the last portion of a FULLY qualified sales opportunity, one of the toughest pieces to nail down, and that is the actual appointment.

I’ve sat in with many BDR’s who have had their conversations with prospects end with things like, “Well, why don’t you just have a rep follow up with me at their convenience.”  Well you know what happens after that, right?  That prospect will never pick up the phone when the sales rep calls back.  If you’ve got an inside team generating sales leads for you, or you’ve outsourced that process, ask your sales team which lead they prefer getting:  The one with the appointment or the one without?  Wait a sec – don’t bother asking.    

Can you really consider a lead fully qualified if it doesn’t have an appointment booked for a sales rep?  I don’t think so.  The word “full” denotes being complete.  A lead must have with an appointment in order for it to be totally qualified.  Now, I’ll throw a side note in:  I have worked with MANY a client who wanted us to pass over opportunities that have not been fully qualified by that standard; that is their choice, though, as they’re the customer. 

The actual booking of the conference call, face to face meeting, or whatever you want to categorize it as, depending on how good your BDR is, isn’t always the most difficult thing to obtain.  If you’re BDR is good and has built a rapport with their prospect, setting up that next natural step can be easy.  If the BDR is shaky on the technology their representing, or if they’re nervous to go for the close, booking an appointment is going to be very tough.  I’d also, then, ask you this:  Who’s training your BDR’s to close their deals, which is the appointment after all.  Make no mistake, lead generation and sales prospecting has its own close and its own sale, and that IS the appointment.  If you don’t have quality training for your BDR’s to close, you’ve got some work to do then.

The mysterious Allison Reynolds is so much like the hard to pin sales prospecting appointment.  They’re both hard to get a read on up front, but after a bit of prodding, both come out of their shells for the right people.

(okay…someone cue the Simple Minds music…)

Yesterday I started my five part series comparing the important aspects of a fully qualified sales opportunity with a different member of The Breakfast Club.  I talked about how the athlete of the movie, Andrew Clark, is like the business profile (or scope) of a lead; it’s typically the strongest section of a lead and full of pains and needs.  Today, I want to talk to you about the princess of any good quality sales lead, or how I like to think of it, the Claire Standish section.

Claire Standish, played by Molly Ringwald, was the rich girl of The Breakfast Club.  This one is really the easiest to correlate, as when you think of princesses, you typically think of money.  It’s no surprise, then, that I’m talking about the budget section of a sales lead.  After fleshing out the pains and needs that a prospect has, the next natural road to lead them down is where they’re getting money from to solve that problem.  Better yet, today, where are they going to reallocate money from to cure what’s ailing them.  With budgets dwindling, having the ability to show a prospect that they can reallocate funding from one effort to the one you’re calling them about is key.  One of my oldest clients gets around budget questions because they’re able to show prospects a full return on their investment in an average time span of six months.  Obviously, if you’ve got an ROI case like that, people are more likely to stop and listen to what you’ve got to say.

The money section, budget section, funding section, whatever it’s called in your world is so critical to the value of a fully qualified sales opportunity.  Handing off a lead to a sales rep with a budget section that has vague wording is a sure fire way to drive down the value that you’re hoping to add to a B2B lead generation campaign.  If you’ve got an inside lead gen team or your outsourcing those efforts, how important do you think this information ranks with your sales reps or your client’s sales reps?  I’m betting pretty high as I know it does with mine.

There’s a number of ways you can ask prospects about their budgets, and about how they’ll attempt to buy your solution, but make sure that your BDR’s are doing so.  Make sure they’re peeling the onion back on this one.  There’s more to it than just, “yep, we can find money to buy.”  Really?  How much can the prospect sign off on?  Where are you going to find money to buy?  Who’s going to approve that?  Who signs that check?  If you find a piece of software or a service that is really going to solve a deep pain, how long does the process take from decision to wire transfer?

Claire was the princess of The Breakfast Club, and budgetary information is the princess of a fully qualified sales ready opportunity.  Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about the John Bender of a lead, the decision making section.

How lame does that title sound, huh?  Almost as lame as what one client told me, regarding how prospects would feel about their product:  “The streets are going to want to marry you!”  You know what I found during that campaign?  The streets didn’t even understand my language.

One of the most vital aspects of any good sales prospecting effort is the script that your business development rep’s are going to use.  The truth is that people are more likely to respond to an email these days than they are pick up the phone, and it is that truth alone that makes having a quality sales prospecting script a must.  While I’m a firm believer that the best way to generate fully qualified leads is through the phone, I also know how difficult that can be if the script that you’re using isn’t good.  It is critical that a good teleprospecting script comprises the following: 

1.  It doesn’t sound “scripted” – You know what its like to get a call with someone trying to sell you something at home, be it a newspaper subscription or digital cable.  They all HAVE this one in common, that they sound scripted.  A good manager will work with his/her BDR’s to ensure that their teleprospecting script doesn’t sound “scripted,” and that it flows well.

2.  It does get to the point – Please, please, please do not product dump!  NOBODY wants to listen to 47 seconds of your BDR babbling about your technology, I can promise you this.  A good script is going to get to point and do it fast.  Tell the prospect why they want to talk with you, not about you.

3.  It does get the prospect talking – This may sound remedial, but you’d be surprised at the number of scripts I look at from client’s that do not end their intro with an open ended question.  One of the most important things that BDR’s can do to ensure a better, more qualified sales opportunity is to ask open ended questions.  We’re trying to, as my colleague Matt described in his blog on the 16^th, paint a picture as to what the opportunity really looks like for our client.  The more a sales prospecting script is loaded with open ended questions, the more we can get prospects talking.

Now, about the clients who told me that “the streets [would] want to marry me”?  The script that I originally got from them was just full of techno-babble and product dumping, and that’s why it wasn’t a hit with “the streets.”  “The streets,” in this instance, were looking for a quick way to separate themselves from me, not marry me.  For now, keep the script real by following the guidelines above, and maybe you’ll get some play that way.