So I feel like there’s been a lot of blogs lately stating that cold calling is or is not dead, and today I read another one.  Matt Gethins, from B2B telemarketing firm Professional Prospecting Systems, wrote an article yesterday entitled Cold Calling Dead?  Not For B2B Appointment Setting.  Matt makes the common observation that all that is heard today is that all a company needs to do is focus on their inbound marketing and social media efforts, and they’ll be all set in regards to lead generation.  Matt’s response, “This is, in many cases, ridiculously bad advice and completely untrue.”  I totally agree with him.

Matt goes on to share seven reasons why cold calling is not dead, and I certainly think that you should read them.  Of particular interest to me, though, was number six on his list:

“6.  Outbound accelerates Inbound – That’s right, if you have your act together with outbound (cold calling, getting on the phone) you will make more money from your Inbound marketing. I’ve sold inbound lead generation products, the clients that had good outbound always made more money than those that did not, there was no variation in this. As we say in the South, Inbound Marketing is not going to cause the fried chicken to fly into your mouth, you have to get on the phone.”

I’m not from the South, so I really can’t speak to the fried chicken analogy, but I think he’s spot on in adding this point to his list.  I’m a big believer in Inbound Marketing – I love what folks like David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah and their whole HubSpot crew have done for Marketing as a whole.  In particular, Scott and his whole New Rules are all about bringing prospects TO you.  Halligan and Shah have founded a company whose entire mission is to offer software that helps other companies get found.  I still believe that at the end of the day, you still need to utilize teleprospecting to further qualify the folks that find you.  On top of that, I also believe that no matter how great the content is that you create, there are going to be some folks in your target market who you want as a client but must reach out to them through the phone to initiate a dialogue.

I like the phrase that Mike Damphousse has come up with for amalgamating your inbound and outbound efforts – “unified marketing.”  I think cold calling has its place in a unified marketing environment, right alongside blogging, viral videos, and eBooks.

What do you think?

*Photo credit: Liyin the Designer-in-Pajamas via Flickr

If you’re like me and my friends, you were pretty hyped up for last night’s season premiere of LOST.  I came to the game late on this one, having to watch three seasons on DVD (which by the way, is actually more fun because you can just keep watching episode after episode).  If you don’t know what LOST is, it’s a show about survivors of a plane crash and their adventures on the island that they crashed on.  To tell you anymore within the confines of this blog would break the space-time continuum.  I’d say it’s probably one of the most well developed shows in TV history; that’s just my limited opinion though.  As I was discussing last night’s two-hour opening with some of the BDR’s at work today, it got me thinking – how can you keep your teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their sales prospecting calls?

If you’ve got an in-house team of B2B lead generators or maybe you’re partnering with a vendor to provide you with sales qualified leads, naturally you want to make sure that the folks representing you and your organization over the phone are as effective as possible.  Teleprospectors, for the most part, make a ton of dials every day, and depending on who they talk to, there are times when conversations can be very dizzying.  I think there are three ways we can help BDR’s from becoming “lost” on their teleprospecting calls: 

1. Ensure they know who they’re calling.
2. Know when to call your prospects.
3. Help them to control the conversation.

The first way we can help teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their calls is to ensure they know who they’re calling.  I’ve had many clients who’ve told me that they’re not sure who they want my BDR’s to speak with.  Okay – big red flag here!  Help your BDR’s by nailing down the top two or three titles in an organization who would want to buy your product or service.  If you’re doing your due-diligence, you should already be creating buyer personas, as marketing strategist David Meerman Scott points out in The New Rules of Marketing and PR (which by the way just came out with a second edition).  By understanding exactly who is going to buy your solution or service, you can help your BDR’s to target those titles on their teleprospecting calls.  They’ll keep from becoming lost because you will have given them a mark with which they can align their lead-gen compass by.

The second way we can help teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their calls is to know when to call your prospects.  Appointment setting guru Mike Damphousse blogged about the best time to make lead gen calls after reading sales management expert Gerhard Gschwandther’s highlights on an MIT/InsideSales.com study of outbound prospecting lead conversion.  Mike points out himself the most effective time to make teleprospecting calls, and you can read that here.  The take-away from this is that if we can help our BDR’s figure out the most likely time that they’re prospects are going to be in their office, we can increase the possibility of those prospects becoming sales qualified leads.

Lastly, we can help our teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their calls by helping them to control the conversation.  There have been plenty of times when I’ve sat in with rookie BDR’s who have had prospects run them ragged on a call.  They get off the phone, head spinning, saying, “What the hell just happened!?”  We can help our BDR’s take control of the conversation just by giving them better qualification questions to ask.  I think we can agree that most folks like to talk about themselves, and by helping our BDR’s to ask more poignant, pain-eliciting questions, we keep the ball in their court by keeping the prospect talking.  It’s not always going to work, because we’re dealing with another human on the end of the line, but for the most part, if we can help our BDR’s to control conversations with better questions, and then couple that with a better understanding of the technology or service their calling on, they’re certainly going to get “lost” less.

What do you think?  What can you add to the list?

I read a blog today from the inside sales consulting firm The Bridge Group’s Patrice Murray.  Patrice highlighted a post from Dave Kurlan’s blog, where basically Dave shared a story of a time where he was giving a presentation on a Sales Hiring Webinar.  Dave was asked why, if his process worked so well, were more people not using it.  Dave’s answer was broken down into three points – ego, money, and fear.  Patrice did a great job breaking down the post, and you should read it here.

Additionally, my colleague, Craig Ferrara, hosted a webcast about best practices for hiring teleprospectors.  In it, Craig shares his thoughts on setting up a teleprospecting profile, implementing an interview process that focuses on the phone role play, and his evaluation process.  Check out the Perspectives on Teleprospecting – Best Practices for Hiring Teleprospectors webcast here.

*Photo courtesy of LisaDeeRN via Flickr

Man, the summer of 1987 when I discovered Guns N’ Roses’ first release, Appetite for Destruction, was a good one.  I think I listened to their first album (cassette tape actually) so much that I probably needed to buy a second one.  My sister hated them, and would get mad at me every time I wanted to watch their videos on MTV (when they actually played videos).  In my opinion, there wasn’t a bad song on the whole album.  Do you have any like that in your music collection?  You know, one that you can just listen to over and over without feeling like you need to fast forward past a song.  I think I have a few, but the first one I ever encountered, where I liked EVERY song was Appetite for Destruction.  I thought I’d try and do something a little different today, so I’m going to relate some teleprospecting lessons through the titles of each of the songs on the Appetite for Destruction album.

I guess for starters, let’s take a look at the title of the album.  You need to have an appetite for destruction if you’re going to be in sales, and teleprospecting is no different.  Nobody wants to work with a sales rep or a BDR with an appetite for niceness.  That just sounds lame all around!  Teleprospecting is about crushing your numbers, crushing your client’s (or in-house sales team’s) expectations of your estimated production.  If you don’t have that, what are you doing in the industry in the first place?  Okay, well here we go, each title of a song and some advice on how the title relates to teleprospecting:

Welcome To the Jungle – Great way to kick this off!  Teleprospecting is like a jungle, and for those of you that are new to it or are new to managing a teleprospecting team, this is something you need to get used to.  You’ve got all different animals to meet, from BDR’s to prospects and from your sales managers to your vendor’s.  Become the “king” of your jungle by learning how to interact with all of the animals successfully.

It’s So Easy – Whether you’re managing an in-house team of teleprospectors or you’re partnering with a vendor, you’re going to encounter BDR’s who are naturals at qualifying potential sales opportunities.  Identify these folks soon and invest in them professionally.

Nightrain – Typically trains that run through the night don’t stop, right?  They’re chugging along all night until they reach their destinations.  Teleprospecting teams need to be the same way.  Don’t let your BDR’s get down on themselves for a dry spell – sales machines stop for no one, your BDR’s included.  Teach them to put yesterday behind and focus on a new day.

Out ta Get Me – Your BDR’s are going to feel like people are out to get them sometimes, especially with the amount of “no’s” they’re going to hear (or do hear) on a daily basis.  Remind them that they’re the ones on the hunt.  Sure, they may get down from the negativity (rejection) that can come with the job, but if they know they have someone in their corner, it makes that much easier to deal with.

Mr. Brownstone – This song title is a reminder that formalities have no place in your teleprospecting scripts.  Our teleprospectors are every bit the professionals that the prospects that they’re calling on are, so why would you want to create a distance between them with formalities?  I’m not saying that your BDR’s should be disrespectful.  What I am saying is that they are every bit as important as the people they call and if they want to be more successful, they need to act like it.

Paradise City – The compensation plan you have for your teleprospectors should make them feel like they hit this if they attain all of their goals.  From monthly SPIFF’s to their quarterly commissions, make sure that your BDR’s are excited about the comp plan you have for them.

My Michelle – Michelle is the name of one my favorite BDR’s of all time.  No lesson here, really, aside from the fact that if you can help it, make sure that you hire great BDR’s.  If you’ve got BDR’s like Michelle (and her clients will agree), you’re off to a great start.

Think About You – Here’s what you need to do about your prospects.  You need to think about them.  Like I said in yesterday’s blog, you need to prospect to your prospects they way they want to be prospected to (say that five times fast).  Everything you do, from building scripts to shaping messaging to the emails you send out need to be focused on how your future customers want to be prospected.

Sweet Child O’ Mine – Your sales qualified leads are precious, akin to the child of all of the hard work that your BDR’s put in.  Make sure you follow up on these little ones and watch them grow through the sales process.  If they’re not progressing, find out why.

You’re Crazy – You must be if you’re still reading at this point.  Seriously, though, there are going to be times when you have this reaction to a client’s request; I know I have.  Maybe you’ve got a sales or marketing manager who wants to know why there haven’t been any sales qualified leads from that tradeshow list you were given.  Tell them the truth that there aren’t going to be many since the list came WITHOUT phone numbers or company names.  Make sure you set expectations with everyone who is counting on you and your team’s efforts to minimize the crazy requests for stats you may get.

Anything Goes – Make sure that your BDR’s are thinking outside the box when it comes to getting the most of their conversations with prospects.  If their main contact isn’t available, have them talk with someone in the department and get something out of the call.  The point here is to not let an answered call go without getting something out of it.

Rocket Queen – I don’t even know what the hell this means.  Let’s go with this:  Make sure that your BDR’s are armed with the best tools you can give them.  Whether it’s subscriptions to great contact generation sources, a great CRM, or even greater teleprospecting messages, your BDR’s need to be outfitted with the best if you want them to generate great leads for you.  Invest in them and you’ll make out on the other end with stellar production.

Whew…if you stuck around, thanks!  What do you think?  What advice would you give using the song titles above?

Think about your prospects for a minute.  You’ve probably got a list or a database chock full of folks that you really want to do business with.  Sure you want to do business with them because that means money for you and your organization, but I’m sure there are those that you want to do business because of the weight that their name carries in their respective industries.  Now take a minute and think about how you reach out to those folks, from a teleprospecting perspective.  Maybe you’re not doing that right now but you want to.  Do you prospect your prospects the way YOU want to or the way THEY want to be?  This question came to me today after reading a blog entry in the Marketing Mélange by Mike Frichol.

Frichol’s article, Are You Selling or Facilitating Buying for Customers?, purports that if prospective buyers, Marketing, and Sales were all aligned, the sales cycle might not take so long.  He’s right.  So, while I’ll leave it to the Marketing and Sales experts to help you align those departments with your future customers, I do see three ways that your teleprospecting teams can do all they can to quicken their aspect of the buying process.  The way I see it, there are three things you should do to make sure that your BDR’s are aligning themselves with how your prospects buy: 

1. Make sure they understand your current clients’ pains and how your solutions/services alleviated them.
2. Make sure they spend more time listening to your prospects, rather than talking.
3. Make sure they touch base with their prospects throughout the lead nurturing process with relevant collateral.

First, if you’re BDR’s are going to prospect the way your future customers want to be prospected to, you need to make sure they understand your current clients’ pains and how your solutions/services alleviated them.  This is simple, sure, but how many of your teleprospectors have taken the time to do that.  Better yet, how many of their mangers have spent time with them talking about this specifically?  I’m guessing not many.  The point here is that if your BDR’s have a good understanding of WHY people have bought from you in the past (see, they’re on the front end of the process, so they usually aren’t there when the decision maker signs the contract), they’re going to have greater likelihood of being able to empathize with your prospects.  People don’t care how much your BDR’s know until they know how much your BDR’s care.  When your teleprospectors can share with your prospects how your organization has alleviated real pains for folks in the same situation as them, turning them into a sales qualified lead is not far behind.

Second, make sure your BDR’s spend more time listening to your prospects, rather than talking.  I’ve said this before, but your teleprospectors need to focus on not just hearing your prospects, but actually listening to them.  Nobody wants to be prospected to by an order taker.  You feel this pain?  Do you have money?  Who makes the decision?  When do you want to buy?  The amount of time your teleprospectors are actually talking should be about a quarter of the time versus the amount of time your prospects should be talking with them.  The take-away here is that if you’re the one building qualification scripts for your BDR’s, make sure that the scripts are flush with open ended questions.  For the most part, folks love to talk about themselves, and if they’ve got problems and are mad enough about those problems, they’ll talk a lot.  Help your prospects talk by crafting better qualification questions so your BDR’s can spend more time listening.

Lastly, to ensure that your BDR’s are prospecting the way your future clients want to be prospected to, make sure they touch base with their prospects throughout the lead nurturing process with relevant collateral.  Unfortunately, you don’t pass a sales qualified lead every time you talk with a prospect.  If you do, let me know how you do it.  That being said, your teleprospectors are going to have a group of folks in their pipeline who are interested in your services, but who are not in need just yet.  I’m sure they follow up every now and then with a call here, a voicemail or maybe an email there, and that is great.  I think if you want to really make an impact on your prospective clients, your BDR’s should start sending relevant collateral with no other motive behind it besides being helpful.  Maybe they came across a blog article, or came across a webcast that would be pertinent to your prospect.  They should be sending those along, building credibility with those interested prospects.  That way, when it does come time to buy, your prospects will remember who reached out to them in a more consultative way and will likely call back to set up time to speak with a product specialist.

At the very least, this is certainly something to think about, and I’m glad that Frichol planted this seed in my brain – it’s a reminder that teleprospecting can always move the sales process along faster by being more efficient.  What do you think?  Can you add to my list?

Okay, if you’ve got a stick of gum, a paper clip, three pennies, a ball made of rubber bands, and an acorn who are you?  A lot of folks may say that you’re the contents of the front pocket of a seven year old boy, but they would be wrong.  Actually, the real answer is a flame thrower if you’re in the hands of one Angus MacGyver – yes, THE MacGyver.  You remember him, right?  They guy with a penchant for getting out of inescapable situations by creating some contraption out of things he’d find on the ground or in his or a partner’s pockets.  MacGyver was awesome (besides the mullet) and one of the cooler aspects of that show was actually trying to figure out how he was going to do what he needed to do, and with what.  Like I said, the guy could make a tank out of a broken baby-stroller and a coat rack.  More than anything, MacGyver was inventive, and without a doubt, one of the top 100 qualities of a great teleprospecting rep is being inventive.

MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson, had a great number of skills that really do not pertain to sales prospecting and B2B lead generation; most notably, the guy was a physicist and chemist.  Not necessarily skill sets that make one a fantastic qualifier of potential sales opportunities.  Now, the fact that the guy was inventive?  That is a skill that BDR’s need.  I can see three ways that being inventive is a great quality for your teleprospecting reps to have: 

1. They invent new ways to shape messages.
2. They invent new ways to get in front of prospects.
3. They invent new ways of streamlining their job.

First of all, being inventive comes in handy for your BDR’s because they are always going to need new ways to shape their teleprospecting messages.  If you’ve got an in-house teleprospecting team or maybe you’ve partnered with a vendor to supply you with sales qualified leads, you’ve got to remember that at some point, “new messaging” becomes “old messaging.”  Who better to help you tweak and reshape their call scripts than a great BDR.  The really good ones are already doing this, anyways!  They’re taking what works and what doesn’t and amalgamating them into one really successful teleprospecting script.

Second, being inventive is necessary because getting in front of prospects gets harder everyday.  Administrative Assistants get colder to the cold call, and decision makers are picking up their phones less and less.  Great teleprospectors invent new ways to get time with their (or their client’s) targeted prospects.  Take for example, one of my colleague’s BDR’s.  Now, although someone else may have come up with this idea, this particular BDR was the first to do it in his group.  He had gotten tired of never hearing back from prospects that he was emailing, so he decided to take a bold step and send out an Outlook invitation for five minutes to talk about his product.  It worked.  He got more prospects to respond than he ever had.  Now granted, more of them were declinations, but he got a lot of prospects to give him five minutes, which is all he needed to get his foot in the door.  Again, maybe someone else did this before, but never in my buddy’s organization.  They standardized sending Outlook invites, and while some prospects get offended, more often than not their praised for their inventiveness.

Lastly, being inventive is important because you want a BDR who is looking for ways to streamline their job.  A teleprospector spends their day making phone calls, and the good ones always make more.  The great ones invent new ways to get more done with the hours they have.  Now, I’m not talking about inventing new software or telephony products (though that would be awesome), I’m really talking more about processes.  Whether it’s inventing a new system to get more calls made in an hour or a new way to write up the sales qualified leads that they’ve found, they’re doing something.  It may be as simple as the way they set up their CRM and their web browsers, but to them, they’ve invented a new way of doing things that makes them more effective.

There you have it, my reasons why a great teleprospector is an inventive one.  What did I miss, or what can you add to this topic on inventiveness?

Wow, so the first “official” work day of 2010 is over, and I can’t believe I’m just sitting down to blog at 10:30pm at night.  So sorry for the delay on this!  If you recall, last week I started talking to you about what I want for your teleprospectors this year.  I shared with you that I would want them to have more courage, because courageous BDR’s are more likely to pass fully qualified sales opportunities.  They’re not afraid to ask tough questions and they’re certainly not flustered when presented with difficult objections.  I also talked with you about how I want your BDR’s to have a better source of data from which to prospect from and a compensation plan that pays them out on the quality of their work.  Tonight, want to finish up this little series with numbers four and five of my “wants” for your teleprospectors in 2010.

The fourth desire I have for your teleprospectors in 2010 is a plan to be better BDR’s.  Chances are, if you’re managing a team of teleprospectors or if you’re partnering with a vendor to provide you with sales qualified leads, not every one of the folks on the phone for you are what you would call “A” players (and that’s okay).  Not everyone is going to be an “A,” and chances are also good that when the “A’s” realize they’re at that level, they move on to do something else.  You may have a lot of “B” and “C” level BDR’s, and that’s okay, too.  Okay for a while.  How are you going to bring those folks up?  How are you going to raise their skill levels?  What are you going to do when your “A’s” leave for more money or a different opportunity?  These are questions that if you haven’t yet, you need to start asking yourselves now.

You see, if there’s one thing that you take away from any of the “wants” that I have for your BDR’s, it’s this one.  Help them to better their skills.  Help them to prospect better.  Help them to mine for opportunities better.  Help them understand your solutions or services better.  Saying that you want to do that is one thing, but it is a whole different story to take this seriously and plan something for them.  They need skills enrichment programs if you’re expecting them to pass more and more qualified opportunities.  The money you invest in the training of your BDR’s is only going to serve to bring better sales qualified leads to your sales team.  Better leads mean better forecasts, and better forecasts means more closed business, which is what we’re all looking for.  I want your teleprospectors to have a plan to be better BDR’s in 2010.

Lastly, my fifth “want” for your BDR’s in 2010 is for them to have managers who have “been there” before.  I understand this cannot always be the case, but if it is at all possible, you should have someone managing your BDR’s who have made teleprospecting calls in the past.  The job of a BDR is not the easiest.  They typically talk with people who do not want to talk with them, and when they need a pep talk or a sounding board, a manager who has made those same calls before goes a long way.  I know that when I made teleprospecting calls, it meant a lot to me that my manager had made calls right by my side months ago.

If you are in the position to place someone in charge of your teleprospecting team who’s actually MADE B2B lead generation calls before, do it.  Your reps will see the authenticity in their leadership abilities (at least when it comes to teleprospecting) and chances are their production will increase.  It’s been my experience that BDR’s respond better to someone who has been in their shoes before.  In 2010, I want your teleprospectors to have managers that have “been there” before.

There you have it – my top five “wants” for your BDR’s in 2010.  What did I miss?  What else belongs on this list?

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite Christmas stories.  I love the idea of someone getting visited by four ghosts to show him how the errors of his ways can determine his future.  It’s a story about second chances, too.  Ebenezer Scrooge is a terribly wicked man at the beginning of the tale, and by the end, he’s barely recognizable because his outlook on life is a complete turn from what people had been used to.  How can anyone not enjoy a story like that!?  You know, the ending of one year and the beginning of another brings that same feel of a second chance with it.  When it comes to your B2B lead generation efforts and your sales prospecting campaigns, what are you going to do differently to make 2010 better than 2009?

Obviously, in order to answer that question, you need to look back on 2009 and determine what worked and what didn’t work.  You’ve got to run reports on the campaigns that you initiated and on the programs that you kicked off and look at the results of each.  Maybe you outsourced some of your lead generation efforts to a third party vendor this year and determined that next year, you’re just going to build your own inside teleprospecting team to drive qualified leads to your sales team.  Maybe, though, you had your own inside team this year and they just didn’t perform to the levels that you needed them to and you’re seriously thinking that maybe some of these “outsourcers” may actually have a bead on sales prospecting.  Whatever you do in 2010, here are three areas that I think you need to focus on: 

1. Focus on creating a prospecting strategy.
2. Focus on better teleprospecting lists.
3. Focus on making your BDR’s better.

The first area that I think you need to focus on in 2010 is to create a prospecting strategy.  A prospecting strategy, mind you, that goes beyond smiling and dialing.  Put some thought into what works and what doesn’t in terms of getting prospects to call your BDR’s back or return their emails.  How many times should you call a prospect per day?  Per week?  When should you and when shouldn’t you leave a voicemail message when you get an answering machine?  How often should you follow up with an email?  These are all things that you need to have some sort of a plan around.  If you look back at 2009 and feel like your teleprospecting efforts didn’t go quite the way you wanted them to, maybe you should start by looking at the strategy you used to get yourself there.  Having a well thought out process in place for your teleprospectors to follow is key to having a better 2010, lead generation-wise.

The second area that you should focus on in 2010 is to get better teleprospecting lists for your BDR’s to call into.  Easier said than done, right?  Easy is SO 2009 my friends; it’s time to work harder than we ever have, and that includes grunt work like list building.  I’m not saying that YOU specifically have to get a better list, but make sure someone in your organization is tasked with getting an improved database for your teleprospectors to call into.  If you can afford it, have someone generate the list for you from scratch.  Get your targets in all of your territories identified and then task someone to build that database of contacts from the ground up.  If your BDR’s have a better list from which to prospect from, and they use that list to fortify all of the other inbound marketing data sets that you’re going to generate throughout 2010, your pipeline should escalate very quickly.  You do what you want, obviously, but this is one area worth spending time on in the New Year.

Lastly, regarding your B2B lead generation efforts in 2010, you should focus on making your BDR’s better.  This one should be a no brainer for you; better BDR’s equal better sales qualified leads.  Put some programs together for you teleprospectors to make them better at generating leads.  Put together a book club and choose a book about sales or marketing to read together, get trainers to come in on a quarterly basis and run seminars for them, create a mentoring program – I don’t really care what you do for them, but the point is that you should do something.  Their jobs can get monotonous and they are the frontline of your organization to your prospects.  If you help them to be better at what they do, your prospects are going to have a better outlook on your organization as a whole because your BDR’s will feel more empowered because of the added effort you’ve put into making them better (that’s a mouthful, but no less true).  You want improvement in 2010 for your teleprospectors, then make your BDR’s better at their jobs.

Let me ask you, now – what are you going to do to change your prospecting efforts in 2010?

Do you know the definition of what a “vicious circle” is?  According to dictionary.com it’s, “a situation in which effort to solve a given problem results in aggravation of the problem or the creation of a worse problem.”  Maybe you’ve seen it comically played out in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.  Spoiler alert for those of you who’ve never seen it in the last ten years, but there was a character in it named Fat Bastard, a Scottish hit man, played by Mike Meyers.  Per his name, he really is a fat guy under the employ of the movie’s main antagonist, Dr. Evil.  Near the end of the film, Fat Bastard tries to kill Austin Powers and his co-spy in the movie, Felicity Shagwell, by pretending to be a UPS delivery guy.  Fat Bastard crashes through their front door and tries to kill them, and eventually breaks down in tears and admits that, “I eat because I’m unhappy, and I’m unhappy because I eat. It’s a vicious cycle. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone I need to get in touch with and forgive: meself.”  If you find yourself thinking that you don’t have any budget to put towards teleprospecting in 2010, I think you’re going to find yourself falling into the same vicious circle that got you to that point in the first place.

Budgets are tight, right?  I mean, that’s a given.  In fact, who says, “Hey, I’ve got tons of cash to throw around at any and everything I can think of?”  Not many.  I can’t think of anyone who’s come to me and said that about adding additional headcount to a teleprospecting effort.  Understanding that budgets are more constricted now than they ever have been, let’s think about how they got there.  At a very rudimentary level, they got there because not enough sales closed the year before for that budget number to increase.  If sales closes “x” number of deals, most departments get “y” dollars more in their budget to spend next year.  Remember, I said rudimentary!  Here are three questions that you should ask yourself before you say that you don’t have enough budget for teleprospecting in 2010: 

1. How are you going to get more qualified sales opportunities into your sales reps hands?
2. How do you plan on reaching all of your inbound marketing hand-raisers?
3. How do you plan on supporting a potentially faulty non teleprospecting supported marketing campaign?

How are you going to get more qualified sales opportunities into your sales reps hands?  Your sales reps certainly aren’t going to do that, and even if you task them to do so, you don’t want them doing that.  Qualifying potential sales opportunities is not what sales reps do best, nor should they be doing it because it takes them away from what their skilled at – closing business.  Your sales reps need to have more sales qualified leads in front of them in 2010 more than ever.  Prospects are holding on to their money more now, too.  Sure, they’re more interested in talking, but not necessarily with parting with their money.  If you don’t build an in-house lead generation team or partner with a teleprospecting firm to separate the “buying” wheat from the “tire kicking” chaff, someone in your organization is going to have to do that, and having that fall under the responsibility of sales is a poor choice.  You don’t want the folks you have in place to close business, to bring in more corporate dollars, to have to generate their own opportunities.  Think of it like this – if you were brought on as the CMO for your organization, chances are you wouldn’t task yourself with writing and sending your quarterly campaign mass emails.  You can do it, sure, but that’s not what you’re best suited for.  The same thing goes for your sales reps.  Give them more qualified sales opportunities to close more business.

How do you plan on reaching all of your inbound marketing hand-raisers?  You’ve probably got a slew of marketing efforts going on right now, and you’re probably planning even better ones for next year.  The thing is this, though – what if all of your campaigns hit their targets?  Think about it.  What if they’re fantastic and you have more inbound prospects than you ever thought possible.  Don’t think it’s possible?  Just check out what Mike Damphousse, CEO of the appointment setting firm Green Leads, is doing with inbound marketing gurus HubSpot to bring in more opportunities.  It is now more likely than ever that you’re inbound marketing efforts can bring in more prospects that you could think of.  If you get all of those hand-raisers, then I ask you, who is going to reach out to them?  They still need to be contacted, and more than just through email.  The same rings true, here, as it did above, in that someone still needs to separate the good from the bad; if you’ve got a lot of inbound leads coming in, a teleprospecting team can get those low hanging fruit in front of sales faster than just handing sales the list of hand-raisers from their territories.  Additionally, they’re not going to nurture them either – they just don’t do that because they’re too busy, but we’ve already established that.

Lastly, how do you plan on supporting a potentially faulty non teleprospecting supported marketing campaign?  Look, let’s face it – maybe those great ideas that you have for 2010 aren’t really as great as you think they are.  They might be, and I hope they are, but what if they’re not?  You should be running a targeted cold calling effort behind all of your marketing efforts just in case.  Every building has a fire alarm in, right?  Think of your cold calling efforts as your Sales and Marketing “break in case of fire” alarm.  Just in case your marketing campaigns don’t, well, don’t hit the mark, if you’re backing that up with a teleprospecting effort, chances are you won’t feel the effects of it too bad.  Just speaking from experience, when I’ve had clients give me their marketing leads and their cold call lists, historically, the cold call lists tend to yield more opportunities.  Now sure, that is most likely because the marketing lists were poor, but hey, isn’t that what we’re talking about?

Just think about it – if you’re telling me that you don’t have any money to spend on teleprospecting, why is that?  If sales prospecting isn’t part of your 2010 plan, I’d love to know why, but you’ve got to give me something better than, “We don’t have the budget.”

One of my favorite episodes from Seinfeld was one where George’s girlfriend sits him down at Monk’s and tries to give him the old, “It’s not you, it’s me,” routine.  You know what that is, right?  When someone tries to break up with their significant other by saying that it has nothing to do with the S.O., but rather about the person doing the breaking up.  People say that because confrontation is never desirable; they never want to tell the other that it really IS them, or something that they’ve done or neglected to do, that is causing the break up.  George counters the move by saying, “I invented the, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’…nobody tells me it’s them and not me.  If it’s anybody – it’s me!”  How about in a failing teleprospecting campaign?  How do you know it’s really your fault and not your vendors?  There is someone to blame, no doubt, but how can you tell who’s owns the blame?

You know, I’d like to think that there is always a chance to succeed at a teleprospecting campaign, but sometimes there are just no leads to be found.  I know, however, from experience that it isn’t always the case.  I’ve done work with folks who thought that their target market desperately needed the software that they offered and had to tell them that it was perceived more as a “nice to have.”  There have been times, too, that I thought, “I’m NEVER going to find leads for these folks,” and low and behold, they become long time clients.  If you’ve partnered with an organization to find you sales qualified opportunities, or if you have an in-house team doing the same, there comes a time when you need to take a good long look in the mirror if the project is not successful.  The way I see it, there are three ways to tell it’s you and not your BDR’s to blame for a failing project: 

1. Your sales team is getting plenty of qualified opportunities, but none hit pipeline.
2. You keep tweaking and re-tweaking teleprospecting scripts.
3. You’re focusing on the wrong metrics.

One of the first ways to tell that it’s the client and not the teleprospecting team to blame is if your sales team is getting plenty of qualified opportunities, but none hit pipeline.  More than likely, before you’ve signed a contract to have someone generate sales leads for you, you’ve outlined with detail, what your definition of a “qualified lead” looks like.  You’ve given that definition to your vendor, and I’m betting that if a lead crossed your desk that didn’t fit that bill, that you’ve sent it back.  Your teleprospecting team takes that definition and finds you sales qualified leads, maybe even to the number per month that you were hoping for (hopefully more), yet none of them are hitting your sales team’s pipeline.  You see, with that, I would say that the problem starts with the way the qualified leads are being followed up upon.  If you’re receiving leads that fit the definition that has been predetermined (by you) from the beginning of the project and none (or only a few) are moving along in your sales process, then something is amiss, and more likely than not, it rests on your side.  If this is happening to you, do some investigation as to what your sales process is like and who is following up on the leads that your teleprospecting team is generating.

Another way to tell that it’s a client issue and not a teleprospecting issue is if the client keeps tweaking and re-tweaking teleprospecting scripts.  I’m not talking about the occasional edit here and there, especially if new software or service offerings are making their way into the market.  What I am talking about are those clients who, after a few days of a teleprospecting campaign, feel the need to change the script.  Not only do they do it a few days in, but they change it a few days after that.  After a couple of weeks, their target audience has heard several different messages from BDR’s and is not doubt thinking that they’re dealing with a bunch of hacks, because no one is saying anything with any level of consistency.  I’ve said it before, but you’ve got to give the message a chance, and one longer that three days.  Sometimes it takes a week before we generate a lead for a new project.  Sure, there are times when our BDR’s come across a low-hanging fruit and pass a lead on day one or day two, but that is not the norm.  If you find yourself constantly changing your teleprospectors script, it should be no wonder why you’re not seeing the level of leads you’re hoping for; they haven’t had the chance to bring any level of message-unification so that your market understands what you offer.

Lastly, if you’re focusing on the wrong metrics, it’s most definitely you, not your teleprospector.  For example, if you’re not getting the amount of leads you hoped for and none of the ones that have been passed to you have hit your pipeline, it is certainly a problem with your BDR’s.  However, if you have fewer opportunities, but those opportunities are hitting pipeline at a greater clip, what is the problem?  The focus should be, ultimately, on dollars closed, but depending on your sales cycle, you’ll have to wait six to twelve months before you utilize that statistic to gauge success.  Alternatively, though, you should be focusing on the amounts of money hitting your pipeline due to the leads that have been passed over.  Make sure you’re focusing on the right metrics.  Focus on conversations, not activity.  Focus on lead conversion from the conversations being had.  Focus on the percentage of positive results from leads passed, but most importantly, focus on what is being added to your pipeline on a monthly basis.

I know what you’re thinking – I’m just throwing blame off of the teleprospector.  Stay tuned, though, as I will be doing another post like this, only talking about ways to tell that it’s your BDR’s and not you who’s to blame for a failing project.