The CRAP Report

Okay, so for the most part, I really can’t stand reality television.  I watched my fair share of MTV’s The Real World (when it really was “real” back in 1992) before it became obvious that the same “type” of character was cast season after season.  I watch stuff like Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen shows and who doesn’t watch American Idol, right?  Don’t judge me for my television watching, please!  This past weekend, however, while I was flipping around the channels, I came across A&E’s new reality show called Steven Seagal: Lawman.  How can I pass this up!?  This guy was in the coolest action movies of three word titles the early 1980’s had to offer!  Who can forget Above the Law, Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice?  Steven Seagal was (and apparently still is) a bad ass, and I think teleprospectors can learn thing or two from him.

Steven Seagal is a practitioner of the martial art Aikido.  Aikido is when you use an attacker’s motion against them.  They throw a punch at you and you use their motion to direct them away from you or into a hold or flip or something like that.  Seagal brought that martial art into the spotlight in 1987’s Above the Law and that art has helped him spawn a 20+ year career in entertainment.  I think there are three things that teleprospectors can learn from him to be better at their job: 

1. Be unassuming.
2. Be confident.
3. Know your enemy’s next possible move.

Steven Seagal, though he is 6’4” is a very unassuming person.  If you’ve ever seen interviews with him or footage of him off-set, he’s this really mellow guy.  I’m guessing his martial arts training have helped him become more Zen-like.  The correlation here to teleprospecting is that if our BDR’s can have that same sense of calmness on the phones, they’re going to be able to put their prospects at ease, thus making a conversation more likely one that bears fruit.  We’ve all spoken with telemarketers on the phone, who interrupt us while we’re at home eating dinner, or maybe watching a movie, or maybe just not wanting to answer a phone.  Those folks know they’re interrupting and you can hear their discomfort through the phone.  I think BDR’s (and telemarketers, too) can take a lesson from Seagal here and learn to be a little more Zen while prospecting for sales qualified leads.  Think about it for a minute – if your BDR is less nervous about making a cold call, they have a greater likelihood of passing leads because of the coolness they bring to the phone.  Help your BDR’s to be unassuming on the phone by role playing with them the difficult situations that may come up during teleprospecting.

I think another lesson teleprospectors can learn from Seagal is that you’ve got to have confidence.  This guy just exudes confidence!  I know that sounds contradictory a little, right?  Be unassuming and confident.  Confidence doesn’t always mean being brash or boastful.  I’m talking more about a quiet confidence; a confidence that has been built up by training.  If you’ve got a team of teleprospectors in-house developing sales qualified leads for you, or if you’re partnered with a vendor to find them for you, trust me when I tell you that you want those folks confident.  That confidence, however, is only going to come with enough training.  Last week I talked about building confidence in your teleprospecting team, and while I won’t rehash everything that I said there, I can’t say enough about ensuring that your BDR’s know everything they can about the solution or service that they’re calling on.  Remember what it was like in school after you’d just spent nights studying for a big test?  If you’ve put enough time in, there comes a point where you feel within yourself that there is nothing more you need to learn or memorize – you’ve learned it all (at least for this particular test).  The test day comes and you stride into class like you’re Rowdy Roddy Piper from They Live – you’re “ready to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and you’re all out of bubble gum.”  Your studying gave you that level of confidence.  The same can be said for teleprospecting.  The more your BDR’s study up on what they’re calling on, the more confident they will be on the phones.

Lastly, Seagal was talking on his show this weekend about the importance of knowing what a suspect’s next move could be.  Anticipation is the key here, right?  Though I’m not advocating that prospects are the “enemy” of a BDR, the point is no less applicable.  A BDR needs to anticipate what a prospect is going to tell them on the phone.  Some folks find it very valuable to build a flow chart of potential conversations that can be had with prospects.  “If they say this, I’ll say that.  If they say that, I’ll say this.  If they go down this road, I’ll detour them with that;” you get the idea.  We would do well by our BDR’s if we help them understand what a prospect may object to on their calls.  I would suggest taking a look at all of your BDR’s conversations and picking out the common threads.  Spend some time mapping out potential barriers or roadblocks and then create the workarounds that will help your teleprospectors.  The more practice your BDR’s have at anticipating what a prospect will come back at them with, the better they’re going to be.  The better your BDR, the better your qualified leads.  The better your qualified leads, the more pipeline and so on.  The point here is that it’s imperative to help your teleprospectors to anticipate what their prospects are going to say so that they can (forgive me for this lameness) turn a negative into a positive.

There you go – lessons for your BDR’s from Steven Seagal!  Make sure your BDR’s are unassuming and put prospects at ease, that they’ve built confidence that comes from learning their product/service, and that they’re able to anticipate a prospect’s next move so that they can better pass fully qualified sales opportunities.