The CRAP Report

One of my favorite things from growing up was my G.I. Joe action figures.  I read the comic books and watched the cartoons all the time.  The cartoons always ended with some sort of public service announcement about staying away from fallen electrical wires, not talking to strangers, or what to do in case of a fire.  Today, those PSA’s have been dubbed to talk about some funny stuff (pork chop sandwiches, anyone!?).  If you’ve ever seen one of the original PSA’s, you know they always ended with a kid saying, “now I know!” followed by a member of the G.I. Joe team saying, “and knowing is half the battle.”  In terms of half the battle of teleprospecting and B2B lead generation, you’d better have some sort of pre-call plan in place if you’re going to be successful.

What do I mean by a “pre-call” plan?  Don’t you just get your list together and start smiling and dialing?  Okay, I know, if you’re reading this you don’t do that, but what do you do and why?  I think it’s really important that BDR’s have some sort of pre-call planning routine that they go through for each call.  List management is really important, but I think having a strategy before you make dials into an organization is key.  Like the Boy Scouts say, right?  Be prepared.  If you’ve got an inside team making dials for you, or you’ve paid someone to do it for you, you want them to treat every phone call they make as if it is going to be a lead passed, and the best way to do that is to pre-call plan.

I think that an effective way to pre-call plan is to strategize about the call that you’re about to make.  Make sure you know exactly who you’re calling.  What is their title?  Are they the person that you want to be speaking with, or are they the person who can point you to the person that you ultimately want to speak with?  How many times have I tried reaching this person in the past, and what am I going to do if I don’t get them on the phone today?  You definitely want to understand who you’re calling and what their role is in your call plan.

You also want to think about why you’re calling this person to talk about your product or service.  Do they even want to hear from you?  Can you solve a problem that they may be having?  What are you going to say if they give you some lame reason for not wanting to talk with you?  What is it about your product or service that would make this prospect want to talk with you?  Make sure that before you or your team (or your vendor) makes calls for your organization, that they can answer these questions.  The last thing that we, as a teleprospecting and B2B lead generation community, want to do is waste people’s time.  They’re already on the defensive because we’re the ones calling them.

So these are just a couple of things that you need to be thinking about when pre-call planning:  knowing who you’re calling and thinking about why you’re calling.  Understanding both of these will help you focus on making a better teleprospecting call, and hopefully put  you in a place to pass a better, more qualified sales opportunity.  Now you know…and knowing is half the battle!