The CRAP Report

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.