The CRAP Report

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!