|
Aug 28 |
Getting Past Gatekeepers on thNo comments · Posted by Howard Larson |
Now in calling we normally use what I call the Payton to the right, Payton to the left, Payton up the middle technique. We hit the line with honesty and directness and it works 9 times out of 10. But if you’re having problems getting through or it is one of those need to have accounts sometimes you need to call out of the box.
1. Call and ask for the Sales Department.
Sales always answers. Talking with salespeople can be an excellent approach. It’s amazing how one salesperson will be willing to help out another salesperson. When asking for assistance, be sure to offer to help them in finding potential leads and contacts. Scratch their backs to get your back scratched.
2. Rather than asking the gatekeeper for the person you want to speak to, begin the call by asking them the same questions you would ask your prospect. These people know more and might have more insight then you or I give them credit. Many times the gatekeeper will realize they can’t answer the questions and wind up connecting with the person and/or department who can.
3. Call back before 8 AM or after 5 PM. Most gatekeepers work traditional hours, so calling either before 8 or after 5 may allow somebody else to answer the phone, "How can help you?" Might be considered unprofitable for having a service to these kinds of calling but if it is you? Go for it.
4. Call during holiday weeks. I’m always surprised at how people behave differently knowing there’s a holiday coming. Calling during a holiday week may very well result in speaking with the gatekeeper when they are in a completely different mood. Side note is the gatekeeper might be on vacation.
5. Call one or two digits off from the phone number you’ve been calling. Dangerious to do but When the person answers, be upfront and say who you’re looking to speak to.
6. Call and ask for Accounts Receivable. Who won’t you through to accounts receivable. Every company is eager to collect money if they can, and by asking for that department, you’ll get connected. When you do get connected, be upfront and state who you’re looking to speak to.
7. Call at different times of the day or over lunch. Everyone takes breaks, and many times the person who relieves the gatekeeper for lunch and/or breaks does not take the same approach as they gatekeeper would. That person filling in may very well put you through.
8. Let your personality come through and allow the gatekeeper to see you as a normal person who is merely doing their job, just like them.
9. Call a different division or location, if the company has one. Using the other location is a way to learn who you should speak to when the location you’re trying to reach is stonewalling you.
10. Don’t allow one rejection by a gatekeeper to stop you from calling again.
Larson Notes & Satire: I might or might not suggest you using some of these tactics but they can and do work. I might choose to not use some of the shadier ones. Persistence is your best way and can and will pay off in the long run. Don’t take it seriously or personally. Calling is a game of cat and mouse.
If you allow a rejection by a gatekeeper to negatively impact you, there is little chance you will ever be successful.
The beautiful thing about be being blocked by a gatekeeper is the same thing is most likely happening to your competitor. Big difference is your competitor is probably blowing off the opportunity, leaving the door wide open for you once you get past the gatekeeper.
Many times huge sales have been made after getting past the gatekeeper.
For the answer to your sales and lead generation problems call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws . One call is all it takes.
Howard LarsoLarson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better|
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate
P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.
| Mood: | Music: | Location: |
|
Aug 27 |
Larson’s ABC’sNo comments · Posted by Howard Larson |
| Mood: | Music: | Location: |
|
Jan 14 |
What is in store for 2015No comments · Posted by Howard Larson |
Marketers received a healthy portion of companies' budgets in 2014, and that might be increasing in 2015. According to the "Presentation for CMO Survey 2015: Eye on the Buyer” report by research firm Gartner, companies spent, on average, 10.2% of their annual revenue on marketing activities in 2014. And now half of the companies that were surveyed plan to increase their spending in 2015, which translates out to a budget increase of 10.4%.
But there is devil is in the details. Bigger companies are getting bigger budgets. As an example, companies with revenues of $5 billion or more anticipate using 11% of their money to marketing, while companies with revenues between $500 million and $1 billion ONLY plan to allocate 9.2%. 46% of respondents plan on spending less than 9% of their revenue on marketing and 30% intend to allocate more than 13%, and 24% plan to use some percentage in between. Now I know most of you if not all are not this size or even close but it does not hurt to pay attention to where the Big Boys are playing and what they are playing with.
So where is all this extra money going? One work: DIGITAL! According to the report, 51% of these companies plan to increase their digital marketing budget in 2015. The average boost will be 17%. That increase will give digital a significant hunk of the overall marketing budget. More so when we considering that companies used about 25% of their marketing budgets on digital in 2014.
For some marketers budget allocation is a tough one to crack because not all companies have separate digital marketing budgets. Sixty-eight percent of companies do, according to the report. But marketers waffle on what a digital marketing budget encompasses. Thirty-two percent of respondents consider digital a single line item of the overall marketing budget, while 36% itemize each digital activity. In addition, 23% have incorporated digital marketing into each function of the marketing budget and 8% have done none of the above.
Larson Notes & Satire: I hate to say it (no I don’t) but if you don’t keep your spending on the traditional ways of marketing you’re going to be really lost. Digital is not a standalone marketing channel. Well maybe to some but to most of you out there, you need the support of email, web site, content, direct mail, trade show and of course TELEMARKETING. And now with our new service offering of INBOUND call answering and ACT social media software we at putting more of what you need together for you.
For the answer to your sales and lead generation problems call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws . One call is all it takes.
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate
P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.
| Mood: | Music: | Location: |
|
Oct 27 |
Lead Generation Just Doing WhaNo comments · Posted by Howard Larson |
I hope to encourage you to get serious about going out and finding new sales leads. Socially, we can talk about traditional ways another time.
There really is no magic formula. Well there is a formula and I am in the middle of writing a book but NOTHING is 100% in the area of lead generation so get use to it.
1. It is a game of small bites. You need to lots of things right. You need to find, nurture and coddle every lead until they tell you to go away of become a client.
2. You will get very tired of your message before anyone else does. You will I can almost guarantee that you will get very tired of your message you are putting out before most of your target market even know you are saying anything. There is a desire to change your message but don’t! Stay on course and send the same message out over and over and over again and again.
3. Your prospect can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist or who you are. No one cares how fast you are, how cheap you are, how good you are. If the prospect has never heard of you they won’t really care. Keep your attention on this plain and simple truth, Make becoming know your first objective.
4. Pretend you’re a search algorithm. Yes pretend you’re Google. It really makes no difference what your business does or what it makes. The question is what do people type in to find you. What are the words or word strings. Be the search.
5. You need to be as social engaged as you possibly can. It is really not an option anymore. LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter. Those are the big 3 for starters then there is a plethora or others such as MerchantCircle , Storeboard, tsu.co, Solaborate, Scoop.it, APSense and Referral Key just to name a few.
6. You don’t need to go in big leaps. Some sites are easy, some take time. Take the time to work the sites to make them work for you. Go slow, go steady and you will get there.
Larson Notes & Satire: This is the online side of lead gen but don’t forget to think about off line lead generation. Things like teleprospecting, direct mail (might want to throw in email marketing in here) trade shows, and the like. It’s not all online and you can get a good bang for your buck using traditional marketing channels. Or if you don’t or can’t find the time call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws . One call and we work to hand over those leads to you to finish the job.
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate
P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.
| Mood: | Music: | Location: |
|
Oct 14 |
Cold Calling Builds Long TermNo comments · Posted by Howard Larson |
Even with the push of Social Media and Online Marketing, cold calling is and still remains the best way to go out and make contact with potential clients. It is the only proactive way to start a two way conversation with a prospect. Using every other way you need to sit back and hope the prospect actually picks up the phone, emails or sends back a business reply card. Do you have that kind of time? Now these are all great ways to marketing but if you add in a cold call follow-up in your marketing play your results will be 10% to 22% better.
In case you need more of an incentive to using the phone or picking it up and calling us here at Larson & Associates to do it for you, here are 5 successful ways to mix in cold calling into your sales and marketing attack.
1st. Clearly define your criteria. Get your program put together and aimed towards where you want to go. No brainer but how many times does it not happen. Sit down in a meeting with all your sales and marketing people and determine the base criteria for what is a qualified lead.
2nd Set an agenda to guide you through the steps to start a real conversation. A call without a direction is the path to a failed call. I am not saying use a script but know where you want to go to in the call.
3rd Be relevant to the person you are calling. Ask yourself these two questions. 1) What is the reason for the call? And 2) Is it relevant to THIS prospect? Don’t waste their time. Don’t waste your time.
4th Create a voice mail strategy. I believe in voice mail so much that if I take a project and the client says to NOT leave a voice mail, I might just not take the project. It is almost doomed to failure. A voice mail is a way to send out a mini advertisement right into the prospects ear. With a relative message you will warm up the prospect for your next try at speaking to them. And yes sometimes they call back and if they do 1 of 2 things are happening. Then need what you got or they are calling you to tell you to go away and don’t call back. Either way you win. In the first one you are one step further down the sales process. The other you can take them off your prospect list and you don’t have to waste your time on them anymore.
5th Integration of multimedia and multichannel marketing. Keep in mind the 3 legged stool. 3 channels work best. Cold calling can and will benefit from the use of multimedia, content marketing, social media marketing, direct mail and/or email marketing. You may go the Whitepaper and webinar route as well. It is about exposure and follow-up. You don’t follow up, don’t bother doing it.
Larson Notes & Satire: Cold calling follow up is just the natural progression of the sales process. Every product or service has a cycle and a natural progression. A good well placed cold call only shortens the sales cycle because you get in and out quickly. The key is to get in and get out without making the prospect angry. The fact that most of you reading this are B2B and the telephone is a natural way to do business it only makes sense to use it. Or if you don’t or can’t find the time or nerve to call prospects call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294. One call and we back the rest of those scary cold calls and hand over those leads to you to finish the job.
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
Larson & Associates
Larson Google Blog site
Facebook Fan Page
LinkedIn business page
Follow us on Twitter
P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.
| Mood: | Music: | Location: |
