They’ll tell you it is multidimensional and comprehensive…and it works
Everybody says their methodology is different, right? So, what do our clients say about why they chose us and why they minimally doubled the number of Initial Appointments their sales team was setting prior to attending one of our Prospector’s Academies™? More importantly, how did they sustain those gains?
Picture a three-legged stool. The three legs represent what we call the Art, Science and Best Practices of Appointment setting.
- Let’s start with Art. Art, said another way is skills. It’s all about what we say, how we say it, and when we say it to get through to the decision maker more often—and then once we do get through, turn more of those conversations into appointments. This is the technique component of countering the no. You can also read more about how even this is different than most methodologies by clicking here.
- The second leg is Best Practices, which is all completed before an Academy is ever delivered. There are strategic and tactical components to this. The strategic includes thinking through the process we’ll follow and the preparation for calling. Things like defining what our optimal target looks like, how many of those targets we’ll need, where they are located and how we’ll compile that list so that when it’s time for a Call Block, all we need to do is pick up the phone and dial. (You have no idea how many sales professionals subscribe to the ‘ready, shoot, aim’ theory of prospecting, resulting in a less than ideal pipeline.) It also includes things like how many times we’ll call and how often.
The tactical side of things is delivered in our tailored Playbooks. Each sales professional receives their own individual version containing what we’ll say when they answer the phone, what messages we’ll send and leave if they don’t and how we’ll counter the typical ways people say no to us.
- The third leg is the Science of the process. It is all about speed, organization, and accurate reporting. One of the biggest causes for call reluctance, believe it or not, is not having the time to keep up with the process or simply getting overwhelmed by the process. The technology we utilize was designed specifically for this process and benchmarks at twice the speed. It also provides management with very accurate and granular reporting for accountability and coaching purposes.
This is all delivered through an eight-week, instructor led online class that includes a lot of practice to burn in the skills, tools and process. At the end of the day, our clients would tell you that it is the only comprehensive training they’ve seen on the hardest part of the selling process—setting the Initial Appointment.
If you’d like more information on the topic of why no team of sales professionals has ever failed to at least double the number of Initial Appointments they were setting after going through one of our programs, give us a call or drop us a line. We love talking appointment making!
Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the appointment setting solution called Coldcalling101™. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations—the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 817 224-9900 or at bcaponi@caponipg.com. You can also find answers to many of your challenges in our many published articles on LinkedIn and in our books: Contrary to Popular Belief, Cold Calling DOES Work! Volume I: Effectiveness, The Art of Appointment Making and Volume II: Efficiency, the Science of Appointment Making.
Remember the movie, Ground Hog Day? Bill Murray kept experiencing the same day, over and over again, until he finally addressed what was causing it.
Sales training, when coupled with ongoing coaching works, period. According to the Sales Executive Council, sales professionals that receive fewer than two hours a month of coaching average 90% of their assigned quota. Those that get more than three hours of coaching per month average 107% of quota. 
Should we canvas for Initial Appointments or use the phone? In environments that require a lot of appointment setting with new targets, it’s a question that gets asked a lot. So what’s the answer? 
There is a concept in psychology called, ‘Learned Helplessness‘. It means that when we experience something often enough, we can develop a belief that supports that experience. With cold calling, we hear the following comments from people all the time. “Cold calling doesn’t work.” “Leaving voicemails doesn’t work.” “I won’t use scripts because it makes me sound canned, like the proverbial telemarketer reading their script.” 
The last of the 2018 goal setting blogs is about setting the daily activity objectives so that you can measure your progress towards your goal each day. If you went through the GOSPA exercise, you know that the Strategy piece of the process is very powerful. When you figure out how you’re going to accomplish a particular objective—in this case—your revenue goal, then it’s time to ‘do the math’ in terms of the activity necessary. 
Any self-help book worth its salt will talk about envisioning yourself where you want to be, doing what you want to be doing, and being what you want to be as a very powerful part of the process of accomplishing what you want out of life. The reason for that is simply this. Years ago, scientists discovered that the human mind truly cannot tell the difference between what is imagined and what is real. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” In practical terms, what he’s saying is that if we don’t have a written set of goals that we’ve made public in some fashion (to help us stick to them), it’s just too easy to let life’s events lead us down a road to a destination different than the one we envisioned.