The Great Guns Marketing Blog

For many of our clients, identifying key decision makers and approaching them from cold is something that is a lot harder in practice than it sounds, which is why they come to us to do it for them. In this market the success of engaging with decision makers from cold relies heavily on approaching the right decision makers with strong, personalised messaging (not a script!) as you don’t get many chances to make the right impression.

One of the tools we find really useful for researching prospects and their companies is LinkedIn. Here are some tips as to how to use it

1. Look up company profiles. This will give you lots of information including numbers of employees, sectors, website details, office locations and you can even follow the company to hear about new hires so you can engage with them as soon as they start. You will be able to see employees who fall within your network and your groups so you have a name, job title and conversation point for when you want to engage. Tip – now LinkedIn has hidden some names, if you copy and paste the job title into Google it should come up with the full name on their search results.
2. Search for individual people. If you already have a name, look them up on LinkedIn. This can tell you a lot about them – their hobbies and interests, groups they are members of, other decision makers they work closely with  and discussions they are involved with. If they have a blog, follow them to learn even more about them.
3. Connect. Once you’ve met or engaged with a decision maker, connect to them. Do this immediately and they are more likely to accept your connection when you’ve just met. This allows you constantly updated information on them – if they do leave the company you are trying to build a relationship with then you’ll have a new contact in another company at least!
4. Join groups. Once you start identifying which groups your prospects are members of, join the same group and more importantly, be active. Focus on a few groups which are most relevant and join in the discussion. Do not be tempted to over sell your company, you want to be seen as a thought leader not a sales person!
5. Search for key topics relevant to you.  You can soon see who are the thought leaders contributing to the discussions and starting them. Connect with them and join in their discussions. They’ll soon start noticing your contributions and click on your website, downloading your content in return.

This can take some time so you need to focus on targeting people you really want to build a relationship with and stick with it, or alternatively contact Great Guns and we can do this for you.

Selling would be a whole lot easier if someone hadn’t invented objections, wouldn’t it?

Telemarketing would be a lot easier without objections and that’s why, at Great Guns, we spend a lot of time training and coaching our telemarketers on handling and overcoming objections.

Objections are the reasons voiced by prospects for not wanting to buy exactly what you’ve recommended, or for not wanting to buy at all. I find it best to think of objections as hidden requests for more information – you can then consider them to be buying signals.

I like to get the objections on the table during the selling process and I find that asking questions like these will usually flush them out:-

• Is there anything I’ve not covered or that you are unsure about?
• Are there any reasons why we can’t go ahead with this?
• What needs to happen for you to go ahead with this?

Once I understand the objections, I can then clarify them by asking further questions like “Do you mean that the offer is too expensive or that you are not confident of it achieving the outcome and hence not giving value for money?”

Once I clearly understand the real objection, I can then set about tackling it.

I usually finish up the objection discussion with something like “so if I can overcome that to your satisfaction, will you go ahead?”

Once I get a ‘yes’ to that, then the way ahead is clear.

The ABBA Debate

23rd September2010 

Automated marketing can take care of all your marketing needs so you don’t need a marketing department or an Agency.

Perhaps you disagree? Come and join us to debate this topical and contentious issue and put your views and questions to the panel.

        15.45 – Registration and refreshments

        16.00 – Welcome and introduction from John Stanton

        16.15 – Debate

        17.30 – Q&A

        18.00 – Networking – drinks and canapés on the terrace

Sales is all about results – largely measured by return on investment.

Here are some things to think about before you go steaming ahead with the sales process, which will help you to manage your pipeline and get more out of your telemarketing activity:

1. What makes a good client? Do you really know who you’re targeting and who you want to sell to? One of the first things you can do to make your time more productive is to only go after prospects you know will be your best clients. Profile them based on the industry, size of company, where they are in their buying cycle, what the potential opportunity is etc. For example, if you are a printing company, you may want to think about targeting companies that have a minimum annual print spend, have requirements for lithographic printing, are local to you etc.
2. Build a process to manage your database and gather this market intelligence as you are calling. If you set up you database correctly, it will prompt you to ask these profiling questions and record the intelligence. Some prospects will automatically drop off your radar as you identify they don’t have the correct opportunity for you, reducing your time and money in continuing to target them. Those that do meet your criteria for an excellent client will become apparent and you will put more effort into targeting them.
3. Decide the best way to engage with each prospect. This may be a multi-channel approach. In the first instance you should ideally speak to them over the phone, identify what their pains are, what their personal objectives and business objectives are and understand how they would like you to keep in contact with them. Don’t push too hard – listen to them and respond to what they want, when they want. If you can’t offer a solution to them at the time, be honest about this as it will earn trust and respect.
4. At the end of every conversation agree a next course of action. This may be to send them some information, to invite them to events you run, to call back in a few weeks or to put them on a mailing list. Agree this with your prospect and make sure you deliver to this agreement. We still find one of the best way of achieving appointments is by calling back when we say we will. If this is difficult for you to manage as you’re too busy to stick to your promises then maybe you need to look for support to carry out the telemarketing on your behalf. If you’re not very organised and miss your call backs then maybe you should look for a CRM system where you can set alarms to remind you to call prospects back.
5. Get the level of contact right. If you have followed the above steps then you will be giving your prospect just the right amount of attention as you are agreeing next steps with them. If you contact them too often then you are likely to drive a prospect away. Don’t take advantage of an agreement to contact a prospect again – this is a sign of their trust so don’t abuse it.
6. Give it some time. Stick to the principles and you will win quality meetings with great prospects.