Who ya gonna call?

This Week's Edition

• Introduction
• The Article - Who do you call in target prospects (and why)?
• Tactic of the Week - The email that (almost) never fails

Introduction

OK, if you've been following this newsletter you'll remember we've discussed finding a list of specific companies that fit, or are close to, your Ideal Customer Profile.

If you haven't, go back and read the earlier editions now - but only if you want to.

So, we have a list of companies who are likely to have business issues we can help with, probably sorted by industry, who we want to contact to see if they need what we sell.

But whatever channel you use - phone, email, SMS, snail mail, Fedex parcel, referral, semaphore - you don't contact a company. You contact one or more people. Human beings.

The main article discusses who you should call - and why. Because you call different people for different reasons.

Then for Tactic of the Week we'll look at the email that never fails - or hardly ever - when you're trying to get a response from a prospect who's ghosting you. Off we go.

As always, if you find this useful please "like" it and (if you have time & the inclination) please share it so more people can see it. And I will answer all questions and comments, positive and negative - so ask away.

Oh, the picture. It's a koala. In Port Douglas, Queensland. It's quite relevant because the big yawn is what many prospects do about 30 seconds into many sales calls.

The Article - Who ya gonna call?

Here's the situation. You sell a high value product or service and winning a new customer is worth at least $250k lifetime value, usually much more. So it's worth your while to put in a decent effort to get in front of the right person.

You have a list of potential high value customers. Now you need to work out which people you want to get in front of in those prospects.

Obviously you want to speak with the highest level executive in each target company who has ultimate responsibility for the issue you can help them with. Depending on the size of the company & the degree of importance of the issues you help wth it may be a "C" level executive or someone lower down the totem pole.

For example if you're selling a $500,000 solution to a company with turnover of $10 milion you'll almost certainly need to speak to the CEO or CFO. It's a big chunk of change for them. But if you're selling a $500,000 solution to Tesla you probably don't want to speak to Elon Musk. He spends that getting one SpaceX rocket in the air.

On the other hand if you can help him buy Twitter cheap go ahead and call him.

So the person you need is whoever a) owns the issue and b) signs - or authorises - the cheque. Or if you're in the USA, the check.

On the other hand you don't want to spend an arm and a leg to get in front of the perfect executive in your ideal customer and have them say "oh no, we don't have that issue" or "we bought one yesterday".

Nor do we want them to think "this idiot doesn't have a clue about my business" after five minutes - which is how long you'll get before they kick you out. If you're lucky.

For the sake of this article let's assume your target is the CFO or equivalent. That's because you sell something that will help make her or his Accounts Receivable department more efficient, will redude their DS) (Days Sales Outstanding) which is a key measurable, will reduce the pressure on their AR team and will improve customer satisfaction. All desirable outcomes that will help her or him achieve their KPIs and get their big fat bonus.

(That's assuming, of course, that they have a reasonably large AR department - but of course your research has already confirmed that.)

So you have good reasons for him or her to talk to you - from his or her perspective.

Or do you? Obviously if you're selling an AR solution you understand the key issues that AR departments face. And if you're focused on a particular industry you know the industry-specific AR issues. For example in the publishing industry returns are a big deal which means that AR has to deal with a lot of claims for returned books, which makes cash reconciliation a bit of a nightmare.

But even if you understand the business issues, even if you understand the industry specific issues, even if you know the ultimate benefits from the CFO's perspective (reduced DSO etc. lerading to a big fat cheque) - you DON'T know how big any one issue it is in that specific company.

Maybe it's a massive issue. Or maybe they have a pretty effective workaround. Maybe people in their AR team are tearing their hair out each month end. Or maybe they bought a solution from a competitor last Tuesday. Or maybe they're in the process of implementing an ERP and they don't plan to even think of any other things for six months.

If/when you get in front of the CFO it would be useful if you knew some of those things. If you can say "I know your AR team work 20 hours straight every month end to reconcile all the cash before you can close the books, they're leaving in droves and we can reduce that to six hours so they stop resigning" it's a lot more effective than "we have a great AR solution, look at all these customers".

So one approach - one which some of my clients are currently using - is to call at operational level to identify the specific issues and their impacts at that specific company. Then to call at executive level armed with all the necessary information to not only get a meeting but to make sure the meeting is productive.

That's not the only approach by any means. Sometimes it's quicker and easier just to call higher up, or lower down. It depends on many factors. But if a new customer is worth $500k upwards it's worth putting in the work so you can go into the executive suite with as much ammunition as possible.

The great thing is that, if you do it properly, it's much harder to fail. Sure, you'll uncover some of companies that don't actually have issues you can help with. But they were never really prospects anyway, were they? You'll uncover some that have already implemented another solution. That's bloody annoying - but not much you can do about it (except you could have started this process six months ago).

You'll come across people who have a need but have other priorities right now. These you can put into a nurturing program - a proper one run by actual human beings, not by an generic, electronic robot that tries to guide a herd of prospects down a predetermined buyer's journey like a flock of sheep.

(Many mixed metaphors there but I like them anyway)

So we know who we're calling. In this example the CFO, but not until we've talked to people at the operations level. This may be the actual workers - Accounts Receivable clerks - or the head of AR or both. But remember we're not calling the ops people to make a sale. We're calling to understand their situation.

And if we approach it that way we'll hardly ever get the brush-off. Because people are almost always happy to talk about their work with someone sympathetic who isn't trying to sell to them or qualify them but who can talk intelligently about their issues in their language.

I'm a massive critic of the SDR model where trainee salespeople call executives to qualify them and see if they're important enough for their AEs to bother with. I think it's disrespectful for the prospect, high pressure and bad training for the SDR, it gives salespeople a bad name and it doesn't work very well.

But I'm very open to people who know what they're talking about calling operational people to discuss their business issues and the impact thereof to see it there's an unmet need, without any sales pressure.

Next question - who does the calling?

Again, it depends. It depends how many people you have, how big you are, who you're calling and a heap of other stuff.

But in general, people who call should speak the language of the person they're calling. If you're calling a CFO you need to speak CFO. If you're calling a Head of AR you need to speak AR, or at least know enough about AR to speak to and understand their key issues.

If you're bilingual you can call at both levels.

Of course it's much easier for someone like me who's been around since the Battle of Hastings, who's had more jobs than a geriatric Boy Scout and who's spent more time at "C" level than the Flying Dutchman to pick up operational languages than it is for a trainee to pick up CEO or CFO.

But my rather mangled point is that whoever you're calling, you need to be able to speak about their stuff and their issues in their language from their point of view.

When you call the CFO, assuming you've determined they have an itch you can help scratch, you only have one objective - to get a meeting where they will give you their full attention for thirty minutes. There are many ways to do that and we'll cover them in a later issue.

But without a reason - an itch - any technique or tactic will be useless.

Quick summary

1. Work out which roles you need to contact and why.
2. Work out which specific people have those roles in each target prospect. Because different companies use different titles for similar roles.
3. The bottom line is that you need to know this: In Company X I need to speak to two AR clerks, who are Bill & Sebastian, to understand what frustrates them most; I need to speak to the head of AR, who is Amber, to understand what her biggest issues are; and I then want to speak to Penny who is CFO to set up a meeting to discuss how I can help her reach her strategic and personal goals (which I know by way of my research & knowledge of the role & industry) by sorting out this issues Amber, Bill & Sebastian have told me about.

Next weeks

In the next couple of weeks we'll look at how to structure these conversations with the above, the different options for communicating with them and the pros and cons of each.

Until then, here's the...

Tactic of the Week - The email (or voice mail, or SMS) that almost never fails.

OK, this is 85% stolen - sorry, borrowed - from Chris Voss, author of the brilliant "Never Split the Difference". I'd already used it myself but I can't encapsulate it nearly as well as he did - see his website Blackswanltd.com.

About 8 years ago on one of the LinkedIn sales groups - back in the days when people actually used to use them before LinkedIn screwed them up - someone posted a question. It went something like this.

"I have a prospect that was totally enthusiastic about my solution. They were mad keen to go, all the signals were positive, we had eliminated the competition & agreed pricing - then they went silent. They aren't returning my calls and emails. What did I do wrong?"

He got literally dozens of responses, most of which answered the question he asked. They told him in excrutiating detail where he'd gone wrong.

Some of them blamed the prospect. Some said "obviously they've gone with the competition and don't want to tell you" and other fanciful ideas. Some said to send the prospect a rude email telling them off.

I disagreed. I said something like. "I don't know if you did anything wrong. Neither do you. In fact the only thing you do know is that they aren't answering your emails. Maybe they're busy. Maybe someone died. Maybe there was a takeover. Don't guess - ask them."

I suggested he send an email not unlike the one Chris Voss recommends.

About three weeks later he messaged me. "Thanks for the advice, I did send the email you recommended. They said yes, they're still interested, sorry for the silence but they've been flat out with another project that distracted them. But that's settled now and they want to go ahead immediately."

(Just to be clear I've also given some truly awful advice and screwed up many things so don't go thinking I know it all - I don't. No-one does)

Here's what Chris Voss says, rephrased.

Start with a no-oriented question

And put it in the email header so they actu ally open the email. This gives them permission to say "no". If they are ghosting you because they don't want to do business they will usually be relieved they don't have to tell you. But more likely something else happened and this will get them to correct you.

Chris suggests the following;

• Have you decided to give up on X?
• Are you walking away from X?
• Did you decide to go away from X?

Now Chris is brilliant but I prefer to personalise it a bit more, especially in a subject header. So I usually go with "To Edith from Steve - have you decided to give up on X?" (but I only use these specific words if I'm talking to someone called Edith, of course)

But the idea is to give them permission to tell you they've given up, or preferably to get them to correct you.

End the email on a positive note

I like this but I'll give you my own ending rather than his. I'd say something like "if you have decided not to go ahead I wish you all the best and if we are continuing I look forward to working with you". Note the "and" as opposed to a "but" - they're both very powerful words and you need to be careful when you use them.

He also suggests using a different salutation such as "humbly" or "the very best regards" just to be different from what everyone else says. I don't do that because I almost always end my emails with "Cheers" which is pretty differrent anyway.

There are a couple of other distinctions he recommends but you can see them for yourself on blog.blackswanltd.com/the-edge/sales-email-magic-the-guaranteed-way-to-get-a-response

I won't discuss them here because they're linguistic subtleties and I'll be covering linguistics in a later newsletter. ,

Here's an example of how I'd write such an email:

Header: To Mark from Steve - are you giving up on our idea?

Hi Mark,

It's been a while since we discussed our idea to implement a "How to Sell to Executives" coaching program for your sales team. I haven't heard back from you and I wondered if you've given up on the idea for some reason. I know different things can come up so if there's a delay or you've changed tack just let me know.

If are ready to go ahead let me know asap as I'm a bit concerned your team won't get the full benefits if we don't make a start before the holiday season.

Let me know what works for you and either way I hope your team goes gangbusters this year,

Cheers,

Steve

Notes

I say "our idea" to show it's a collaboration rather than me trying to sell somehting

"For some reason" is deliberately vague. It's very non-judgemental or assumptive.

"I know different things can come up so if there's a delay or you've changed tack just let me know." is again judgemental and implies I could care less, just as long as I know what's happening.

The sentence about the holiday season gives a reason, from their perspective, not mine, to get off their bum if they are going to do something.

"either way I hope your team goes gangbusters" again lets them off the hook and is deliberately colloquial because it's human being to human being (or salesperson to salesperson), not business jargon.

That will almost always work. Try it, but in your own words.

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That's all for this week folks, apart from one thing.

My biggest message is that everything I say depends on a whole heap of stuff. Your outreach program needs to take your own specific situation into account - if you have any questions about your situation or general questions as me in the comments - or message me - and I'll try to help.

Until next week, TTFN