AMA - Prospecting

[BlindSide]

Didn’t see a AMA on the topic of cold calling/Prospecting, feel free to remove if it’s there. While I haven’t built a Fastlane business - this forum & books have helped me step outside my comfort zone to generate my own income without a job, learn new skills, and so much more. Thought it was time I give back.

Ask me anything on how to get in front of people you want to talk to, and do business with. If I don’t know, I’ll be upfront about it. Not gonna give advice if I Haven’t tried it myself.

 

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[iwant53million]

I've heard that when cold calling or prospecting, you have the first few secs to get the attention of the client before they decide to decline or schedule an appointment. That being said, when I call a customer and they pick up do you think it's a good idea to say who I am first and share a bit of what I have under my belt (results achieved for other clients) OR go straight to why I called and what I can do for them skipping the introduction part.

 

[Jon L]

I sell custom software and have struggled with prospecting. My current method, calling IT Service Providers to see if they have any clients that need custom software, works ok, but I'd love to figure out how to prospect clients directly.

I can't get my head around how to approach a client. The problem is that custom software can be anything.

"What are you selling?" "Custom Software" "What is that?" "Well what do you want it to be?" ... makes for a difficult cold call.

Past clients have come through referrals, IT firms and the like. I've had a few clients that have talked me up to their friends, but custom software isn't something that a normal business will need but once every few years, or so it seems.

People have said I should specialize. But in what? I've built systems for Oil and Gas, Law, Retail, Wholesale, Real Estate, etc etc etc.

What I'd like to know is: how you would approach a company, what to say, who to talk to, and how much to follow up. I'm sure this kind of thing would be useful to other service providers, too.

By the way, once I am talking to a potential client that needs what I can provide, and has the money to afford it, I have a very high close rate. Something around 80%, depending on what you count.

 

[BlindSide]

I've heard that when cold calling or prospecting, you have the first few secs to get the attention of the client before they decide to decline or schedule an appointment. That being said, when I call a customer and they pick up do you think it's a good idea to say who I am first and share a bit of what I have under my belt (results achieved for other clients) OR go straight to why I called and what I can do for them skipping the introduction part.

Good question, this catches a lot of people. There are so many ways to do this, and it comes down to what fits your personality. I ask for permission.

here are a few that have worked for me:

“Hey _, this is Tyler with _, thank you for taking my call, do you have a few moments?”

“Hey _, this is Tyler, and I was hoping you could help me out for a moment.”

If you’d rather go into it, you can go with:

“Hi _, this is _ with_. The reason for the call is ...”

2 things:

1. Tonality is huge here. IMO, it’s more important than the script (provided the script isn’t horrible). You need to sound calm & confident, not nervous. Detach from the outcome, and see if they are open to you helping.

2. Smart Calling is such a great book. Highly recommend it for learning how to build strong introductions &gaining interest.

I sell custom software and have struggled with prospecting. My current method, calling IT Service Providers to see if they have any clients that need custom software, works ok, but I'd love to figure out how to prospect clients directly.

I can't get my head around how to approach a client. The problem is that custom software can be anything.

"What are you selling?" "Custom Software" "What is that?" "Well what do you want it to be?" ... makes for a difficult cold call.

Past clients have come through referrals, IT firms and the like. I've had a few clients that have talked me up to their friends, but custom software isn't something that a normal business will need but once every few years, or so it seems.

People have said I should specialize. But in what? I've built systems for Oil and Gas, Law, Retail, Wholesale, Real Estate, etc etc etc.

What I'd like to know is: how you would approach a company, what to say, who to talk to, and how much to follow up. I'm sure this kind of thing would be useful to other service providers, too.

By the way, once I am talking to a potential client that needs what I can provide, and has the money to afford it, I have a very high close rate. Something around 80%, depending on what you count.

Ooh, this is fun. So first off, even though your solutions your building can be new each time, what are the benefits? Web developers& designers build new sites all the time. But the value props exist. What’s your value prop? Why did those customers choose you?

Once you work backward from this, then Id take a look at the response I just build on intros for the other question.Break it down into steps

1. Introduce yourself
2. Use some intelligence that you know about the company that you know you can help with
3. Tease your value prop
4. Ask if you can ask a few questions to see if they could benefit, or go straight for the meeting.

As for follow up, it depends on the size of the companies here. Are we talking large enterprises? Small businesses? I’d recommend 8-12 touch points (combination of LinkedIn, call, email, voicemail, Direct mail, etc). Spread that over the course of say 30 days to start.

 

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[iwant53million]

@TylerH1994 Thanks for taking your time to respond, I'll read the book. You said "detach from the outcome" you mean the outcome of the phone call or outcome of what I can do for them?

 

[BlindSide]

@TylerH1994 Thanks for taking your time to respond, I'll read the book. You said "detach from the outcome" you mean the outcome of the phone call or outcome of what I can do for them?

Of course! It’ll help a lot.

Outcome of the phone call. So many people are nervous to dial because they view themselves as a distraction. One of the best ways to handle this is to detach from that - don’t worry if they hang up, get angry, ya da yada. Be genuinely curious if you can help them, and see if they are open to it. If not, move on.

 

[Ronak]

I've built systems for Oil and Gas, Law, Retail, Wholesale, Real Estate, etc etc etc.

Start there with other companies in the same vertical. "I just built xyz for CoolCo and they were able to benefit¹, benefit² benefit³. Would you be open to a conversation to learn more?"

 

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[Jon L]

Not sure why, but I don't have my head wrapped around this yet. I've been making about 10 calls a day for a few days now. Typically, I'll talk to 4 people out of 10. 2 will be receptionists who say, 'no, go away.' 1 will say, 'i have no need for that' (And they're in a position to know). 1 will want to talk further. I've gotten one job from it and one potential job. Both are small, but as with any small job, they have the potential to turn into more.

I'll call up a business and ask if they have any custom software projects that they're considering. If they say 'no' immediately, I'll say, 'ok thank you.' Then, I'll pause and ask if they're in a position to know that for sure. Because of the way I ask the question, that typically gets me passed along to someone more senior.

I know that this isn't the way a 'real' sales rep would approach a potential client, but its what computes in my head at the moment. When I do try a different approach, it needs to make sense to me.

What I struggle with about approaching companies is that I have no idea what they need up front. One company, a printing company, listened to me talk a bit. They said, 'yeah we just hired a custom software developer to develop a full end to end system for us, but you know, we have these XML files that we get from our old system. We know we need to have those read and converted into something useful and we haven't looked around for someone to handle that. Can you do it?' 'Yup,' I said, and described an example of a client that had a similar need.' ... This will be a $1000-$2000 job, which is quite small. BUT ... we will do a good job for them, make ourselves easy to work with, and see where that relationship goes.

If I'd limited myself to a specific area of their business, that conversation may not have happened.

So ... to grow in this endeavor, how do I need to shift my thinking so that I'm not essentially saying, 'hey, wanna buy some custom software?'

(I know people have said above, 'call on companies in industries where you've had clients and offer the same thing to other people in those same industries.' I don't know why I'm so resistant to that idea.) Here's an example of where I think that will go:

A client of mine is a food products distributor. We've rewritten his system that he uses to run his entire business. It is highly specific to how he runs his company (it would not be useful to anyone but him). Another distributor in the same industry might need the same thing, but probably not. They could just as easily need a system that integrates their order processing system, which they're mostly happy with, with their website. Or, they might need better reporting out of their system, or whatever. If I approached them offering to build a custom order processing system, they'd say 'no' and I'd lose the chance to offer what they really need.

... the business I'm really in? Business consulting. I just happen to fix business issues with custom software for my clients. So, how do I sell business consulting?