Nicholas Bate

The Weekly Tutorial: the telephone cold call

Tutorial day 4 of 4: do the necessary follow-up actions e.g. writing a confirmatory e-mail. And ask yourself: what could I do better next time? Remember:
• Plan it. Do it. Review it.
• Politeness + Persistence.
• Expect resistance: anticipate and plan for it.
• Your goal is the meeting.

For a structured approach on the consultative selling process, contact Nicholas Bate on [email protected] for details of his new sales book: RainMaker.
Check in for forthcoming tutorials:
Each week, Monday to Thursday at 0800. Coming up in October:

w/c 2 October: Presenting Unplugged. How to present without PowerPoint.
w/c 9 October: Study Skills revised for your MBA. How to take great notes and learn and remember more.
w/c 16 October: How to get the job/career you want. How to approach/search proactively.
w/c 23 October: Start-up! How to start a small, premium consultancy.
w/c 30 October: Brain Development. How to think smarter and more creatively.

Warwick Business School

Considering an MBA? Is Warwick Business School on your list for consideration? I'm teaching there today. What is delightful about their programme, is the significant emphasis given to the soft skills which are increasingly important to complement the traditional technical skills of the classic MBA. EQ as well as IQ. Leadership as well as management. Creativity as well as analysis. I'm looking forward to it: always a bright and challenging bunch.

The Weekly Tutorial: the telephone cold call

Tutorial day 3 of 4: Making the call:
1. Introduce yourself: name + company. Do this at a steady pace: do not rush which reveals anxiety and low confidence.
2. Move quickly to ask an open exploratory question linked specifically to their business. Open is encouraging them to talk. Question is getting them talking. Exploratory is adult to adult. Thus…and I was wondering how you are addressing that issue?
3. Shut up and handle the resistance. Expect it, and deal with it professionally. Thus when they say ‘I simply don’t have time’, you say ‘I wouldn’t necessarily have expected you to do so now, that’s’ why I would like to set up a meeting…’
4. Close on the meeting: time and date.

Microsoft MSN

Worked yesterday with a great team from Microsoft MSN. A bunch of bright people dedicated to ensuring you get the best return for your marketing spend. Are you new to the world of on-line? Read about in Permission Marketing and The Long Tail. Sure there are plenty of fads out there in internet world, but this isn't one of them.

Weekly Tutorial: the telephone cold call

Tutorial day 2 of 4. Plan the call. What will you say? How are they likely to respond? What is your value proposition? Why should they be willing to listen to you? What resistance are they likely to present? As you plan, remember your focus is to get a meeting. That is what you are selling. Thus you will NOT say, I want to come and talk to you about our company’s new cost reduction processes, but you might say, I noticed in the FT that you are currently going through a re-organisation in order to lower your cost base. I’d love to come and talk about how we might be able to contribute to that by showing some case studies.

The Man Who Mistook His Laptop For His Life

0545 Buzz. This is getting tougher. Allan dragged himself out of bed to the shower. There was time (not long ago?) when he would have shaved first. Now he needed a good dose of hot water to get himself going before he could face any further effort. Of course there had been a time before that when he had been up, out of the house and jogging pre-shower. And a time before that when he would have returned to get his wife breakfast. Not now, though. A different world.

The hot water poured over him. It wasn’t great at the moment: his body. Unfortunately it seemed far too representative of his Life as a whole: hard to manage and getting worse.

To be continued. Next Monday at 3pm. In the meantime, try Get a Life.

Weekly Tutorial: the telephone cold call

Whether you’re an entrepreneur getting your start-up off the ground or a full-time consultative salesperson, you must get good at telephone cold-calling. Why? Three very good reasons: (1) If you can do it, you’ll never be hungry, you’ll never be short of business, (2) you can choose the clients you’d like to do business with and reach up to more senior decision-makers, (3) the practice of doing it sharpens incredibly your ability to encapsulate your value proposition in a few sentences and handle objections under pressure. This week’s tutorial* addresses the skill of telephone cold calling.

Tutorial day 1 of 4. Do your research. Before picking up that phone you need (1) the name of a decision maker and his/her direct line (2) a story-a reason for calling (3) an anticipation of the objections you may well receive, both the classics (I haven’t got time) and the specific (that story in the FT was inaccurate). Don’t skimp on this research. Do web-based: their web-site, especially the press box. Search on their name and key roles. Ring and speak to various departments. Remember persistence and politeness is remarkably powerful.

*Each week, Monday to Thursday at 0800. Coming up in October:
w/c 2 October: Presenting Unplugged. How to present without PowerPoint.
w/c 9 October: Study Skills revised for your MBA. How to take great notes and learn and remember more.
w/c 16 October: How to get the job/career you want. How to approach/search proactively.
w/c 23 October: Start-up! How to start a small, premium consultancy.
w/c 30 October: Brain development. How to think smarter and more creatively.

What is their problem? Little Chef

Come on, you have stopped at a Little Chef. Probably a few times. One time you called the fry-up was great: eggs perfect, served promptly and pretty good value. And you were waited upon. So you could read the newspaper, collect your thoughts...That 'being waited upon' should be a real selling advantage for Little Chef: great for families who tend to lose the little ones around all the islands of food at the motorway services, great for business people who want a quiet table and someone to get all the stuff.
But. It's so inconsistent. When it's great it's brilliant. But too much of the time the service is just too slow. Such as half-term holidays, lunch-time (did they learn that from the great high street banks?), supper time. Come on Little Chef. Wake up! Sell the fact you have at-table service, forget the silly coffee top-ups (we'd rather have decent coffee) and work out a way of having enough people to serve at busy times. Otherwise, you have lost our custom.

What are you reading?

Two great books for you to read: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. Not only is the book excellent on introducing and expounding an important idea-that much of what could never be viably sold in the Old World of Work because sales were too low is now very much a commercial opportunity with the internet as a channel-but also because the book was created via his blog. Which I also encourage you to visit. And the other?-aah the fantastic Michael Connelly whose latest Harry Bosch novel, Echo Park, is as excellent as ever. And if you haven't yet discovered Connelly your problems for several long flights to come are solved.

By the way, Seth Godins's latest, Small is the New Big, is entirely Riffs and Rants from his blog.

Dumbing down or connecting?

Have you read John Updike's new novel Terrorist? Or listened to Bob Dylans's new album Modern Times What do you think? I like them both. A lot. Both artists have received some criticism for dumbing down and not being as good/challenging as they were. Well, one things for certain, the products of their thinking, their art is different and will no doubt continue to be so. That's very healthy for an artist. (In fact it's very healthy for all of us). However great they were, we don't need another Centaur from Updike nor Blood on the Tracks by Dylan. We've got them. And they are fantastic pieces of work. I think both authors have done a great job of connecting with newer audiences who don't have nor are willing to find the time to read nor listen in depth. This is a good strategy because once 'won over' these new audiences may well be willing to put the effort into a back catalogue.

A message may be for all of us who produce 'product'. Before we get too 'high and mighty' about 'not being appreciated', how much effort have we put in to connect with our chosen market? It can always be done. Anyhow, you were wondering what to read and listen to this week-end, weren't you?