Nicholas Bate

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.

Distinct or extinct? How to create difference

Earlier this week, we were talking about raising standards in the context of giving you a differentiator or USP.
If you are dire, you’ll be out, fired, no more. And that will happen pretty well immediately. There is no long term if dire is your chosen standard.
If your chosen performance is poor, it may take a little longer for people to catch up with you, but you’ll be out once they realise and once again there is no long term for you. Not if your chosen standard is poor.
If you choose to be OK, then you’re in for the short-term and if you are willing to raise your standards then you have a long-term future. But bear in mind, you simply can’t stay at OK! Who wants to buy from someone who is OK? They will wish to choose from someone who is good, someone who is very good. They’ll promote someone who is excellent. And who for that matter who personally simply wants to be just OK? There is no future long-term as just OK.
If you are good, then people will be interested in you both short-term and long-term. You should be able to hang onto jobs, but will they be the jobs you want? And will you be given you the promotion the challenge, the career, the money you seek? No-that’s right: probably not. You see, good is no longer good enough. Certainly not in the long-term. But hopefully if you are good you are good enough to recognise the need to raise your standards.
How about if you are very good? Ahh..now we are talking. People are much more interested in you. There are more possibilities open to you. You should have more choice over your career. You should get regular consideration for some of the best opportunities.
What about if you are excellent? Cool. There are never, ever enough excellent people about the place. You’ll be in demand, you’ll always be employable. You’re going to be able to enjoy the package you seek. You’ll have fun.
Could you step up to outstanding? Of course you could. Because you‘ve got the message, haven’t you? Every one of these steps is a choice. Your talent is genetic, but your standards are choice. And if you were outstanding…..think of what would be open to you.
And if you were awesome there would be absolutely no stopping you. How about it? Make that decision today. Simply decide to be awesome. They’ll be after you. You can name your price.

Seth Godin has a nice quote connected to this subject:

This is scary. It's really scary to turn down most (the average) of what comes your way and hold out for the remarkable opportunities. Scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you'll end up just like them. Scary to go way out on an edge and intentionally make what you do unattractive to some.
Which is why it's such a great opportunity.

Protect your price

To protect price you need to be different:you need some Unique Selling Points (USPs). This message has existed since the start of formal sales training which began seriously with the growth of insurance sales in the 1950s. And of course it is perfectly logical. If you are not different, then someone can buy elsewhere. And if they can buy elsewhere then they can begin to negotiate over your price; if they cannot get your product or service elsewhere that is far more difficult for them to do.

In the Old World of Work when your competition tended to be confined to a certain industry or a certain geographical region then that was an easier thing to achieve. In the New World of Work we have a much greater, faster and leaner list of competitors. So, do USPs really exist anymore? No, not so simply. Having a particular feature or funtionality on a phone or healthier ingredients list on a jar of jam or a longer pay-back time on a policy may get you ahead for a while. But that 'while' gets shorter all the time. If your USP, if your differentiator is any good, the competition will copy it. And you'll be back to competing on price. But of course UPSs do not need to be 'hard'; they can be 'soft' such as levels of service. How about if everything you did, everything your team did was at least excellent. You would become remarkable i.e. people would begin to remark about you. And please don't think that is too easy: how many truly excellent people or companies can you think of? Quite. More on this tomorrow. In the meantime you may want to check out Tom Peters, the 'father' of excellence in business thinking and also Seth Godin an interesting marketeer who regularly uses the term 'remarkable' in its true meaning and who will give you plenty to think about. Get to it. Difference allow you to defend your price. Defending your price allows you to protect margin. Protecting margin allows you to make money. And that's a nice position to be in.