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The Fallacy of Making Appointments
Guest articles > The Fallacy of Making Appointments
by: Sharon Drew Morgen
Do you want to make a sale, or an appointment? Does an appointment create a 'relationship' that will close the deal? Give you a higher probability of closing a sale? And howâs that working for you? Are you closing all the sales you deserve to close? By seeking appointments with prospects with a âneedâ who could buy your solution (a prospect is someone who WILL buy, not merely someone who COULD buy), you severely limit your âintro meetingsâ to either those already seeking your solution (and competitors), or those youâre guessing might (might) be buyers. Indeed, what you determine a âsales qualified opportunityâ might be nothing more than a biased interpretation of a biased conversation that affords the opportunity to try to convince someone to buy; the odds are very high youâre wasting your time. Maybe youâre not finding the right prospects. Maybe a qualified opportunity isnât qualified. But the real problem is that by sorting for prospects with both a âneedâ and a willingness to take an appointment, youâre severely restricting the playing field and most likely closing well under 5% of qualified leads. So something is awry. But by shifting your criteria, by seeking candidates who CAN buy, itâs possible to make appointments with buyers ABLE to buy. APPOINTMENT SETTING IS COSTING YOU SALESRight now youâre spending a lot of resource for a very low return, with a substandard ratio between seeking, and connecting with, initial conversations to the actual closing of a sale: 200 cold calls = 10 conversations = 1 meeting (.5%) Lots of meetings = unknown closes I have a colleague who charges $5,000 per âCâ level appointment; it takes his team 1500 cold calls to get an appointment, and again, he has no concrete numbers on how many sales are actually closed. (Sales Development groups consider themselves finished when they book appointments, and have no attachment to whether or not the sale closes.) I believe that the way youâre going about seeking appointments is costing you sales. Ask yourself this: Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities. When you start off with a goal to make an appointment, youâre
What makes âneedâ the criteria anyway? What if your criteria were to discover those who CAN buy? By using your first interaction to facilitate a buyerâs ability to buy, by facilitating Buyer Readiness, you can find real buyers and get an appointment with all of the appropriate influencers and decision makers present on your first call. WHY APPOINTMENTS SUCKHave you ever even asked yourself why you believe itâs necessary to make an appointment as part of your sales process? Hereâs why: because in 1937, in How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie suggested sellers needed to make appointments. Thatâs right, 1937. In 1937, without the internet, computers, good phone lines or travel, sellers probably didnât go too far from their homes to sell. What else are you doing from 1937? Thereâs now a completely different set of global, technology, capability givens: buyers have all the data they need at their fingertips; sellers neednât be physically present to actually demonstrate a solution; itâs easy to sit at a desk and communicate anywhere in the world. You can actually facilitate a buying decision with prospects who will buy, once theyâve got their ducks in a row, in less time than it takes to make an appointment. Here are the problems sellers face when their goal is to make an appointment with those with a âneedâ, and why youâre closing such a paltry percentage:
Itâs possible to use your lists and phone time to first facilitate Buyer Readiness â on the first call - before asking for an appointment. Then, with your expert help, buyers assemble the appropriate Buying Decision Team, quickly determine necessary change/purchase issues, and know how to handle the fallout a purchase would entail. You can do this on the phone less time than it takes you to get an appointment. CASE STUDYHereâs a situation that happened to me years before Sales Development Consulting to find âsales qualified opportunitiesâ was a thing. Itâs a funny example of how little we know when we make an appointment, and how costly our assumptions of âneedâ can be. When I lived in Taos, NM, I hired a sales professional in Albuquerque. While it was only 147 miles door to door, that trip was treacherous going up and down the Sangre de Christos Mountains in the winter and I hated the drive. One day my new hire Anna called to tell me she made an appointment for us to meet with senior folks in a local bank. Working with me she knew she wasnât supposed to make appointments. âBut they asked to see us!â she said, excitedly. âAnd they need sales training. Theyâre very excited to meet with you.â I bet her a lunch at my favorite Japanese restaurant in Albuquerque that sheâd realize she shouldnât have made an appointment, that I would do the best I could, but sheâd surely owe me a lunch. We entered a boardroom, with 2 seats for me and Anna on one side, and 3 men sitting on the other. According to their business cards, it was the Branch Manager, Assistant Branch Manager and the Training Director. At the start of the meeting, the menâs chairs were pretty much equidistant. We shared a few pleasantries as I watched Miguel, the Training Director on the far left, move his seat, bit by bit, away from his colleagues. Within about 5 minutes, he was at least 2 feet away from his nearest seatmate. After the pleasantries, I asked: SDM: Howâs your current sales training working? PAT: (Branch Manager): Itâs fine. SDM: Sooo how did you decide to see me today? PAT: Well, Anna called and told me all about you (Again, something she is not supposed to do.) and I found it interesting. I thought it might be fun to just sit and talk about sales training. SDM: So your sales training is merely fine, and you didnât seek anyone out to find out how to make it better? PAT: Well, itâs working well enough. [NOTE: Obviously, this wasnât a buyer; heâs got nothing to buy.] SDM: And what is it about sales training that you would hear from me that youâd find interesting? Itâs sort of confusing me since you seem to be fine as you are. PAT: (silence for about 3 very long minutes.) Oh, I donât know, maybe we can talk about the sort of results banks might get from sales training? SDM: Pat, Iâm not sure why Iâm here. Sounds like youâve got training thatâs working for you and you havenât been seeking anything new. Iâm confused. How âbout you call me if you decide you want to do something different and we can talk on the phone. The visit lasted 10 minutes. Anna and I walked out, wordlessly got in the car, and she drove me to my Japanese restaurant. Cost: SDM - 6 hours of driving time. Anna - 3 hours of lost calling time to facilitate real buyers, plus $100 for lunch. The next day, Pat called me. PAT: Iâd like to apologize for yesterday. That wasnât fair to you. What you didnât know was that Miguel, on the end, was the nephew of the owner of the bank. He designed all the sales training weâve used for the last 10 years. Itâs awful and our results are terrible. But politically, I couldnât be the one to say we needed you. I hoped with you being there heâd be willing to discuss the problems and maybe seek a new solution. I kept giving him opportunities to say something. He never did. A coda: I ran into Pat in Taos about 4 years later. Seemed they were still using the same sales training, getting the same bad results. Note: I could have spoken to Pat on the phone and avoided this meeting. They were never buyers, although they certainly had a âneedâ I could fulfill. I suggest you shift the focus to facilitate buying, and use appointments to sell once there is a real buying opportunity. The problem has never been in your solution, has it? ENTER FIRST AS A FACILITATORWe can use our early moments on an initial call to immediately begin facilitating Buyer Readiness. Hereâs a story I often share. Sorry if youâve read this from me before now, but the example bears repeating. When I trained a group of small business bankers at a large bank, their initial cold calls sought an appointment: Banker: Hi. Iâm John Smith and a small business banker at W bank. Iâm going to be in your neighborhood next week to introduce folks to our new solutions for small businesses. Would you have time for me to come by Tuesday or Thursday afternoon? Iâd come by to show you resources that would help your business grow. The bankers got 10% agreement to make an appointment, and closed 2 in 11 months. 2% close. During my training with these folks, we designed a Facilitative Question (a skill in Buying FacilitationÂŽ) that helped the prospects determine how they could achieve excellence and solve a problem from the first question in our interaction: Banker: Hi. Iâm John Smith and a small business banker at W bank and this is a sales call. How are you currently adding new resources to use with the bank youâre currently using, for those times your bank canât give you all that you need? The bankers got 37% agreement to make an appointment. The question caused those with a need realize their current bank wouldnât be able to give them large loans, and they actually requested the appointments with their whole Buying Decision Team present. The bankers closed 29 for a 29% close in 3 months. By starting with facilitating excellence, we highlighted an area we knew to be a problem, took into account our understanding of the small business ownerâs historic relationships with their bankers, and quickly taught prospects how to âthink forwardâ to develop a plan to add resources without threatening their long-standing relationships. And we immediately, on our first question, taught almost 4x the number of prospects HOW to buy from us, and found truly qualified prospects who invited us to an appointment â with everyone present. It saved us from seeking out only those prospects who didnât have banking relationships and expanded the field. By beginning your interactions seeking to make an appointment with prospects with a âneedâ, youâre short-changing your sales. Change your criteria. Begin your sales calls by seeking how you can facilitate excellence. Using the model I designed for this process (Buying FacilitationÂŽ) my clients have been able to close 30% more than the folks using the same list in the control group, in half the time with Âź the resources, and without going through the call/conversation/meeting process. And itâs certainly possible to develop scripts and email campaigns to accomplish this. Design your own facilitation system. Just shift your goals and expectations for what a successful appointment would need to look like (i.e. those who can buy, and who invite the full Buying Decision Team to meet you) and enter each call to facilitate buying. Youâll not only stop wasting time and resource, but youâll close a helluva lot more sales. Teach your prospects how to know what they need and how to get consensus â and close quickly. And in addition, youâll be a servant leader Make money and make nice.
Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of 9 books, including NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? She has developed facilitation material for sales/change management, coaching, and listening. To learn more about her sales, decision making, and change management material, (www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com) go to www.sharondrewmorgen.com. To learn more about her work on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, go to www.didihearyou.com. Contact Sharon Drew for training, keynotes, or online programs at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Sharon Drew is currently designing programs for coaches to Find and Keep the Ideal Client, and Lead Facilitation for Lead Generation. Contributor: Sharon Drew Morgen Published here on: 29-Jan-17 Classification: Sales Websites:
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