B2C & B2B - New Sales Paradigm



THE TELEPHONE: HOW, WHY AND WHEN TO USE IT - B2C & B2B

By Sharon Drew Morgen

The telemarketing industry is in trouble. It makes me sad, as the telephone is a truly important communication tool when used properly.

My first book, Sales on the Line was published in 1992 for the tele-sales industry - both B2C and B2B. While the book was welcomed by the sales industry in general, it was ignored by the telemarketing industry in specific, as my message of supporting the buyer's buying decision ran counter to their ethos: "Why waste time teaching buyers how to make effective decisions?" telemarketers asked. "We just do it by the numbers: place X calls, and get 1/2 of 1% response. Create a great script, purchase competent predictive dialers and get good leads, hire lots of cheap labor, train them (over and over again to the tune of 70% turnover), place millions of calls, make the calls with a low overhead, make sure they last no more than 2 minutes, and take the 1/2 of 1% response rate to the bank."

Right.

But what is the message here? That it's a numbers game: throw product information at them (regardless of what they might need, or not want to hear about), do it when you have the best chance of reaching them (weekends and meal times), just find that 1/2 of 1% - and totally ignore the 99.5% of the people who were annoyed by the nuisance call.

But that 99.5% that are being ignored, that were annoyed and angered by the calls, is a huge number - think millions of calls, total, going out per day, from call centers world-wide. Enough annoyed people to change the rules in an entire industry and put it out of business.

People don't want to be just numbers anymore; people don't want to be disturbed; people don't want data thrown at them - even if they might need the offering. People want to be cared about, respected, served by suppliers, and supported through change.

We cannot afford to annoy customers. Bottom line.

THE TELEPHONE AND THE NEW BUSINESS MODELS

The customer has always been in control (remember: s/he who signs check is in control). But now customers are in control with a vengeance: the have all the information they need at their fingertips and don't need sellers for that; they know all the competitive products and alternate possibilities; they have all available pricing models given to them in one form or another; they know what is coming out - and when - to replace your product, from anywhere in the world.

Fooling, badgering, lying, pushing, mistreating, ignoring, and in any way not serving your client or prospect base will come back to haunt you.

I've had problems with rude FedEx couriers over the years, and know for a fact that they have never been given customer service training (a friend has been a courier with them and has never been offered one day of customer service training in 5 years!). When I've gone to my local MBE I've been sure to request UPS. Just today, I had a package that I had to return via a FedEx return packing slip. My local MBE was now a UPS outlet! Cool. Except that I still had to send my FedEx package, and I didn't know where to go - and the package wasn't ready to send. The UPS people took the package from me, packed it properly, taped it, weighed it so we could fill out the slip, and looked up the nearest FedEx drop-off bin for me. They didn't take money, and made nothing from the transaction, except a happy customer.

And this is what we all have to do these days to lure and keep our customers.

So how do we use the telephone to support us? Here are the areas where I believe the telephone is fundamental (and if you don't agree, at least hang in with me while I explain why):

1. prospecting, cold calling, and qualifying in every industry, no matter how large the offering.

Example. I did some work with one of the Big Five - oops, I mean the Big Four - accounting firms. They were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on presentation materials for their multimillion-dollar solutions. Boy, were these presentations pretty! And impressive!!! Graphs, charts, company histories, intricate looks at the prospect's initiatives. Just wonderful. And to present, the senior partners would get dressed up in their best suits and ties (and shoes and watches and briefcases) to show the prospect how smart they were and how much the prospect needed them.

And then they'd wait - and work the relationships, and schmooze, and visit, and call, and consult - for weeks, months, years, until the prospect made their best decision and either purchased or didn't.

Most all sellers do some form of the same thing. You operate from the assumption that if you offer the right data - irrefutable data I might add! - in a cogent fashion (pretty, smart, appropriate, revolutionary, yadayadayada), that obviously the buyer will be smart enough to know they are supposed to buy it! Right? Then how come they don't?

Because all of the data in the world will not teach a buying team how to make a purchasing decision if they haven't lined up all of their internal variables to insure there won't be chaos. Data is only necessary when folks have already decided what and how and where and when they want to buy, or if indeed something seems to be missing at all that their current vendors can't provide them with.

And people only reach purchasing decisions when they have all of their own answers. Presenting data does not teach them how to come up with their own answers.

Here comes the phone: I managed to convince these uppity senior partners that using the phone could be a prospecting tool if used correctly (i.e. using the Buying Facilitation® Facilitative Questioning process that creates efficient decision alignment). At first they laughed - on the floor with belly laughs actually - but then they tried it. And it worked. Saved them lots and lots of time; their sales cycle went from 3 years to 4 months in some instances, and almost as dramatic in general. And we're talking huge multi-million dollar solutions.

Use the phone to help people decide how to decide.

2. customer loyalty. How do you keep customers over time - and keep them happy and supported? How do you become your customer's trusted advisor in an era where loyalty is only as effective as your last contact?

Example. My friend Jill Griffin wrote a wonderful book called Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It. In it she says, "...the average company is losing 20-40 percent of its customers annually. Why? Because many companies are delivering an 'underwhelming' customer experience that falls well below the new empowered customer's expectations." (pge xiv)

We don't have the time to go see all of our customers frequently. But we can pick up the phone and connect. We can find out how they are doing, what, if anything, they need to talk with us about, what plans they are making six months' out...

I once supervised sellers while they placed Buying Facilitation®-based phone calls during the hands-on portion of a training program I was running. We called current long-term (3 years, appx.) customers and - different from their normal check-in, rapport, customer service calls, asked a series of Facilitative Questions (Note: the reps used information-based questions as the basis of their conversations. Information-based questions do not get to criteria, so they don't aid in making expanded decisions, thereby leaving possibilities on the table.). After sitting for an hour with each of the 15 top sales reps of a 250-person group in a leading hardware company, we brought in $6,400,000 of un-asked for business that was sitting in their long-term client accounts accounts that used no competitors!

Remember that you don't need to look a customer in the eye to connect and keep them loyal. Not to mention finding all of the additional business that's sitting on the table waiting for you to show up.

3. partnerships.

Example: The biggest problem with partnerships is not the work-load or the project, it's the communication. Close to 90% of partnerships fail because they don't know how to influence each other appropriately; share power; negotiate; create a common vocabulary, rules, and norms; and have a vocabulary with which to disagree and have stress appropriately.

A partnership is just a relationship that needs to be created with human beings that are flawed. The same rules apply here as they do with any relationship. The phone is a fabulous tool to support communication so that issues, strategies, problems, negotiations, etc. can be worked out and through as they occur, rather than waiting until a face-to-face visit.

There is no reason why we can't connect with our partners in a human, vulnerable, honest way and keep the conversations flowing.

MAKING OLD BELIEFS CURRENT

The telephone has been a very underutilized, underappreciated tool because of the lingering belief that customers needed to be seen face-to-face, eye-to-eye.

We've been swayed by Dale Carnegie's beliefs that sellers need to see their clients and prospects. Yes, that's where that visual push comes from. But think of the times back then when How to Win Friends and Influence People was written (1937). What were the phones like? Air travel? Roads? Hence, you had business that could be managed in your immediate neighborhood, and you went out to see the customers on a regular basis.

But now we've got a different fact pattern. Now we have global business, and great phones. We can video conference, email, fax, instant message, voice conference, all from our desks.

And people do not need to see you to make a decision. Yes, you'll show up with great ties (and shoes and watches and briefcases), but so will your competitors. Yes, you'll get to 'read' your prospect's face....and this gives you what? So you notice annoyance, or joy, or friendship. Tell that to their COO - or X department head that wants to do something different.

I'm not telling you that you should not meet with clients and prospects - obviously at times during the sales and service cycle that is imperative. I'm just suggesting that you can be using the phone - with rapport, respect, and serving - to support each stage of your process, and make huge in-roads into diminishing your sales-cycle time by using the phone to support/create your prospect's decisioning process.

I recently met with a group of technical folks who were convinced they were going to get the deal they were pitching. Why? Because the prospect gave them some proprietary materials to work from to create a sample. Who else did they give such material to? How will they decide which sample will give them exactly what they want? What other departments are involved in the same search? How will they choose one vendor over another? How will they choose one delivery vehicle over another? How will they know how to choose YOU over your competition - and how will they know your offering is indeed what they need rather than another offering?

This group is ready to spend 3 weeks with 4 people involved in this sample preparation. That's 12 person-weeks! And they have no idea what criteria the prospect is using to decide.

If they get on the phone, ask Facilitative Questions, not only will they understand how the client is deciding, but they can help the client figure out how they are deciding. This offers a true Value-Add, puts them on the same side of the table as the client and makes them a Trusted Advisor, and they reduce the sales cycle dramatically.

Remember: the time it takes people/groups/prospects to come up with their own best answers is the length of the sales cycle. Your job is to help them align all of those variables that have created and maintained the status quo within their system that brought them to where they are now. You can easily do this with the phone. All you have to do is get over attempting to be Superman: no matter how good, how smart, how caring, how indispensable you are, your clients will only buy when their internal systems can handle change efficiently. And this can be accomplished when you learn how to use Buying Facilitation® effectively on the telephone.

Remember: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy. They remain two different skill sets. Which one do you want to use? And how will you offer yourselves all of the possibilities to serve your customers and prospects in the way they need to be served most, by getting help making their best decisions.

The telemarketing industry is an example of a group that was determined to sell, not caring how, and not caring about the 'someones' who didn't buy. Remember this next time you want to connect with a prospect or customer. And pick up the phone.

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