Mastering the First Sales Call to Create Demand
Salespeople tend to get nervous about meeting a new executive for the first time, especially when their mission is to open discussions in the hope of creating a new sales opportunity.
They tend to fall back on a discussion about their organization's capabilities in a particular area, their solution capabilities, or will probe business issues or challenges. The latter is the "discovery call" approach.
Often no momentum is gained for a new opportunity, and chances fade quickly because everyone sounds the same!
It's clear that an innovative approach is needed, one that sets you apart from the rest and makes you stand out in the executive's mind.
“We must differentiate ourselves before we can differentiate our solution or our company! ”
— Kevin Doddrell, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Storm
To effectively execute first-time calls, we can create a framework that has 3 critical elements:
- What Are We Trying to Achieve on the First Call?
The single most important outcome of the first sales call is to generate enough curiosity and interest for the potential client to ask for a second meeting.
We are going to ask them to give up their most valuable commodity - their time - to engage further with me! And for a person to spend more time with me, they need to believe that I have a valuable contribution to make that is personally important to them.
So, it’s very personal. It’s about their time and spending more time with me!
Here is the first rule for creating demand:
We must differentiate ourselves before we can differentiate our solution or our company!
- How Do We Differentiate Ourselves?
We can engage in three levels of communication in a sales call:
- Small Talk
- Information
- Point of View
Small Talk
Small Talk serves a purpose at the start of a meeting. It helps to establish a friendly atmosphere and overcome the 'friend-or-foe' trigger, a subconscious human response that occurs when meeting someone for the first time. This trigger, which happens in a matter of seconds, can be mitigated by a few minutes of relaxed, personal rapport building.
The key is to allow your personality and authenticity to shine and to convey that you are enjoying yourself. Just don’t overdo it!
Information
This is the favorite place for most sellers, leading with information about their company or their solution or asking information-type questions, such as what challenges or issues the client is having.
This has its place, as it may be that the client does not know your organization or what you do, or it can build personal credibility leveraging your experience or expertise in your area.
But it will not differentiate you from your competition.
After all, your new prospect can find out anything about your company’s products and services leveraging Ai.
If you choose to use discovery questions, lead these with insight. Think of how a television interviewer asks questions - they always lead with a brief statement and then the question. Proceed with caution. Senior executives will be quick to gauge whether you have “earnt the right” to ask questions about their business.
In essence, a discussion involving exchanging information carries a low probability of creating momentum.
Point of View
This is where human energy starts to happen. An exchange of Points of View!
Think back to your last animated discussion with fellow sports fans about the upcoming important game. The opinions and points of view would have been flowing thick and fast! This is the way human beings love to communicate.
Leading with insights or a point of view sometimes seems risky. What if my prospects have a different point of view? Would that put me in a bad spot?
Suppose you are a Hitech seller and the topic of the discussion is cloud transformation.4 You may choose to outline, from your perspective, the three biggest mistakes that you have seen companies make when embarking on a cloud initiative – they don’t communicate enough to their people, they try to transform the business at the same time, or they treat the cloud initiative as a technology play, not a business reinvention – whatever your personal points of views are.
If the prospect disagrees and says they believe there are different risks, you are in a good place. There is a positive exchange of opinions, and there is active engagement.
That’s the beauty of a personal point of view. Elon Musk has a clear point of view that all cars should be electric. The Chairman of Toyota, the largest car company in the world says, “Not so fast”. He believes the future is not in electric, but hydrogen. Both are successful but with contrary viewpoints.
If you are going to quote a Marketing report quoting some research paper, make sure that you layer your personal perspective as well.
Stories are essential in effective communication. Develop stories that have a lesson or an outtake that is memorable. In terms of recall, 16% of people will remember numbers or information, 67% will recall a story! *
- Time Management for the First Call
The higher you are in your client’s organization, the more time-prioritized executives are. In today’s environment we rarely have virtual meetings for longer than 30 minutes (and some are even shorter), and if lucky, you may get 45 minutes for a face-to-face call.
An executive will make a credibility decision about you within the first 2 minutes of a virtual call and about 5 minutes of a face-to-face call.
Planning is critical.
As you prepare for that first call, plan each of the phases—how much time you should spend in chitchat (very little, but it should be planned), information (just enough to build credibility), and then lead with your insights or points of view to stimulate the discussion.
Risk is Underrated
I encourage you all to be bold, develop interesting points of view, be interesting to engage with, and differentiate yourself from the competition right from the start!
Personal Challenge:
We often get stuck calling the same roles or positions when we are creating demand. Look at the organization chart of your client or target organization – seek out a new role to target and develop a compelling POV for an area that you haven't targeted before.
Sales Tip:
The TIPS tool is the perfect tool to help you develop a POV. Don't forget to utilize all assets at your disposal, including AI. Then translate your insight into the Encounter Plan to make sure that you create the right connection and emotional momentum!
Author: Kevin Doddrell
Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Storm
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