Tag: Prospecting

Learning The Hard Way-Jerry Rubin’s Story

by Jacques Werth

It was 1995 when business owner Jerry Rubin became a student of High Probability Prospecting.  He immediately valued the course and it’s teaching, but admits to never quite working the program like he was taught.

“I would make prospecting calls,” Rubin shares.  “But leads were scarce and hard to come by for my annuities business so I had a very hard time asking for a commitment.  I had a solid fear that I would burn the lead if I asked for one.”

Little by little he “diluted” his opening introduction, moving further and further away from what he was taught.  He started asking “is that something you’re willing to take a look at?” instead of asking “is that something you want?”  Rubin admits that there were many times he drove hours to talk to a lead that was “willing to look at” his material and product, only to drive home empty handed and frustrated.

“Everyone is ‘willing to take a look’”, Rubin adds.  “But there’s no commitment in that statement and all I was doing was wasting time and tapping dancing for low probability prospects.”

Rubin’s “ah-HA” moment came years later, and came in the form of a new employee.  As he trained his new hire he remembered the High Probability Selling system and realized the error of his ways.  This new realization was sharpened by the fact he was now paying someone else whether he was making a sale or not.  Rubin witnessed his new hire working HPS the way it should be, asking for commitments from prospects and getting them.

“Getting a commitment took on whole new meaning, and the light bulb came on,” Rubin adds.  He took over the reins and started using High Probability Prospecting the way it was designed; asking for the commitment from the leads that were being generated. He immediately saw results and reports he is getting a commitment from 80% of the prospecting calls he makes.

“My ah-ha moment helped me line up my internal parts and thoughts and enabled me to do what I should have been doing all along; asking for a commitment,” Rubin shares with pride in his voice.  “There’s no way I am going back to my old ways.”

 

Dodging Price Creates Doubt

Most salespeople avoid answering the price question until after they have built value in the eyes of the prospect. How do you feel about a salesperson who dodges your questions about price when you are the buyer? Most prospects know exactly what the salesperson is doing and they resent it. That resentment ends in too many “I have to think it over” results.

by Jacques Werth

Most salespeople avoid answering the price question until after they have built value in the eyes of the prospect.  How do you feel about a salesperson who dodges your questions about price when you are the buyer?  Most prospects know exactly what the salesperson is doing and they resent it.  That resentment ends in too many “I have to think it over” results.

At the beginning of the sales process many prospects ask about price.  Most salespeople conclude that price must be very important to that prospect.  However, less than twenty percent of major purchases (excluding commodities) go to the low price supplier.

Most of the top sales producers have a very different attitude when a prospect asks about price.  They respond without hesitation, and give the prospect an authentic price range.  Example:  “Depending on exactly what you want, the price range is between $16,000 and $24,000.  Are you able and willing to buy within that range?”

Top sales producers understand that most prospects who ask about price only want to know whether the price is in the ballpark of what they can and will pay.

If the prospect does not ask the price question early in the sales process, top sales producers bring it up.  They want to know the prospect’s answer to avoid wasting time and emotional stamina on a prospect that is very unlikely to buy.

Finding the Job You Want – Josh’s Story

Josh used High Probability Prospecting to find the job he wanted.  He decided to sell life insurance, because he wanted “a job selling my way, which is High Probability Selling.”

by Jacques Werth

One morning last week, I took a call from Josh.  He told me that he bought our book “High Probability Selling” and read it 8 times.  However, he hasn’t been able to sell anything.

“What have you been selling?” I asked.

“A network marketing business opportunity,” said Josh.  “I must be doing something wrong, because I know High Probability Selling has to work.”

“High Probability Selling doesn’t work for network marketing.  How did you get into that?” I asked.

“I was invited to a seminar and the presenter explained how you can make a ton of money in network marketing, I mean two or three hundred thousand a year.  A lot of people are making more than one hundred thousand in their first year.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked.

“Yes, is there something wrong with it?”

“Well how are you doing?” I asked.

“I tried to sell the opportunity but nobody is interested,” he said.

“That’s probably because you’re not very good at lying,” I said.  “You must realize by now that the presenter was lying to you and to everyone else in the seminar.”

“I kind of suspected it, but they must be very good liars,” he said.  “So, what kind of business can I get into where I can make a lot of money without lying?”

“Do you have experience selling anything?”

“No, but I think I can learn to sell,” he said.

I asked, “Why do you think that?”

“Because I read your book and I just know I could sell that way.”

“What kind of work have you done in the past?”

“Mostly light construction, like home improvements.  But there are no jobs now because all of the skilled construction workers are fighting over the home improvement jobs.  And, there are not enough of those jobs around.”

“Some people make good money selling life insurance.  However, only about ten percent who go into that field survive.” I said.

“Do you think I could make it selling life insurance?” said Josh.

“I have no idea.  If you have the money, you could have a behavioral profile done that is a very good predictor of how well you will do in almost any profession.  But, the good profiles are expensive,” I said.  “Can you live on very little commissions while you are learning the business?”

“Yes, I could do that for at least six months, no problem,” he said.  “How do I get that kind of job?”

“By doing High Probability Prospecting, just like you read in our book.  But, now the product you are selling is you.  Can you do that?”

“I guess I’ll find out”, he said.

“Most insurance agencies will not give you a salary.  You only get commissions on what you sell,” I said.  “Also, make sure that they will let you sell the way you want to sell.”

“Thanks very much,” he said.

I said, “You are welcome,” and we both hung up.

Josh called again a day or two later.

“Well, I got a few job offers.  I just need to pass the licensing test,” said Josh.  “They told me that it is okay for me to use any sales method I want, as long as it is legal, ethical and does not get them in trouble with the compliance rules of the insurance companies they represent.”

“How did you get the job offers?” I asked.

“Right after I spoke to you, I wrote out a prospecting offer, and called all of the insurance agencies listed on the Internet that are within twenty miles of where I live.  On most of those calls I could not even get to talk to anyone in charge.  But, I did talk to about ten or fifteen agency managers and three of them asked me to come in for an interview.”

“So you had appointments for 3 job interviews after your first day of prospecting,” I said.  “What happened on the interviews?”

“When we met, the agency managers all asked me how I was going to find prospects.  I told them that I was going to use the phone to find prospects the same way I found them.  They thought that was great, and they all offered me a job.”

“Have you accepted any of the job offers?” I asked.

“No, not yet.  I want to finish prospecting my list first, and then decide which job I want.”

I thanked him and asked his permission to write his story on our blog.  I also asked him to keep in contact and to let me know how well he does selling life insurance.

Prospecting Persistence Pays

by Jacques Werth

My first job after college was selling forklift trucks in an industrial section of New York City.  I was prospecting on foot because telephones were too expensive.

I walked into the main office of a company that made valves.  I told the receptionist I needed to speak with John.
An angry-faced man stuck his head out of one of offices behind her and yelled, “Get rid of that *** salesman!”
She shrugged her shoulders and mouthed “Sorry.”
So I left.
About three weeks later, when I was in that neighborhood, I again went into the same office, saw the same receptionist, and handed her my business card.
“Is John available?” I asked.
“What is this in reference to?” she asked.
“Forklift trucks”, I said.
Before she could do anything, the same guy came out of the same office and hollered, “Tell that *** salesman I’m not interested in whatever he is selling.”
She gave me a meek smile of embarrassment before I left.
A few weeks later and I was right back in the same office.  I said to the receptionist, “Would you tell John that I want to talk to him about forklift trucks.”
She picked up her phone and dialed a two digit number and said, “Jacques Werth is here to talk to you about forklifts.” Then, she hung up and said, “He’s not interested.”
The next time I came into the office, the receptionist told me that her boss was in a particularly foul mood, much worse than usual, and that I should probably just go.
“I heard that!  Who are you talking to?”, came the angry voice from the office behind her.
Before she could answer, John came out of the office, looked at me and said, “It’s you, the forklift guy.  Get your *** in my office!”

Easy Closing Starts With Prospecting

by Jacques Werth
Closing is hard when you try to find a way to qualify your prospects.
Closing is easy when your prospects will not allow you to disqualify them.
Closing is hard when you have to sell prospects on giving you an appointment.
Closing is easy when the prospect is ready to spend time and money to get a problem solved.
Closing is hard when a prospect is merely “interested”.
Closing is easy when a prospect wants to get answers to his or her problem.
Closing is hard when you have to push the prospect to buy.
Closing is easy when neither the prospect nor you feel any pressure.
Closing is hard when the prospect doesn’t know that he or she needs your product or service.
Closing is easy when the prospect already wants the benefits of your type of product or service.
Closing is hard when the prospect is not ready to decide.
Closing is easy when the prospect is ready, willing, and able to buy.
Closing is hard when you have to make the prospect do something.
Closing is easy when you realize that you can’t make the prospect do anything.
Our next workshop on High Probability Prospecting begins on Monday 24 August 2009.  For details, please visit www.HighProbSell.com/workshops/ws20090824A.html
We invite you to leave comments on our blog.

Prospecting: Should you research a prospect before you call?

by Jacques Werth

Many salespeople have been taught that they should know as much as possible about a prospect before they make a prospecting call.  Depending on the type of prospects that you are calling, the research could take between five minutes and perhaps forty-five minutes.  All that, for a call to someone who is far more likely to say “No” than “Yes.”

You should generally do only as much research as it takes to get the name and phone number of the prospect before you call.  In most cases that means that you must define who is most likely to have a need for your type of products and services, and the money to buy what you are selling.  Therefore, you must make a list of all of the demographics of your ideal customers and prospects.

If your market is consumers, some of those demographics could be:  age, family status, income, net worth, zip code, etc.

If your market is business, or institutional, some of those demographics could be:  industry, job title, size of company, number of employees, etc.

Once you have the list, contact a reputable list broker and buy a prospecting list of about 750 prospects, complete with phone numbers.  The costs may range from 11¢ to 45¢ per name.

That is all the knowledge you will need to call the people on your list and offer them your product or service.  Once you have presented your offer, most of them will say “No”.  All that means is they are not ready to buy now.  In some cases they will tell you that you are talking to the wrong person and they will give you the name of someone else to call.  In some cases they will say “Yes”.  Once you have set up an appointment with a prospect, that is the time to do research on whom you are going to meet.

Take Advantage of Information Overload

by Jacques Werth

Information Overload results in the average American being exposed to over 12 million informational messages per year.  The vast majority of those messages get filtered out before they ever reach a conscious mind.

Five-Step Buying Decision Model, developed circa 1950
AIDCA = Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, and Action

Those people that perceive they have a need for the benefits of your products and services open their mental filters to “solutions” that have the potential to satisfy those needs.  They have already gone through Attention, Interest, and Desire before you showed up.  Then, it is a matter of which of their needs has top priority.  That makes them into High Probability Prospects, or not.

A High Probability Prospect is someone who needs, wants, can afford, and is ready to buy now whatever it is that you are selling.  We do not spend time with anyone who does not meet these criteria.

A High Probability Prospect already has Attention, Interest, and Desire.  We verify this during the initial steps of the sales process.

When you spend your time only with High Probability Prospects, your primary focus is on the Conviction and Action steps.  You will close many more sales than your competitors who are spending their time on the Attention, Interest, and Desire steps.

Cold Calling Fear: Facing the Elephant in the Room

All salespeople feel it, but no one wants to talk about it:  the fear of cold calling.  As  a sales and business coach, I’ve often heard the following comments from salespeople I have coached:

  • “I feel like I’m bothering people by calling them.”
  • “I think I need another sales course to get up to speed.”
  • “I need a better list.”

“I feel like I’m bothering
people by calling them.”

These comments are ways of not thinking about the elephant in the room:  the fear of cold calling.  We don’t like admitting we are afraid.  It’s embarrassing, so we unconsciously invent creative ways to avoid thinking and talking about it.  And that’s OK; we’re all human.  But if we want to be truly successful in sales, we’ll have to find ways to surmount the fear barrier.

Traditional sales methods gloss over the fear of cold calling with useless admonitions of, “You need to develop a thicker skin”, and “You just need to make more calls.”  Additionally, most salespeople have been trained to use manipulative language which automatically causes resistance in the prospect.  As consumers, we have been trained from birth to be suspicious of and resistant towards sales people.  No wonder it doesn’t work.

But top salespeople have found ways to drill into and dismantle their own fears so they can actually pick up the phone without getting paralyzed.  In my experience as a coach, the two best ways to get beyond the fear are, 1) use a sales method which minimizes fear and, 2) use an accountability partner who holds the salesperson to his commitments.

The best sales method I have found is High Probability Selling, which reduces fear of rejection dramatically and almost completely eliminates sales resistance.  The process itself was developed by Jacques Werth, of Media, Pennsylvania.  As well as being a master salesman in his own right, Werth also studied the top 1% of salespeople in many industries and distilled the methods they were using into a teachable process that dramatically reduces fear and resistance and increases closing rates.  Werth has been successfully passing on his knowledge in a variety of books, teleseminars and on-site trainings for many years.

The other element to conquering cold-calling fear is using an Accountability Partner.  These can come in different forms.  One might be a partnership with an office friend with whom you make agreements as to your calling commitments, checking in with one another regularly to compare and log results.  These are usually informal arrangements between friends or co-workers.  The partners decide what their arrangement will be.  Because of the informal nature of the partnership, the success of these arrangements is highly variable and depends on the commitment level of each partner.

Another more formal type of Accountability Partner is a Sales Accountability Coach, who is a trained professional who follows a systematic process which usually includes these elements:

  • Understanding the best selling mindset.  Good selling methodologies come from a mindset of abundance which prevents the neediness and groveling that demeans salespeople and turns off prospects.
  • Crafting and practicing a number of good phone offers.
  • Managing the fear.  Beyond good selling methodology, some coaches are also well-versed in psycho-physiological techniques that can further reduce the residual fear of the phone.
  • Getting a weekly commitment to phone prospecting, and then reporting and analyzing the results with the coach.  Knowing that his coach is depending on him and will be checking in with him on a weekly basis makes this the most powerful element of using an Accountability Partner.
  • Tracking the numbers.  According to Werth, the top sales people know their numbers: calls, appointments, sales.  Having a system for tracking your numbers and using it consistently is absolutely essential.

Accountability Coaching is accomplished through weekly meetings, usually over the phone.  Because the salesperson is paying a fee to the Accountability Coach, there is a strong incentive for the salesperson to actually accomplish the commitments he has made with the coach.

Tired of cold-calling fear?  As a coach, I have a few recommendations for you:

  • Pick up a copy of Jacques Werth’s book, High Probability Selling.  It is available at their website, www.HighProbSell.com or at amazon.com.
  • Consider using some type of accountability partner to break through the fear.

Fear:  we all feel it, even if we sometimes don’t want to acknowledge it and we don’t know what to do about it.  It most likely will continue to attempt derailing our efforts.  The most accomplished salespeople find ways to stare it down and step over it into the success they are seeking.

Elizabeth Blane is a Sales Accountability Coach and lives in San Diego, California.  Phone 858-240-7730

Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness

An earlier version of this article was posted on Business Insurance Agents on 12 March 2009.

Suppose you are watching a James Bond movie and Agent 007 says to another character, “Tomorrow I am going to pick up my dream car.”  If you know much about Agent 007, you will immediately have a mental picture of a gleaming white Aston-Martin hardtop.  If you are not familiar with the James Bond character you will probably picture your own “dream car” whatever it is;  perhaps it’s a Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari, or Lexis.

That describes a powerful marketing concept called “Front of the Mind Awareness.”  A refinement of that concept, which is applicable to excellent telephone prospecting, is “Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness.” 

Get a list of six hundred prospects that meet the demographic criteria of companies or individuals that buy the type of products and services that you sell.  You can call those people every three to four weeks, providing that you change your prospecting offer every time you call.  The first time you call the list, about seven percent of them will ask you not to call them anymore;  so don’t.  That leaves you with about 560 prospects on your list.  It is easy to contact that many every three to four weeks.

If the way you do your prospecting leaves those people feeling good about each call they receive from you, you will be developing Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness in most of their minds.  That means that anytime they are exposed to marketing, advertising, or cold calls about your type of products and services, most of them will immediately have favorable thoughts of you.

If you call them more frequently, a higher percentage will become your customers.  However, if you push them for an appointment or try to engage them in a sales conversation, that will create the opposite effect. 

People buy in their own time, for their own reasons. They do not buy because you need to make a sale this week. It is important that you are in frequent contact with your whole list so that you are there when they want to buy what you have to offer. The more often they hear from you, provided that your calls are very brief, informative, and free of any pressure, the greater positive affect it will have on your prospect’s minds.  That will continuously increase Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness. 

The end result is that almost all of your appointments will be with people who want to buy what you have been offering them.  After they become your customers, provided that you continue to call them at the same intervals, they will be loyal clients for years to come.

You can learn more about this kind of prospecting by going to www.HighProbSell.com.

10 Tips for Prospecting Success

by Jacques Werth

The ability to prospect efficiently, effectively and enjoyably will enable you to meet with prospects that need, want and can afford your products and services – now. Your confidence will soar and empower you to develop a consistently superior income stream.

1. Start with a highly targeted telephone prospecting list, consisting of people or companies that are most likely to buy your type of products and services. Use a highly reputable list broker to find such a list. Start with a list of no more than 600 names. You cannot afford to develop your own list; It is much too time consuming. If you already have a book of business, follow this prospecting process with your existing clients as if they are new prospects.

2. Call every name on your list every 3-4 weeks. Understand that only a small percentage of your list will be ready to buy the first time that you call. Many more will be ready each successive time that you call. People buy in their own time for their own reasons; not because you have to make a sale this week. Calling them frequently is vital to prospecting success.

3. Present a “prospecting offer” of no more than 45 words that clearly states who you are, what you are selling, and two features of your product or service. Finish up with “Is that what you want?” Each time you call, change the two features. That will prevent most prospects from getting annoyed. It will also eliminate most of the rejection that is caused by traditional cold calling.

4. If the prospect says “No” or “I am not interested,” you say “Okay, good bye.” Do not press for an appointment. Do not try to engage the prospect in a conversation or ask any questions. This will be the most pleasant sales call they ever get. It will assure that very few prospects will ask you not to call again.

5. Schedule your prospecting sessions for 3½ hours. Take a fifteen-minute break between each hour. This is more productive than five prospecting sessions of one hour each.

6. Tape yourself. Use a tape recorder with an open microphone to tape your side of each call. Start the tape when the prospect answers. Listen to how you sound. The goal is to hear yourself using your usual conversational tones. Do not try to sound like a professional salesperson. Do not come across as overly enthusiastic, unusually friendly, or enticing. Just relax and present your offer without persuasion.

7. Always be in a “Disqualification” mode. Be determined to spend your selling time only with High Probability Prospects. Disqualify Low Probability Prospects quickly and courteously. Don’t allow desperation or anxiousness to deter you from your mission. If the prospect says “Yes,” you ask “Why?” Let the prospect convince you that he/she is a High Probability Prospect.

8. Accept the fact that prospecting really is a “numbers game.” The most important numbers are your Dials per Hour and the ratio of prospecting Offers to Dials. Most agents dial at least fifty numbers per hour.

9. Keep accurate records of your prospecting sessions. We have trained thousands of agents to be successful prospectors. The most successful keep accurate records. The least successful don’t. The act of keeping records will enable your subconscious mind to constantly improve your results.

10. Most top producers make fewer appointments, but close most of the prospects they meet.

You can learn more about efficient, effective, and enjoyable prospecting by going to www.HighProbSell.com.