Ask Aleks Vitkin Show Episode 3: Rejection In Sales, How To Pre-Screen Leads, Hire Sales People
In this article, which is based on episode 3 of the Ask Aleks Vitkin Show, you will find out how to handle rejection in sales, how to pre-screen leads and hire sales people who generate results for your business.
How To Get Past The Secretary?
One of my Daily Business Mastermind members was cold calling local companies, trying to sell them a website. He asks: “I said something to the secretary. I just opened the conversation while cold calling local companies to sell my website, and they just said: “oh you are selling something? we don’t want to talk to you” he just says “oh well” and then he gives up and stops calling.
If you are cold calling local companies to close sales, to sell them new websites, whatever you are selling, you cant just be calling one company, get rejected and then simply give up.
You need to try totally different angles, and most of all you need to call a lot a companies, you cant call even ten companies per day and expect to get results. Ten calls in a single day is just a warm up. Some people need 20 people to warm up. I advise 30 calls per day. If you aren’t calling at least 30 companies per day let’s be honest you aren’t doing much, just spending an hour on the phone calling.
If I get to the secretary, I would first get to know her name;
So, hey Jane, this is Aleks from aleksandervitkin.com, I need to speak to John. He’s responsible for your website, correct? Yeah, I need to discuss the website with him. If she doesn’t connect me, I tell her that I’ve reviewed the conversions of their website, and its just I think there’s more money to be made, and I need to discuss this with John.
I give her a reason to connect me, because if she doesn’t, they are missing an opportunity . She doesn’t necessarily know what I’m talking about, but if I’m selling websites I need to provide value on the phone. I need to provide as much value on the phone, as much as the project I’m selling is worth, for free.
The phone call itself is as worth as much as the actual website. In fact I would argue that you need to be much better aware of your niche, than the people you are calling. By the way you should call only a specific niche, and you need to know more about their industry, what’s best about their website, more than they know. They aren’t concerned with this, they are concerned with treating their customers, their patients, getting them to agree and up-sell them stuff. They aren’t concerning with marketing in general. They have someone else do it, or they just don’t do anything about it.
So before I call them I do some preparation work: you need to research all their competitors who are advertising on Google and find best practices on their websites. You don’t just call them and say we want to improve your websites. They will ask “what do you want to improve?”. You need to know exactly what you are going to improve, exactly what works in this industry, in this niche, what they should change, what their competitors do. Educate them, but not in a condescending way: “good job on what you’ve already done, here are some improvements (list some improvements).
“You can do this yourself, or you can pay me and never have to worry about it again.”
If you come from that frame, suddenly you are much more likable, you are talking to them like a real person. You are giving them a free consultation, whether they buy it or not. They are not going to hate you for the free advice. I do this in most conversations and people love talking to me. We have nice conversations, not about me, not about what I do, but about their business.
Once they indicate they are qualified in you website, your content, improving their business and your leads, then I try to sell to them. Before this point in the conversation, it was just a free consultation. But it’s always heading towards the sale. Every topic is seeding ideas that they should improve their website, they should be getting more leads. Connect what you’re offering to their pain points. “You need more time, you need more holidays. With a website you can get higher paying clients. You can hire someone else if your website brings $50,000 extra a year, you can hire an assistant and work less”.
They don’t necessarily care about your website or marketing in general. They care about the results and what they get for themselves. That’s what you should be focusing on on the call. If you don’t, of course you will get “we don’t want to get sold to”. Do you want to be sold to? They get called every single day! You need to be different, you need to be the guy who knows what they are experiencing in their business, you need to be the guy who talks their language, who speaks about them. That’s how you get past your secretary.
What To Do When Your Leads Don’t Seem Interested
The next question I received from my viewers is from someone who constantly keeps getting his leads telling him “we already have that handled”.
“When I call my leads, they seem not interested, they say over and over “we already have that handled”. I’m talking 30-40 leads in a row.”
Are you qualifying leads enough before making the call? When I do a call, I research their website, if they need an upgrade. I research their competitors’ website. I know more than they do about their website. I only call them if they could actually benefit from my product. I am 100% sure they should buy from me. I am 100% sure they will get the value from me. If you are not 100% sure they are going to get the value, it’s not worth it.
There are plenty of fish in the sea, you don’t need this particular client. You need the right client. You are the one choosing even if you are the one calling. It’s relatively easy to get a sale in 2 days, 60 phone calls, if you are intermediate. If you are just starting out, it might take 150 phone calls.
You need to pre-qualify hard, you need to look at guys who are spending money on ads, and have the worst sites. They are the ones already spending money, and they’re much more interested than some random guy who has a whole marketing agency working for him already. You want to be calling the guy who doesn’t have the agency working for him yet.
Hiring Someone to Close Sales
I got one final question from an audience member I’d like to address in this article. He is really good at sales himself, but now he wants to hire someone to close sales for him.
He says that he’s interviewing several sales assistants and here’s the deal: They are perfectly nice, fluent, communicative and know how to sell, but there’s one thing missing…
They can’t seem to be able to close the deal. The “shark mentality” is missing.
What do you do? When you hire them, here’s a trick I used to use. It doesn’t work all the time but here it is:
When you are interviewing sales people, you only want to be talking the best people on the hiring recruitment websites. For example if you go to Odesk, you set up your job description, payment so it reflects the job you offer. You also want to define the experience needed, if they already have sales experience. Also mention they need to do at least 150 phone calls per week or more. (100 per day is more like it.) Write it all out.
Instead of waiting for people to apply, look for people who have at least 500 hours logged on the website, so you know they have experience. They have positive reviews, they have worked for similar clients as yourself, sold similar products to what you are selling (so don’t hire someone who sold cars to sell websites for example). Also they need to be solo workers, not agency employees, preferably with children.
That way they are motivated to work hard and close sales to feed the kids and send them to school. There is more pressure on these people, I like working with these people who are 30 something who have this natural pressure, so I have to put less pressure on them myself. There’s less friction between me and the employee.
When you are interviewing them, you need to make it hard for them. They’re getting a sales position, they are going to get rejected all day. You need to give them a hard time. During the interview process, I like to be there with 2 people interviewing the potential sales assistant. We are just talking between ourselves, interrupting him, giving him a hard time, to see his reaction.
This is to see if they have a reaction or not, if they get frustrated. If they are getting frustrated in the interview, how are they going to be able to handle a real sales call? If they can handle that situation politely and with emotional intelligence, they will be able to deal with the client, because the interview itself is pretty stressful. A real sale is much more stressful anyway, so you need to pile on the pressure, and see how they react. Try it with your sales people, and see how it works out.
That’s it for this article. Be sure to check out related articles if you’re interested in finding out more and see you next time! 🙂
