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When you approach a new prospect, what do you have to offer? Whether you’re sending an email or cold calling, you need to grab the attention of your contact and make them want to talk with you. But too often sellers spew on about their product or lead off with a trap question that screams sales person.

The solution to this prospecting dilemma used to be to start your discussion as a business conversation rather than a traditional semi-scripted cold call. You based it on needs you uncovered in research before ever approaching your prospect.

But even that isn’t enough any more.

Business owners and executives are busy people, with too many responsibilities, too little time, and too few staff to pick up the slack. They don’t have time for a conversation unless it will help them do their job more efficiently and effectively.

Too often the prospecting business discussion is one designed to gather a prospect’s needs and covertly qualify if an opportunity exists. While you begin the conversation discussing the business issue you uncovered in your research, it quickly deteriorates into a series of questions that feel much like a sales call.

Your contact ends the conversation without agreeing to a first appointment and you don’t know why.

You never mentioned your product and you were only talking about them. So what happened? It used to work. What changed?

If you want to catch your prospects’ attention, you must go beyond even the business discussion. You have to have something important to talk with them about, something that feels almost life changing for them.

Here’s how it works.

1.    Know your purpose. In your first call or email, your purpose isn’t to close for an appointment. I know you’re shocked, but it isn’t. Rather, it’s simply to have a conversation to get to know each other, begin building a relationship, and see if you should have a meeting.

While you’re feeling the pressure to fill your pipeline this moment, many of the people you’ll speak with won’t be ready to make any immediate changes. But if you leave a positive impression as a thoughtful, intelligent person who may be able to help their business in the future, they’ll want to stay in touch. That gives you a lead for 3, 6 or 9 months from now.

Better still, they’ll probably call you because they’ll remember your discussion.

2.    Offer to share your expertise freely. Research is important but it’s how you apply it that is truly distinguishes you. Determine the business issue you could assist with, then offer your expertise on what they should be thinking about to address that point.

Don’t hold back because you think a prospect should pay for your advice.

Few companies you speak with will be able to implement your suggestions without your company’s help. Let go of that concern and open up. Share the great knowledge you have.

If you have ideas about how a company could better control their IT costs, tell them. Some will be recommendations that directly connect to your offerings, but others should not. If, for example, during your discussion you believe that some basic training would help their office manager to administer better system back-ups, tell them. You can sell them a full-scale business recovery solution later.

Guide them with ideas they can implement right now while positioning what you can assist with in the future.

3.    Make them think about the possibilities. As you share, discuss what you’ve seen other companies do to address a similar problem. Think about your clients, the challenges they’re facing and what they’re doing about those problems.

Show prospects the possibilities of what they could be doing to improve productivity, cut costs, or address that need you uncovered in your research.

Share one or two simple-to-implement ideas, as well as one or two more complex, suggestions. Base your ideas on how you’ve observed your clients address those matters in their organizations, or how they have implemented your solutions to change their businesses.

The executives you’re calling are so busy they haven’t had time to consider other possibilities. They’re surviving with the issues when they may not have to.

4.    Help them re-examine their status quo. By not pushing prospects into a change with your first call, you’re freeing them up to rethink their status quo. Your conversation of suggestions and possibilities allows them to take time out and think for a moment about what could be.

Suddenly training the office manager may not be enough. They may want your recommendation on how they can protect their business during hurricane season, or secure their data, or better manage their whole IT infrastructure.

They won’t want to wait 3 or 6 months to talk again. They’ll want to pick your brain some more and consider ways to eliminate the issues they’ve been living with now that they know they don’t have to.

I know, you’re thinking that this sounds like a deeper conversation than you usually conduct in a cold call. And, you’re concerned that you interrupted the person. They’d never stay on the phone for this type of discussion.

But, it works.

It works because you’ve grabbed your prospect’s attention and made them want to talk with you. After a conversation like this, they either want to schedule time for a deeper conversation, or they want to hear from you again sometime soon.

You can solve your prospecting dilemma but elevating your conversation to one based on your expertise and ideas. Before you know it, not only will your pipeline increase, but your relationship database of potential new prospects will be overflowing, too.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.

If your business is running along quite nicely under it’s own steam, you may wonder what a mentor would add to your situation.

As an entrepreneur, you often just don’t have the experience and skill sets to handle everything that gets chucked at you during the hectic life of running the average business; so why not take advantage of every offer of help there is?

A fresh pairs of eyes that sees without the restrictions of emotional ties will identify issues and opportunities not always realised when working so close to the business.

The point is that a good mentor has already probably dealt with all the issues you are currently facing, and many times, which means you don’t necessarily need to go through the often expensive learning curve on your own; after all they will have already developed and run successful businesses themselves, often many times over.

The relationship developed with a good mentor will give you access to a springboard for bouncing off your ideas as well as gaining suggestions and fresh inspiration for you and your business that can move you forward with more confidence.

This is especially worthwhile in a start-up situation where perhaps you are transferring from employment to self-employment and you need to assess where the most energy will be put to best use; such as setting targets and deadlines.

When a new company is starting out or an emerging business is forging new paths, a mentor can prove invaluable with their influence and access to networks and contacts particularly in certain business environments and industries where they may have established many years credibility.

The list of potential benefits a mentor could bring to your business is endless. All kinds of value can be brought to a business depending often upon the individual requirements of the entrepreneur; however, you can be certain of one thing, a strong relationship with a mentor could really help your business thrive.

If you would like to explore the possibilities of getting a mentor working for you and your business, contact me now.

There is often a lot of confusion about the meaning of the phrase Interim Manager.

It’s still relatively unknown compared to ‘consultant’ and consultant has probably become the generic word for people who help organisations improve performance and can mean anyone from a solicitor to an accountant.

However, for many, the word consultant carries a lot of baggage. Here are a few not so complementary descriptions about them: “They borrow your watch and tell you the time”, “They’re long on theory but short on practice” They work with you to build solutions, but don’t hang around to see if they work”.

Seriously though, thousands of companies do benefit from both interims and consultants; however, there is a difference.

Any performance improvement project usually has four phases:

1. Analysis: Firstly we need to work out what the real problem is and what the root causes of that problem are.
2. Design: An understanding of the problem will lead us to look for potential solutions and then select the most appropriate one.
3. Implementation: We now need to implement the solution, gaining the commitment of those involved and making all the necessary changes.
4. Maintenance: Finally we need to embed this as the ‘new way’ of working whilst still looking for ways of continuously improving performance.

So perhaps the real question to the client is “where they are in the above process and what input/advice/guidance do they need to make it work or speed things up”.

Only then can the right decision be made on the correct person to get involved based on their own knowledge, skills, experience and preferences.

Research recently conducted confirmed there are interim managers/consultants who may only specialise in consulting, interim management or gap management (e.g. there are some interim managers who only work in the maintenance phase and take on ‘gap’ assignments where for example they may be filling a role whilst the incumbent is on maternity/paternity leave), others may work potentially in all four phases.

So you see, it’s often down to individual choice versus actual requirement. If you’d like to speak to me about an interim or consulting assignment, contact me now.

As any MD/Owner will tell you, growing a small business is very hard work. The sales task alone is a time consuming one with a constant need to fill the “sales funnel” with fresh, qualified prospects on a consistent basis.

You won’t find qualified leads for your business from cold contacts either, they only result from building the business into a strong referral business; but when you do, the benefits for a stronger business are compelling.

For most businesses, developing a strong referral marketing mentality makes perfect sense in terms of on-going benefits, as demonstrated here:

Referral marketing reduces your sales expenses and sales cycle. With less time calling cold prospects, your small business can focus on customers and their circle of influence.

Referrals will build your level of satisfied customers. The cycle self-perpetuates with more satisfied customers referring others to your company.

Referrals increase your sales revenue. According to world-renowned sales trainer, Tom Hopkins, in “Sales Prospecting for Dummies”; your closing ratio for non-qualified leads is 10 percent versus a 60 percent close ratio with referred leads.

So the obvious question is “why is it that so few businesses do it”?

In my experience, they don’t use the correct strategies for building long-term referrals and therefore have minimal success. Here are a few tried and tested tips for success:

• Set Your Target: In business, it’s important to measure the results to improve performance. Set a clear goal with a time line. I.e. 10% increase in referral business over the next 10 weeks.
• Timing: Give your clients time to experience your service or product before asking for a referral. Only ask for a referral at close if you know your client is already delighted with your business.
• Your Top 20: Not all customers are strong referral contenders. Find your top 20% who are delighted about your business and ask them for referrals; and ensure their network is the type of client you want.
• Give and You’ll Receive: Give your clients extra service and after sales support before asking for referrals. When you give willingly, customers will return the favour.
• Type of Customer: Inform your referring clients of the type of customers you can help so they have a clear idea of the customer profile best suited to you.
• Rewards Program: Consider providing rewards to your referring customers on a regular basis. If a customer provides you with 5 sales, offer them something special, e.g. discounts.
• Thank-You: Your business needs to establish trust to build strong referrals. Treat your referral sources with the utmost of care and you will not only build a foundation of trust but keep hot prospects coming to your door.

These tips may seem simple and obvious but when implemented on a regular basis they will drive your referral business and build you sales revenue.

Start today to grow your referrals today, hire me to help you develop your on-going strategy.