Article 101

CROSSING THE PROSPECTING CHASM:
Transition From Breaking The Door Down
For An Appointment To Being Invited And Welcomed.

Who do you have a better chance of selling? The person who has initiated contact with you, or the person who doesn't know you, that you have chased, begged and pleaded with for an appointment?

Whether you have a start-up or are a mature business seeking to quickly jump-start or accelerate sales, prospecting for big ticket sales is not a delicate task. Your efforts must project sufficient force to break doors down to gain access to those who can write checks.

When you launch an appointment setting program, it's a fair generalization that most of those you communicate with during your "first pass" don't know you well and are not intimately familiar with the benefits you provide.

In short - you lack credibility and positioning.

As a salesperson, or an appointment setter working on behalf of a salesperson, works through a list of targeted companies for the first time, you will set sales appointments. Using the techniques and strategies taught in my "Seminar In A Box" or coaching sessions, I consistently can set appointments with between 8% and 13% of targeted decision makers during a "first pass" of calling. You and your sales team can learn to do the same.

Yet, that means that at least 87% of your targeted companies do something other than agree to meet. They say "no", "call me back" or are totally non-responsive.

It is here that an appointment setting chasm comes into your view, and it must be crossed if you wish to sustain your sales appointment setting program and meet with more qualified prospects at a better time to make a sale.

In this initial ramp up phase you meet with lots of targeted decision makers and make sales. Yet many salespeople also experience culture shock. Sales strategies and processes that deliver results when meeting someone who knows you and with whom you have a relationship, just plain aren't enough to close a deal with an audience that doesn't know you as well.

Not only that, you have a time management challenge. You have to go on these appointments, follow-up, follow-up, continue prospecting and follow-up. An impossible task!

They are accounts you would love to have, yet the audience is colder than what you are used to and many times the need is longer term.

The chasm you must cross is to transition from breaking the door down for an appointment with a stranger, to being invited and welcomed to the table by someone who knows and respects you at a time they are ready to do business.

You cross this chasm by laying the proper foundation during your "first pass". Fail to lay the foundation and your prospecting efforts will cease as you will lack time to follow-up effectively and you get frustrated as many of your prospects will convert to
sales slower than you wish, as they don't know you well and have longer
term needs.

You will cross this chasm, and start to set appointments with those who have initiated contact with you, after they have been "touched" by you numerous times consistently (they now know you and respect you), at a time they wish to buy, with the use of the following five tactics and strategies.

1. Coding and segmentation strategies.
2. Proper time and resource allocation.
3. Tactics to determine "worth".
4. Communicating with "groups" rather than individual targets.
5. Utilization of proper marketing tools and offers.

Best wishes for prospecting success,
Scott Channell

copyright 2002-2009 Scott Channell

Article 148	Crossing the Prospecting Chasm
	by Scott Channell