Ed Avis:
Good morning, everybody. This is Ed Avis. I'm the managing director of APDSP and I want to welcome you to today's webinar. Dave Fellman is a veteran sales trainer specializing in the print area and for those of you who read our website and our newsletter, you know that he is a regular contributor on these topics to the APDSP, so we're delighted to have him here with us today to talk about starting the sale. This webinar is being recorded. So if you want to watch it later on the APDSP member portal, you can do that. And Dave welcomes questions. So, if you have questions, use the little tab at the bottom of your screen to put forth questions. And you can do that whenever you want, you don't need to wait until Dave's done. Go ahead and throw them out and he'll either answer them at that moment or we'll answer them at the end. All right. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dave. Dave, it's all yours.
Dave Fellman:
All right, Ed, thank you very much. I want to add my welcome to everybody too. And just as a preface, when Ed first approached me about doing this program, he told me that what he'd been hearing from the board from members was that it was time for a program on cold calling. That there's not enough of that going on in the industry right now, in most of the member companies right now. And I was happy to engage on this subject, but my thought was that I don't want to do a program specifically about cold calling because I hate getting cold calls. And I remember back when I was actively selling in the industry, I hated making cold calls.
Dave Fellman:
Now, that's not to say that there is not a role, an important role, for calling out of the blue in our sales process. But if anybody was thinking that [inaudible 00:02:32] tell you that you got to go out and make 100 cold calls every day, that's not going to happen. I hope that I could put your minds a little bit at ease. Having said that, I am going to say that I hope you'll all commit some number of starts per day or per week or per month, because several different ways to start the sale and they're all important. So here is a very fundamental concept. There's basically three ways to start a sale.
Dave Fellman:
One is to respond to an inquiry and inquiries come from advertising. The other, the second, is to follow up on a tip. Tips result from networking activities. [inaudible 00:03:29] Is what I like to call a find, and basically that means that you, as a salesperson, find somebody [inaudible 00:03:41] be worth calling up. We'll talk about each of those pathways, but before we get there, another fundamental question. What drives the buying decision? I've done a lot of research over the years on [inaudible 00:04:01], and I have learned that the vast majority of people who buy print and related service [inaudible 00:04:12] in their buying decision and [inaudible 00:04:21] more service, and it is especially not price.
Dave Fellman:
I know that most of you are familiar with [inaudible 00:04:32] trinity that we've had to deal with in sales for a million years; quality, service, and price. Actually remember in the old days, when we used to tell people, "Quality, service, price, pick two." We used to say, "You can have any two [inaudible 00:04:52], but you can't have all three." And I got to tell you something. I'm not sure that was ever completely true. I know for a fact that it is not true anymore because sadly, there are many companies in our industry that their only semblance of a value proposition is really low prices. And even charging really low prices, they provide pretty good [inaudible 00:05:26]. It is possible to get all three in today's marketplace.
Dave Fellman:
I still maintain, however, that there's something that's [inaudible 00:05:37] three and that is trust. I've heard this from many print buyers. Yes, quality and service and price are all [inaudible 00:05:52], "But think about this," they'd say, "In the starting, the sales stages, which is what we're [inaudible 00:06:00], all of those things, especially the quality and the service are really only promises that every sales person is making. Thank about the way you sell. How many times have you made those promises? "You'll be happy with the quality. You'll be amazed by our service. You'll find our prices to be very, very competitive and reflect a really good value for you." We make promises, that's the essence of selling.
Dave Fellman:
So, fundamentally, it comes down to this for the buyer. If you can get them to believe your promises, they'll think seriously about maybe buying from you. If you can get them to trust you, they'll probably give you a chance. And then, if you show them that you can perform as promised, keep all those promises, they'll probably continue to buy from you. All right. If you'll buy in with me on the idea that trust is the single most important factor in the buying decision. Now, I want to talk for just a moment about what builds trust, and this really comes down to two things.
Dave Fellman:
The first is to know what you're talking about, or at least to appear in these early stages that you know what you are talking about. And the second is simply to do what you say you're going to do. Now, just think about this for a moment and think about the opportunity that that provides. I am a very strong believer that through the early stages of selling, that rather than avoid having to make any commitments to your prospects and the people you're trying to sell to, you should be looking for opportunities to make promises, and then keep them, because if you can start your process with a couple of small promises that get kept, it makes it progressively easier for them to believe you when you started making the big promises.
Dave Fellman:
This has always been a big part of my selling strategy. I'm always trying to put myself in a position where I'm telling people what I'm doing to do, and then I do it. And very often I even remind them that I'm doing it. All right. So, if we talk about what builds trust, we better talk for a moment about what breaks trust. And this is really pretty simple, too. Not knowing what you're talking about, not keeping your promises, not responding to their needs, their wants and needs. It's a pretty straightforward issue here. It's a pretty binary issue. Only two possibilities. You either do things to build trust or in the absence of that, you're likely to break trust.
Dave Fellman:
Now, let's go on and let's talk about inquiries. Let's talk about what many people call sales leads. And let's talk about maybe the most common of the modern inquiry mechanisms. Somebody is looking for a printer. So they do a Google search or Yahoo or whatever search engine they may choose. They do a search and they find their way to you, to your website. And your website gives them hopefully the opportunity to place an input, to say, "I'm interested, please get in touch with me." Or it might not be that. Your website might provide them with the phone number and that's the way that they initiate contact. The thing I want you to know about an inquiry is that you're still a long way from a sale.
Dave Fellman:
In sports terms, in football terms, let's say that you're starting out at about the 20 yard line. It's not a cold call by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not an order yet. So, what is important here? Well, first and foremost, I think is speed of response. Let's even take this all the way back to the old days when the purpose of advertising for companies like yours was to make the phones ring. Some of you are probably familiar with that phrase. Before the internet, that's what advertising was all about. Before the internet, the things that people do on Google were done through, remember the Yellow Pages? Remember that great big paper book of company names and information?
Dave Fellman:
So anyways, back in the old days, if somebody called on the telephone, they maybe get you. They maybe don't get you. If they don't get you, they leave a message. And if they do leave a message, they want to hear back from you sometime pretty quickly. When I first started in sales 40 something years ago at a company that doesn't even exist anymore, called More Business Forms, we were taught that anything within a day of the call was an acceptable response. That's what we were taught. We were taught that if you get a message at two o'clock and you can return it before five o'clock that that will you pretty well in terms of meeting the customer's expectations. These days, it certainly isn't the same day. It doesn't have to be within five minutes, but it needs to be quick. It needs to be quick. And I'm going to leave it up to you to manage how quickly you can make it.
Dave Fellman:
The second consideration is the professionalism of your response. Now, again, professionalism means knowing what you're talking about, but professionalism also relates to another old phrase an old truism, that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Think about this for a moment. It's pretty well accepted that a salesperson has to make three sales before he or she is going to get any orders. The first thing you have to do is sell yourself. And then the second thing you do is sell your company. Then the third thing you do is sell the actual product. So think about getting a first chance, one chance, to make a good first impression to sell yourself.
Dave Fellman:
I want you to think about what you might sound like if you were to call me back and say, "Hey, this is Fred from Boston Blue. You went on our website. You said you wanted some more information. What can I talk to you about? What could I tell you? What could I do for you?" Think about that. I don't think that was particularly smooth, I wasn't trying to make it smooth, but think about this. "Hi, my name is David Fellman from David Fellman Blueprint. You visited our website earlier, and I am getting back to you to follow up to see what we might be able to help you with." I'm not sure that was maximum slick and smooth either, but here's the point I want to make. This is important. So if I were you, I might think very strongly about sitting down and writing myself a script for these follow-up calls.
Dave Fellman:
Now, do me a favor, please don't ever call me up and read off a script, but what I want you to do, what I think you should do, is write a script that best represents the best possible introduction of you and your company in one of these followup situations and then practice it enough so that it sounds natural coming out of your mouth. And then the next consideration in terms of inquiries is appropriate follow up. All right. Appropriate is the least important word. Follow up is the most important word because follow up is the key to all selling. I don't know what an appropriate follow up would be to this particular situation or any particular situation, but I promise you that there is an appropriate level of follow up. There is the best thing to do.
Dave Fellman:
How do you determine that? You always ask yourself two questions. What do I do next? And when do I do that? What is the best follow up? And wen should I do that? Now, keep this in mind too. You can make a unilateral decision on what to do next and when to do it, or think about this, when you're actually talking to the person that you're talking to. And this is true, whether we're talking about inquiries, tips, or finds, this is true. Whether we're talking about prospecting or dealing with actual customers, this is true in pretty much any interpersonal situation here ever find yourself in. When you're talking with somebody, if you're not sure what to do next, if you're not sure when to do it, you got the perfect opportunity to get them involved in the follow up plan.
Dave Fellman:
I have a favorite frame when I'm in situations like this. I like to ask people, "If you were me, what would you do next? If you were me, what would you do next?" If they don't say something like, "Call me next Thursday." If they just say, "Call me back after a bit," then I'm going to ask them, "When do you think I should do that? When would you like me to do that?" These are the two questions that help you to identify the appropriate follow up, the best case follow up. And again, I can't stress this enough, follow-up is the key to all selling. Now, tips. Tips result from networking, and there's two channels of networking. One, I would guess that many of you belong to some sort of networking groups. Perhaps you attend some sort of networking events. I've worked with a lot of salespeople over the years who've been BNI group members or who participated in chamber of commerce events.
Dave Fellman:
The main point I want to make about this sort of networking is that the working part is the most important part. I've actually been to quite a number of these events over the years with my clients. There was a time when it seemed like every time I went out and did an onsite visit with a client, some salesperson either had a BNI meeting that day or a chamber event that day, so they dragged me along. It [inaudible 00:18:17] me how often I would see the salespeople just basically go, hang out with their friends, maybe do a little business with people they already knew. But never make an attempt to get beyond what I refer to as first level networking, level one networking.
Dave Fellman:
So, think about this for a month. Level one networking is when you will go and you meet the people in your group, people at that event, and you make some connections and maybe you even get some business from some of those people. But that's only scratching the surface of what this is supposed to be about. In fact, those of you who are in BNI groups, you may know that the whole idea behind BNI, it's not that you're supposed to go meet the people in your groups. It said you're supposed to introduce them to your customers and they're supposed to introduce you to their customers. That's level two networking, is when you actually get referrals from these people, not just socialize with them.
Dave Fellman:
And then, I do know a few people who've really gotten this sort of thing going, and they actually are getting some level three networking, too. Level three networking is when they start getting referrals from the new customers they develop through all of this level one and two networking in the first place. And that takes us to the issue of networking within your current customers. And basically, two opportunities here, internal and external. External referrals. Do you know anybody else, outside of your company, maybe somebody you've dealt with in the past, maybe a friend, maybe a neighbor who knows? Do you know anybody who might be interested in talking? That's good stuff.
Dave Fellman:
But it's been my experience that there's more opportunity with what I call internal referrals. Now think about this. Do you have multiple contacts within any of the accounts that you do business with? By the way, this is an important understanding too. I believe that your customers are not companies. I believe that your customers are the individuals within those companies who trust you to handle some of their printing needs. I use the term account to reflect the company. But when I use the term customer, I'm talking about an individual. So, I guess the question I'm asking is, do you already have some accounts in which you have multiple customers? All right, understand this too. It is also possible to have prospects within those same accounts. Customers and prospects.
Dave Fellman:
And part of the key to maximizing your customer relationships is to make sure that you are talking to all of the people in those companies who might have some need or some application for the kind of print that you sell. All right, so here is a classic mistake that many salespeople make. They will go to their customer, the individual that is buying from them now, and they will say, "Who else in your company buys the kind of print that I sell?" That's a bad question. And it's a bad question for two reasons. Reason number one is it leaves it up to that customer to define your entire product line. It's been my experience that most customers only buy part of the overall product line. And they're not as well-versed in the full product line, your full capabilities, as you might like them to be.
Dave Fellman:
So, let's not leave it up to them to just refer people who buy exactly what they buy from you. And then, the second issue, the second reason this is a bad question, is that the bigger the organization we're talking about, the less likely it is that any left hand is going to know what any right hand is doing. So, now I want you to think about this for a moment. I want you to think about your customers, those individuals. And I want you to think about their titles or their responsibilities. It's been my experience that in our industry, we do a lot of business with marketing types. We also do a lot of business with human resources types. We also do a lot of business with facility management types. We even do some business with purchasing types. We do business with a lot of different titles and types within these accounts.
Dave Fellman:
So the question I think you should ask, if, for example, you are talking with the marketing person, your current customer is the marketing person, don't ask, "Who else here buys printing?" Ask, "Who's in charge of human resources?" Or ask, "Who's in charge of facilities?" Ask, "Who's in charge of some other area that I am interested in?" Now, referrals are good. There's no question about that. There is something though, in my opinion, that's even better than a referral. So what would that be? Well, let me explain it this way. If I were to ask a marketing person who's in charge of human resources, and the answer to that question was Mary Smith is our Vice President of human resources. My next question would be, "Would it be possible for you to introduce me to her? Maybe even to walk me over and introduce me to her?" If I was on a physical face-to-face call.
Dave Fellman:
By the way, we're going to get back there. I know it's been a long year or so for all of us doing so much of what we do by phone and email and text and Zoom calls. We are going to get back to face-to-face dealings with our customers on a very regular basis. But even if it isn't practical or possible, if I can't get a face-to-face introduction, I would ask, "Would you be willing to send her an email? Would you be willing to make a phone call to him? Would you be willing to just let him or her or them know that that I am going to be calling?" So here's the thing. There's cold calls. The temperature of a cold call, let's place that at pretty much zero. And then there's warmer calls. And now I realize I'm mixing my metaphors here. Because I started with your yard lines. Maybe I'd better get back there.
Dave Fellman:
All right. A cold call starts you deep in the end zone. A inquiry starts you at the 20 yard line, somewhere around there. A tip maybe starts you at that 20 or 25 yard line, but an introduction might very well start you at the 50 yard line and that's good stuff. I'm sure you'll agree that anything that warms up what would otherwise have been a cold call is a good thing for you. Now, before we move on to finds, I do want to offer you one caution. I want to tell you that the value of a referral, the value to you of a referral, does have something to do with the relationship between the referrer and the referee, between the person who's giving you the referral and the person you're being referred to.
Dave Fellman:
And I have a story to reinforce this. Many, many years ago, I had a basketball buddy named Teddy Collins, and he was a good guy, he was a good friend, he was the kind of guy that we'd talk before or after basketball. He knew what I did. I knew what he did. And he said to me, one day he said, "I know a guy that you want to talk to." And he gave me this guy's name, he was a big forms buyer at a local company.
Dave Fellman:
So, I was very happy with that. I was all excited about that. And I called this guy up on the telephone and I introduced myself. And I said that, "Timmy Collins suggested that I get in touch with you. He thought that it would be good for us to get together." And there's a couple of beats of silence on the other end of the line. And then this guy says, "Timmy Collins, huh? I don't like Timmy Collins and so far, I don't think I like you either." And he hung up the phone. So, just a bit of a caution, keep in mind that a referral is not magic. Good, still worth looking for, but not always magic.
Dave Fellman:
All right, now let's talk about finds. Now let's talk about prospecting. I define prospecting as an activity chain, which begins with the identification of suspect companies and ends with the qualification of real prospects. Now, a little bit of terminology here. There's actually four kinds of people on the buying side of your sales equation; suspects, prospects, customers, and maximized customers. They are suspects when you think they might be prospects. That's the only bar that you have to cross in order to categorize somebody as a suspect. But they're only prospects when you know for sure that they qualify. I'll tell you what that means in just a moment. You should only call them customers when they actually start buying from you and the reason that's important goes back to the early part of our conversation today about trust, about trust being the single most important factor in most people's buying decisions.
Dave Fellman:
The thing about prospects... Let me say this differently. The thing about customers is that they decide at some point you convince them, they decided that they could trust you enough to at least give you a chance. And if you continue to keep all your promises, if you provide a quality service, a great customer experience, they continue to buy from you. But see the thing about your prospects, the people who have not yet pulled the trigger to get the order, to give you an order. I'm telling you that the big issue is simply this. You haven't yet convinced them that you can be trusted to keep all of your promises. Now, I'm not saying that you can't be trusted. I'm not saying that you're not trustworthy. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that you haven't convinced them, to me. That's an important distinction. And it's important enough that you should use different words to describe the different people, the ones who trust you and the ones who don't yet, that we're talking about.
Dave Fellman:
And then you can call them maximize customers when you're getting maximum value from the relationship. I'm hoping that we're going to get a chance to talk about that in particular at some later time. For now, though, I promised I would tell you what it means to be a fully qualified prospect. In order to get there, whoever we're talking about, these individuals we're talking about have to pass three tests. Test number one, they got to buy exactly the kind of print and services that you sell. It's possible that they buy a lot of ink and paper, but the ink and paper that they buy is not really consistent with your capabilities. That may make them good prospects for somebody else, but not for you.
Dave Fellman:
All right. So number one, they got to buy exactly the kind of print that you sell, the kind of products that you sell. Number two, they got to buy enough of it to make pursuing them worthwhile. And I don't know how many dollars of potential that is for you as an individual. It has something to do with your current sales volume, your current number of customers, how much time you have available to pursue the business right now. But I can tell you this. I can tell you that most salespeople don't really give it a thought to how much potential somebody has. And as a result, they waste. And I really mean that word. They waste a lot of their prospecting time chasing after minnows, when they should be looking for bigger fish.
Dave Fellman:
And then the third qualifying criteria, in order to consider somebody a fully qualified prospect, they have to show some real interest in buying from you, which means they have to engage with you. They have to return your calls and emails. They have to agree to meet with you. They have to allow you to conduct a real needs and wants assessment. They got to engage, they got to cooperate. They have to show some real interest. You may have people that you've been trying to get interested in you for a long time, without much success. If they seem to qualify in terms of potential, I'm not saying that you should give up on them. But I am saying that you need to recognize that right now, they're not fully qualified prospects. I believe it's very important to have a clear and realistic picture of your pipeline.
Dave Fellman:
And why is that? Well, it's really pretty simple. The more you want or need to increase sales, the more important it is that you have real prospects, real, fully qualified prospects in your pipeline. Because if you don't, you're just kidding yourself and you'll never get where you're trying to go. All right, so what are your prospecting challenges? Challenge number one is to identify suspects. Challenge number two is to identify decision-makers. Challenge number three is to connect with those decision-makers. And then the next challenge is to sell what I refer to as the first substantive conversation. I use the words needs and wants assessment a moment ago. That's what I'm talking about here. But let's back up a bit. Let's back up to the idea of identifying suspects.
Dave Fellman:
If all of a sudden I became your a sales manager and my first assignment to you was to put together a list of 20 suspect companies. Would you know where to go? Would you know where to start? If not, here's my tip on suspect identification, go to your current customer list. Your current customers, your company's current customer sell customers. Start with the biggest ones, work your way down to the smaller ones, ask yourselves, "What kind of companies are they? What is their business? What is it about their business that creates the need for our products? And then what you do is go looking for more companies that look like those companies in the same businesses as those companies.
Dave Fellman:
Next challenge is to identify the decision makers. How do you do that? Well, there's still the time old, age old strategy of just reaching out to the company and asking. In my career, I've made a lot of phone calls and talked to a lot of receptionists and introduced myself to them and told them, "My name is Dave Fellman. I'm from ABC Company. We are this kind of company. This is our business." And then I'd say, "I would like to send some information about our company to your company. Can you tell me, please, who should I send it to?" It's been my experience that if you call up a company and say, "Hey, can you connect me with whoever buys the printing?" You're not probably going to get the result that you're hoping for. But if you start a little more patiently, introduce yourself, "This is who I am, this is what I'd like to do. Can you help me get my stuff to the right people?" I, in my experience, have found that you're likely to have greater success.
Dave Fellman:
But I've also found, in my experience, that it's easier these days to do this kind of research than it has ever been before. If somebody were to give me a tip, a company name, not a person name, just a company name, my first activity would be to go online and Google search the company. I would hope that would bring me to a company website. I would hope that website would have a staff directory. I would hope that the staff directory would give you the names of the people who have the titles or the responsibilities that I'm most interested in. Failing that, my Google search might provide me with news articles about the company with names of employees sometimes attributed with their titles.
Dave Fellman:
There've been many times recently when that research has given me the name of a person to start with, and I've also had a lot of success and many of my clients have had a lot of success going to LinkedIn and doing a search on LinkedIn on the name of the company and seeing if that produced the opportunity to get a listing of all employees of that company. And then, as even a fourth opportunity, another networking opportunity, it's been my experience that many of the industries that we do well with, that our kind of printing does well with are I'd like to call them closed systems, by which I mean that people go from one company to another company, to another company, another company in the same industry. I have very often gone out to my customers to ask them if they know anybody at another company in their industry.
Dave Fellman:
Anyways, it's not as hard as most people seem to think it is to identify the decision maker. If failing everything else, you can always call on the phone or even walk in the door and ask whoever you meet first who you should send your information to. Now, the issue of connecting with decision makers, here's where we get to the place where it might be time for a cold call, except it isn't. Anything that warms up a cold call is a good thing. So here's the strategy that I've been teaching for many, many years now. When you identify a decision-maker, see if you can't get that decision-maker's email address. And then before you make the call, send off an introductory email. And I don't want this to be anything long and involved because it's been my experience that the longer it is, the less likely it is that somebody is going to take the time to read it.
Dave Fellman:
But think about what you might be able to say in a short paragraph, long introductory email. "My name is David Fellman from Dave's Printing and Graphics. We are a company with a great deal of experience in your industry. I would like to talk to you about your future printing needs. With that in mind, I will be calling you to see if we could set up an appointment, please be expecting my call." Something simple, something basic, something functional and something which, think back to the beginning of our conversation. Something which makes a promise and gives you the opportunity to keep it. And then picture this, it's time to make the follow-up call. Here's what I would say. "Hi, this is Dave Fellman from Dave's Printing And Design. I wrote to you yesterday. I promised that I was going to be calling to see if we could set up an appointment. How does your schedule look for early next week? Later on this week? Some appropriate timeframe?"
Dave Fellman:
It's been said that making a sale is a process, not an event. I believe that the process gives you many opportunities to make some promises and then keep them. I believe that the opportunity here is to build yourself, build yourself a wall, build yourself with individual context. Each of which adds another brick to the wall, the wall being all about, "I know what I'm talking about and you'll be able to trust me to keep all the promises that I eventually make to you." Here's a quick observation. I think too many salespeople wing it with limited success. My experience with the most successful salespeople is they figure out a process that works and then they follow it.
Dave Fellman:
Now, the goal of all of this, the goal of the prospecting is to get to this first meeting, this first substantive conversation. Before we do that, I want to give a little thought to who's behind what door. Back up a little. All right. It is possible for you to decide who you think you want to talk to. Who's likely to be the person that you want to talk to in any given company. But the truth of the matter is that that is not always guaranteed. I know people that do a lot of business with marketing coordinators. I do know people who don't do any business with marketing coordinators because in a particular company, the marketing coordinator is only a gatekeeper or a money spender. I know a lot of people who do business with a marketing coordinator in one company, but they need to be talking to the vice president of marketing in another company.
Dave Fellman:
It is important that you figure out pretty quickly who the person that you had first identified really is. Just to understand this, they all have their roles to play. A gatekeeper can connect you to influencers and decision-makers. Influencers can connect you with decision makers and help you to influence them. I guess the one I want to warn you the most about though, is the money spender. That's my term for somebody who places orders, but is not empowered to change suppliers, to make a big change decisions. Think about this, some of your customers are money spenders. They deal with you to place the orders. That's their job. They are not empowered to replace you, right? They're just doing their part of their job. They may be your customer. They may be the person that you have to keep happy. But the point I'm trying to make is that a money spender can't help you when your prospect. Well, that's not completely true. The money spender may be able to introduce you to other people, just like the gatekeeper does. I'm just saying that it's important to know who you're playing.
Dave Fellman:
All right. So, the goal early on is to sell that meeting the first substantive conversation, what are the obstacles that you're likely to run into here? It's been my experience that there's just not that many things that people say when they're not saying yes to you. One of the things that they seem to like to say is, "I'm really busy right now." I hope you know that the answer to that is pretty straightforward. "When would be a better time?" Let's say, for example, that the person says, "Call me next week." I hear a lot of salespeople who would follow up on that and they would say something like, "What day next week, what time and what day next week should I call you to follow up again?"
Dave Fellman:
I feel that when somebody says, "Call me next week," that they're saying something different than, "Call me in six months." My experience is, "Call me next week, I'm busy right now. I might be interested." "Call me in six months," I think there's a pretty good chance that they're hoping that you'll forget about them or maybe die between now and then. Those are two different obstacles. And I don't want you to push too hard against a soft obstacle. Somebody says to me, "Call me next week," I'm just going to say, "You got it." And then I'm going to tell my CRM or my calendar or whatever I use as a followup machine when to make that call, what do I do next? When do I do it? All right. I know that. And then, this is the important part. What I make that call? Here's what I'm going to say. "Hi, this is Dave Fellman from Dave's Printing and Graphics. I hope you'll remember, we spoke briefly last week. You asked me to call you this week. We were talking about setting up an appointment. How does your schedule look for..."
Dave Fellman:
Two points. One is that this is an opportunity to make a promise and keep it. The other point is that this is still all about setting up that first substantive conversation. Another thing they like to say is, "I don't need anything right now." Okay. You could say, "When do you expect to need something?" And then you could schedule your follow up for some time before that happens. But think about this as a possible response. Maybe you could say, "I understand, and that doesn't bother me at all. I know that there's a lot of salespeople that they're only interested in you when you got something to quote on. But see, what I would like to do is to meet with you sooner rather than later, because my goal, my objective is I'd like to see if I can start learning now enough about you and what you're doing so that when it does come time that you need something, I can be more than just another sales person who could give you just another quote. I want to see if I can figure out how to bring some real value."
Dave Fellman:
I wish I could promise you that, that this strategy always works. It doesn't. In my experience, I've never found anything yet that works every single time in selling. But I know this, I know that I have surprised some people over the years with this approach. And I also know that the people who seemed to like this approach, to respond well to this approach also seem to be people that I was able to engage with pretty well and pretty quickly.
Dave Fellman:
Here's another one. "We're happy with our current supplier." In my experience, when the word we shows up here, you may be talking to a gatekeeper, a money spender, not necessarily a decision maker, but I'm still going to handle the objection the same way. I'm going to say, "Can you tell me who that is?" And it's been my experience that while some gatekeepers won't tell me, most decision makers will tell me and that's the person who says, "I'm happy with my current supplier." But either way, once I identify the current supplier, my competitor, here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say, "Oh yeah, they're very good. In fact, they're probably the second best printing company in our area." And the response I'm hoping for here is the laugh, the little giggle that tells me that they get the joke, and then I'm going to say, "They are a good company, but so are we. And what I'd like to do, what I'm hoping to do with you, is to get to know you, is to evaluate your needs and wants to see if there might be some way that we aren't even better."
Dave Fellman:
Here's another observation. Most people, if they've got a good supplier, tend to be satisfied with that. They think good is good enough, but many people, if you can get them to just start thinking about the possibility of better, that intrigues them, that engages them. And maybe you get on to the next step where you want to go. Another of the things that I hear frequently, "Just send me some literature." In my experience, "Just send me some literature," is just a knee jerk reaction. That's the kind of thing that people say when they want to get you off the phone. And I don't want to just send somebody literature off into the atmosphere someplace. So here's what I would say to that. I would say, "I can do that, but it seems to me that knee's sending you literature is just like me coming in there and boring you with a 25 minute presentation about all the cool things that we do. Don't you think it's more important that I get out there to learn about your company, to find out exactly what you might need from me?"
Dave Fellman:
In my experience, the best way to get people to do what you want them to do is to position it as a benefit to them. And again, I wish I could tell you that any of these responses to the early stages, obstacles, and objections will always work. They don't always work. There's nothing that always works. But here's what I think. I think these strategies have proven to work at least some of the time, which means they give you something to work with. All right. So this first substantative conversation, I like to describe it as the end of the prospecting stage, the beginning of the convincing stage and the heart, most importantly, of the opportunity stage. What does that mean? Let me take you another step in this first substantive conversation.
Dave Fellman:
It is pretty easy to sell to a prospect, a fully qualified prospect. It's pretty much impossible to sell to a non prospect. So let's remember, let's remember what it takes to be fully qualified. Number one, they got to buy exactly what you sell. That's what I want to learn in this first substantive conversation. Number two, they got to buy enough of it to make pursuing them worthwhile. Again, I may think that going in, but I need to confirm that in this first substantive conversation, and then the final element of being a fully qualified prospect is they need to show some interest in buying from you. Please consider this. Anybody who buys what you sell, but is not buying it from you just yet, has another supplier. They're buying it from somebody else.
Dave Fellman:
All right. Why would they change suppliers? I will admit, some of them might change if somebody offers them lower prices. But I'm not sure I want that somebody to be you. The other reason that they might change is if they have some level of dissatisfaction with the current supplier. So, I want you to go into this first meeting, not to make a presentation, but to conduct a needs analysis, which is a conversation about what kind of print they use, how much print they use. But beyond that, a wants analysis, whether they're getting everything that they really want from the relationship that they have with their current supplier. And the question that I like to ask somewhere in this conversation, I like to ask them, "Is there anything that you would change if you could?"
Dave Fellman:
I've mentioned More Business Forms a couple of times, my first selling job in the graphic arts industry. One of the things that they taught us More sales training was that there's two questions that you always want to ask as part of your first substandard conversation. One of the questions you want to ask is what do you like about your current supplier? The other question you want to ask is what do you not like about your current supplier? And I honestly remember, I actually remember the day that I first realized that the first of those questions is really a stupid question for a salesperson to ask.
Dave Fellman:
Think about this. If you ask them what they like about their current supplier, they'll probably tell you, but then the best thing you will be positioned to say is, "I can do that too." If you avoid that question completely, if you don't invite them to brag about how smart they are to have chosen this other supplier in the first place, if you just come to them and ask them not what don't you like, not to presume that there's something they don't like, but ask them. "Is there anything, no matter how small, that you would change if you could?" You position yourself then to say, "I think that I can do that better." One final thought about the first substantive conversation. It's been my experience that even if a salesperson is going to do any needs and wants analysis, even a salesperson is going to start by trying to learn about the suspect, as opposed to just blasting out a presentation about all of the real cool things that you can do. It's been my experience that the presentation usually wants to come on the back of that.
Dave Fellman:
So I want you to think about engineering a situation where, well, let me ask you this. There's stuff you want to learn through the needs and wants analysis, but ultimately isn't the most important part of the engagement when you get to tell them why you think they should buy from you? When you take what you've learned about them and to turn that into a proposal that says, "This is how I think, this is why I think we are better. I can improve. We can improve on your situation." Would you rather do that at the end of one conversation where the person you're talking to is maybe thinking about what they have to do next? Or would you rather do that at the beginning of a fresh conversation? That's what I mean when I'm talking about engineering the DPO, which is your opportunity to come back again for a second meeting to do the proposal part.
Dave Fellman:
All right. Home stretch. I just want to refer back to something that we have talked about before, or at least some of us maybe have talked about before. A while back I did a webinar for APSDA on the subject of navigating away from price. And I told a story about how I heard Seth Godin and speak a few years ago at a conference and he was talking about how the printing industry seems to be determined to convince him that he should always buy their products from whoever offers the lowest price. The point I want to make here is don't lead with price. Don't go into any situation thinking that the best way to bring value is to sell it to them cheaper. And actually, I went into this wanting to just put this on the screen and remind you, let you know that this webinar exists. It's in the archives. I'm sure you can access it just like you'll be able to access this one if you want to listen to it again in the future.
Dave Fellman:
All right, now I really am getting pressed for time. So I got to get to my last slide and deal with the situation where you think you've got somebody who is almost sold. All right, this is where it is most critically important to ask yourself, what do I do next? And when do I do it? But it is also most important to think about what the tipping points may be. And the key point I want to make here is that if there's two people in the conversation, the seller and the buyer, you're the seller and the other person is the buyer, who is really most likely to know what it's going to take to convince them to buy from you? I'm a very strong believer that you should take advantage of the opportunity to ask them what they think you should do next.
Dave Fellman:
Don't be afraid to ask, "If you were me, what would you do in terms of taking you to the finish line, to the goal line?" I think you might be surprised at how often they will give you honest and thoughtful answer, and that makes it easier than it might've been to close the sale. All right, that's it. Ed, did we have questions?
Ed Avis:
Hi, Dave. Thank you. I didn't see any come in. I do have one, but let me remind participants, if you've got a question or two for Dave, go ahead and take a minute now to fire it off. I know we're we're out of time, but that's okay. Dave can share a few more minutes with us, I'm sure.
Dave Fellman:
I got a couple more minutes, yes.
Ed Avis:
Great. Thanks, Dave. I do have one question of my own, and that is when you are in that inquiry stage. When you get an inquiry, let's say through the website or via email, it seems often that the salesperson will email back and that ends the conversation. What's your feeling on immediately calling that person instead of emailing them-
Dave Fellman:
That's what I would do. That's what I would do. And I have advised several of my clients that the process on the website should definitely ask for the person's name, the person's title, the company name, and the phone number, and the email address. Those five pieces of information I think give you what you need to follow up appropriately.
Ed Avis:
Got it. And let me ask one more question while we're waiting for others to come in, if they're coming. You touched on the form on the website and I've seen web forms that ask very specific questions, such as what are you looking for? Blah, blah, blah. What's your feeling on that? How much detail should you be pressing for in your web prequalification form?
Dave Fellman:
Well, let me object to the term pressing, because I don't think that that's a pressure tactic. I think it gives the visitor to the website the option of providing more information or less information. Here's something else I know though, maybe not the majority of buyers, but certainly a substantial percentage of buyers, they know just enough to be dangerous in telling us what they want or what they need. No matter what information about the project they might put in, in the website response, I still feel like I need to talk to them to flesh that all out. And besides all of that, it gives me an opportunity to show off my professionalism that I know what I'm talking about.
Ed Avis:
Okay. Thank you very much, Dave.
Dave Fellman:
I have a question too, by the way. Was I correct in that everybody could access the old webinar on dealing with- [crosstalk 01:03:11]?
Ed Avis:
Yes, yes. That is true. Thank you for mentioning that, Dave. Yes, attendees, all APDSP members have access to the member portal. You get that through the APDSP.org website. And you'll see if you go to the left side, the resources tab, there is a long list of webinars recorded. So, by all means, feel free to access them. And this one will be there too, by tomorrow. So Dave, we don't have any questions. Thank you very much for your insight and your advice. And attendees, thank you very much for attending. And I know that you learned a lot from this and I hope you'll stay tuned for future webinars on sales topics and other issues. So, thank you very much.
Dave Fellman:
Thank you all.
Ed Avis:
That ends today's webinar.