Three Big Hairy Cold Prospecting Problems That Can Haunt and Hurt You for the Rest of Your Business Life...

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

Especially small businesses fall into this trap, but there are lots of medium sized companies too that refuse to invest in marketing programmes and just hire and army of peddlers and send them out to hunt for business.

While this approach can make some short-term savings, in the long-term it can only hurt your business.

Foregoing to invest in marketing for the sake of saving some money is as retarded as foregoing to put money into your long-term investments, so you have more money left right now to spend on impulse items.

Some 100 years ago, in 1903, the Wright Brothers achieved their goal of flying their aeroplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. What most people don't know is that at the same time Alexander Graham Bell also tried to build an aeroplane. But he failed, in spite of having better wind tunnel and all the gadgets he needed.

Why?

Bell focused on making a more powerful engine.

Orville and Wilbur Wright focused on the plane itself. They built their airplane as a glider and only then mounted the engine. They discovered that when you're building an airplane, the wings are more important than the engine.

What does this have to do with marketing and selling?

A lot. Your marketing programme is the glider and your sales force is the engine.

If your plane can't glide without an engine, then you are in deep shit. If you have an engine failure, that is, you best salespeople quit, your business is going to crash and burn.

So, let's see why running a business without marketing, while relying on a sales force to do cold prospecting to drum up business may look cheap and enticing on the surface but is a very dangerous practice.

First Cold Prospecting Problem: It Limits Your Growth Potential

Just think about it. Who sells more books? Amazon with a system and a few people behind the scenes who tweak and crank the system, or your local encyclopaedia distributor with a legion of door-to-door peddlers working harder and longer than a prisoner in a concentration camp? Nuff said, I reckon.

Some people say selling is a number's game, some say it's not. I don't know. I think, though, to a certain extent it is. Just like dating. Not many people marry their very first dates.

But if selling is a number's game, I don't want to go through the numbers one by painstakingly one, pounding my fingers numb on the dial pad of a telephone and wearing my feet and shoes out roaming miles of pavement every day for the rest of my life. I want to build an automated system through which prospects can come to me if they choose to, and they can qualify or disqualify themselves without my involvement.

Look, my idea of fishing is to have the fish caught and cooked by the time I arrive. That's why I believe in automating wherever possible. And prospecting for new business is a form of fishing.

And let's stop here for a moment.

Pitch-based business development is like hunting. With your loaded weapon, your sales pitch you're running all over hell's half acre chasing prospects who try to outrun you and hide from you.

Information-based business development is like fishing. You decide what kind of fish you want to catch that matches your Ideal Client profile, and put together attractive and valuable information, that is a bait, accordingly. if you are after pike, then you bait the hook with some small bait fish. but if you're after carp, you bait your hook with a piece of lightly cooked potato.

And then you wait and the fish will come... in droves. Also, you've developed a highly duplicable consistent and predictable system that brings you a steady supply of fish with pretty little effort.

From a former career and part of my formal education I am an engineer with a strong background in designing and building control and robotic systems. If I have to calculate something, the first time I use a calculator but the second time I write a spreadsheet template to make life easier.

So let me give you this example. The only reason why most people can afford to buy cars today is because they are assembled on automated production lines. If I remember correctly it takes some 43 minutes (definitely less than one hour) to put together a Harley Davidson bike. If they were assembled manually, most people couldn't even afford to buy a bicycle. So, how do you expect to stay competitive in an automated world when your response is more brawn power? How would you fare in a boat race when your response to making your galley go faster is bringing in more slaves to the oars and whipping them harder? That's what most companies do. When for some reason sales take a dive, they hire more peddlers and send them out to roam the land. So, now they have both low sales and high sales-related overheads. More people always mean more overheads.

The key is to find ways of automating parts of your business that can be automated. All right, not everything can be automated. Giving legal advice cannot be automated, but generating leads and converting them into paying clients for a law office can.

Performing chiropractic adjustments cannot be automated, but generating leads and converting them into paying patients for a chiropractic clinic can. Cooking quality gourmet meals cannot be automated, but generating leads and converting them into paying guests for a restaurant can.

If your only strategy to grow your business is to call, harass and piss off more people with your intrusion, then you are in for a very very bumpy ride and I can almost guarantee that you will suffer some serious cuts and bruises along the way.

Now let's move to the...

Second Cold Prospecting Problem: It Makes You Look Desperate for Business...

...and the big hairy truth is that no one wants to do business with a desperate peddler. You are chasing people while they are busy running and hiding from you.

Just imagine this situation. You're walking on the pavement and about 200 meters away you spot a group of beggars. You know they will harass you for money and, especially if it is dark, they may even give you a good recreational beating to make sure you meet their demands. What do you do? Especially if you live in a country where you have no right to defend yourself, even if your life is in danger. You can be done for endangering the life of a poor criminal.

I suppose for the sake of your health and wealth you take a different route, although if you get too close they chase you down and wallop the money out of you. Those folks are desperate for your money and have nothing to lose. And if you can run away, they hit on someone else.

Can you see now how your prospects react when you harass them with your offer? Yesterday I went to see Robert Kiyosaki in Vancouver. Just before the event, there was a woman going around and giving everyone a promotional CD for her multilevel marketing business opportunity. It was interesting to see people's faces. They didn't want to reject her but were not interested in joining her business either.

So they took the CD and later chucked them straight into the rubbish bins inside the conference room. They managed to reject her without hurting her feelings. And she is hoping to receive phone calls from those people ready to doing business with her. How naive. How wasteful. Well, how dumb.

What happens if she follows up with some of the people? Some say "not interested" but some will string her along with the typical "send me more information" stuff.

It's only fair to say that cold prospecting of any kind undermines your business. In our world scepticism is higher than ever. Trust is lower than ever. Certifiable idiots occupy seriously high government positions all over the world. And do you think that in this low-trust and sceptical world you just call on people and do business with them? It won't happen. And if you try you just aggravate yourself.

Third Cold Prospecting Problem: It Hurts in More Than One Way

It is emotional demoralising, humiliating and demeaning to run around and beg for business.

You may have heard this joke. Do you know why salespeople sit on the edges of their chairs? Because they can't damage their knees when they fall on the begging for the business.

I know, in traditional sales it is called "asking for the order", but the effect is the same whatever we call it. The only difference between surgery and autopsy is the state of the patient.

But the fact is that you can ask for the order until blue in the face and dead broke, but until and unless I'm am ready and willing to avail myself of your stuff, I don't buy. I don't buy from you to make you unbroken. Yes, some may say, good salespeople can sweet-talk a baby out of a pregnant woman. Yes, you can do it once. But do you want to have lots of one-off customers or repeat and referral customers? The choice is yours.

Look at multilevel marketing (MLM), the typical industry that is based on systematically harassing friends and family members. And what is the result? The typical MLM distributor makes just over $34 a year. That's a great return on alienating friends and family members.

Cold prospecting is despicable both for people who do it and - even more - for those to whom it is done. Then what's the logic in doing it?

There are lots of books and trainers out there who can teach you how to scumbag your way through someone who can give you're an appointment, but the problem is that you are still regarded as a pest a common pain-in-the-arse. So, how can you expect to be perceived as a peer in this equation?

At this point buyers bring out their most powerful "pest control" tools like "Send me some information", "send me a proposal" or "prepare a comprehensive Powerpoint presentation".

And spending your whole week at "pest control" meetings is not going to advance your career any further. Yes, you can get busy, but that's all. But do you want to be busy or productive?

What Do You Think Excessive Sales Training Is Designed For?

It's designed for companies with armies of peddlers. Companies that suffer from a chronic lack of brain and finesse, and try to compensate for this loss with more brawn and sheer backbreaking grunt work. Well, you can be the best swordsman in the vicinity, but you are no match against a guided missile.

And your company can have a whole army of these proverbial swordsmen and women, when they come up against your competitors' marketing machine they get bulldozed to the ground, and there is not a dickybird they can do about it. Nothing. Not a sausage.

Also, just think about the tremendous amount of motivation that goes hand-in-hand with traditional sales training. Why?

Maybe because salespeople who are freshly trained in traditional - manipulative - selling, must overcome their personal emotional trauma and self-hatred from using what they have just learnt?

Maybe because otherwise honest people have been taught that to stay in business they must use sleazy, unethical, manipulative techniques, and they simply need the motivational lift to go through another day of lying?

Imagine two drastically different situations through which your market can receive your message:

Situation #1: "I've never met you. I've never heard of you. I don't know your firm. I don't know what you offer. I don't know how you got in my office or on my phone line, but I don't like it at all. What the hell do you want to sell me?"

Situation #2: "I've one of your special reports and several of your articles. I've seen you speak at the local chamber of commerce. I've been receiving your newsletter for over a year now. I like your approach to your profession. When I'm ready to change, I will definitely choose you as a change catalyst."

Situation #2 looks a touch better and friendlier to me. Yes, it takes a bit more time, but if you understand that in B2B business development you don't sell when you're ready to sell, but when the buyer is ready to buy, then you have no problem with seeing beyond the futile drudgery of cold prospecting grunt work.

When your only chance of landing new business is to out-sell, out-trick, out-peddle, out-grunt, out-brawn, out-cold call, out-dial, out-pavement-pound, out-drudge, out-last, and out-luck all your competitors, then you are doomed and dead, although you may still be kicking.

How much chance of survival do you think you have? No. It's much less actually.

And remember! Don't sell harder. Market smarter. Both you, your employees, your clients and prospects will find it more enjoyable, profitable and attractive.

Recommended Tools And Resources...

• Bob Bly'sInformation Library
• Dan's Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy
• Infoguru Marketing Manual by Robert Middleton



Copyright 2007 Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan. All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including a live website link. Please also let me know where the material will appear. Thanks a lot. Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who, using his decade-plus experience as an engineer and buyer for technology solutions, helps technology service businesses to develop automated client acquisition systems and build peak-performing business development teams, using the battle-tested principles of military strategy. For a broad range of articles, white papers, including his FREE Executive's Guide to B2B Online Business Development, and other resources visit his site at http://www.varjan.com. So, if you like what you've just read, and feel that you need some help and support to put it all into action and turn it into new revenue, then follow the link and download my Engagement Initiation Package. Relax, there is no obligation here. This package just helps you to define whether or not there is a sound financial justification to initiate the engagement.

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