March 27^th, 2019

How do you get a salesperson to stop working? Put a phone in front of him. For thousands of salespeople, picking up the phone is the most stressful part of their life. Lack of interest, lack of time, lack of knowloedge...

At most companies there is deficient to non existent telephone prospecting training, and when they do provide it, it is usually complex and done by people who’ve never use the phone successfully for prospecting (given by the marketing department, or worse the HR department). Otherwise, it is offered by a consultant who considers strategic prospecting as telemarketing, with a very "90's" vision of the thing.

The statistics show that the contact rate on the phone is between 15% to 80% depending on the industry, product, and role level of the contact (ex. for business services segment, contact rates are consistently between 25% and 40%). This is far higher than response rates with emails and social prospecting.

Because so much sales communication has shifted to emails and social inboxes, phones are not ringing nearly as much as in the past. That is why those who do use the phone stand out in the crowd and get through! And also, prospects are getting burned out on impersonal, irrelevant (and often automated) prospecting emails.

Prospects are hungry for something different: a live, authentic human being!

By Manon Verreau, Rafale development agent

Source: BLOUNT, J. (2015). Fanatical Prospecting. Hoboken: Wiley.