Imagine you're at an NBA game. You've splurged on floor seats for a sold-out game against your team's biggest rival. The excitement mounts as your team takes possession of the ball and fires off a three-point shot--that misses.
In professional basketball, the reality is, if a player's shot average was below 10%, he wouldn't make the team. Period. To make it in the NBA, a player must sink at least 40% of his baskets--if not more. This is the general expectation for scoring in pretty much any sport.
In business, salespeople have been told since the beginning of time that cold calling will lead to success--the more calls you make (or the more shots you take) the greater your chances of closing something. Yet statistics on cold calling show that you need to make about 100 to 150 calls in order to get one sale--somewhere around a 5%-10% success ratio. Can you imagine what the coach of an NBA team would think of those stats$%:
Professional basketball players don't just throw the ball and hope that it makes it in the hoop. They take time to plan things out and they practice. They practice shooting from different spots; they practice speed, mobility, nimbleness, and they practice overcoming all of the potential barriers, blocks, and counter-plays of the opposing team.
By the same token, professional sales requires a strategy, just like the game strategy of professional athletes. I'm not saying don't make sales calls--just don't make cold sales calls. Do your homework and plan it out--make it a warm call and dramatically increase your likelihood of scoring. Understand who you are calling--do your research on the company and the individual you are targeting. Find out about their challenges, their goals, their philosophy, their successes, their weaknesses, and even their competitors. Call them because you know something unique or specific about them that compels them to listen to what you have to say.
So either you can play like an amateur and just keep shooting blindly hoping to get that one-in-a-hundred basket or you can stop cold calling and get yourself onto a professional sales team and play like a pro. Think ahead. Strategize. Learn what makes your potential client special and engage them as an individual with their own unique needs and go for the three-pointer to win the game.
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