Tool Box
Issue No. 62 - December/January 2011
Getting past the gate keeper (Part 1)
by David Ferrier and David Ferrier
Having sales systems in place is essential to being a great salesperson and having a great sales team, and it is important also to look at salespeople and prospects as people, not objects to manipulate.
Taking a genuine interest in people, their families and their trials and tribulations builds authentic relationships.
Without relationships, you can have the best sales systems but still only meet budgets. You can have the best relationships in the world, but without sales structure, systems and KPIs you will fail.
Most business owners and sales managers are passionate about exceeding budgets because that’s the way to ‘look good’. More often than not, potentially brilliant salespeople are told to “go out there and get ‘em Rex” by passionate and enthusiastic sales managers and directors who are unconsciously incompetent; they have no idea they have no idea how powerful sales processes work.
Working ‘on the process rather than in it’ entails diagnosing problems, operating or implementing, and monitoring recovery.
Too often, sales managers say: ‘Scripts don’t work in developing new business; they sound artificial. Give salespeople a guide and have the salesperson put their own spin on it.’
This is cancerous, common thinking among underperforming sales managers and directors who have not managed or performed in a high-level, B2B direct marketing team.
Great BDMs monitor their sales team’s ‘conversion of presentations to decision makers’ because they know this crucial sales conversion relates directly to sales performance.
Many potentially great sales people present to the wrong people. They do their stuff in front of people who can’t make the decision to buy. Top salespeople have scripts and dialogues for getting past gatekeepers and securing qualified appointments with identified decision makers.
This article will explain how to get past the ‘gate keeper’ to get an appoi...
