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Unit Summary
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Extra Resources
Unit Summary
What this unit is about
We will teach you the tips and tricks of getting past the gatekeeper and connecting with decision makers. How to create a reason why you are calling and how NOT to be so salesy!
How to talk to busy owners and NOT waste their time. The process to nail down your appointment and get the prospect to keep it.
Objectives
- How to identify your ideal prospect
- How to get through to the decision maker and gain their attention
- Review the qualification process and nail down appointments
Read Transcript
[00:00:05.830] – James Kernan
All right, we’re back. Hey, gang, good to be back with everybody. My name is James Kernan, and today we’re going to dive into session two called Appointment Setting 101. OK, so this is the lead gen program for managed It service provider. I’m going to go ahead and just get things rolling.
[00:00:26.230] – James Kernan
So many of you know who I am and actually we had great dialogue since our last meeting. I talked to several people either through email or over the telephone. So thank you for reaching out. That’s exactly what I’m here for. Any questions that you’ve got, just reach out.
[00:00:43.690] – James Kernan
I want to make sure that you understand what we’re doing and how to apply it in your business. And we’re all different, we all have different strengths and weaknesses. I just want to make sure that I’m helping you be successful with your Legion program. Okay, so I’ve been around the block for a long time. I’ve been in this industry for basically 30 years.
[00:01:02.280] – James Kernan
First half of my career, bought, sold, owner, ran seven different MSP, and then sold my last business in 2006. And then have been a business coach and peer group facilitator really ever since. So been at it for a long time. So I wanted to remind everybody we had a lot of questions last session and then throughout the week on the handouts and then also the workbooks. So there’s a lot of content that I created for you and I want to make sure that you understand what we’ve got.
[00:01:36.180] – James Kernan
So this is a couple screens I want to show you. This is basically an example of what the course outline would look like. The module one part up top, don’t worry about that. That’s more of just the introduction and housekeeping stuff. The main meat and potatoes is really where it says module two, the class content.
[00:01:56.900] – James Kernan
This will be each one of the five classes. Today we’re on class two. Again, this is just an example. This isn’t the actual one, but hopefully this will help out from a navigation standpoint. A couple of key things I want to point out though is number one, we do have quizzes for each one of the sessions.
[00:02:16.860] – James Kernan
So all five sessions have quizzes. And I think that’s in the process of being put up there for you. And then also pay close attention. Like if you want to be sales certified, there’s some foundation classes and then there’s a handful of classes like this one that you would take to complete. And then you can create kind of a certification plan, rather you or some of the individuals in your company.
[00:02:40.620] – James Kernan
I love the certification part. It’s really training with a purpose. And if people just go through the training, it doesn’t mean they listen, doesn’t mean they learned anything, it really doesn’t mean they will apply it. But if you actually go through the training and test and pass, that means you are listening and that you’re more likely to apply what you’ve learned and implement it. And that’s what this is all about.
[00:03:04.980] – James Kernan
So this last page I wanted to show you, this is actually the video recording of this live session. This main section will be where you would see we would be five W 15. This is the live video or on demand video that was recorded. The handout main workbook would be up here on the right side. And then down here, this is the extra resources.
[00:03:31.980] – James Kernan
There’s a lot of additional contents like the Sales Playbook and the different marketing plans. The one page business plan in the extra resources that should be there. Several people reached out to me during the week and I’m happy to email them. I saw a note from Dan. He just saying, no resources available to download.
[00:03:55.380] – James Kernan
Just make sure you’re in five W one, four. And I was told they’re there, but I did not log in and verify myself. But again, if they’re not there, I’m happy to send those to you. But check both the sections where the handouts would be up here on the right and then on the very bottom where it says Extra resources. So here’s basically where we’re at.
[00:04:21.930] – James Kernan
I just wanted to go through a quick program overview so you understand what all five classes are all about and how they kind of tie things together into your lead gen program. Today’s session two, that will be the bulk of today’s conversation. And then I’m going to go ahead and conclude and wrap up through Q and A. You guys can ask questions and I’m monitoring that. So thanks for the tip.
[00:04:46.890] – James Kernan
So I’m not monitoring chat, but I’m certainly monitoring the QA section. So any questions or comments that you have, go ahead and drop it in there and then we’ll take it from there. So we’re in week two today’s, August 16. This is session two. All right, appointment setting 101.
[00:05:07.340] – James Kernan
We’ve got three more weeks after this, so please continue on the program objectives. The primary objective really is to create the plan, and that is what I call the Sales Playbook. I created a 35 page sales playbook. It might be a little sophisticated for some of you, but trust me, the whole intentions are for you to grow into that. So all the content that I’ve created for you should be available for you to easily edit, slap your logo on it and put your own fingerprint on it, so to speak.
[00:05:41.920] – James Kernan
Customize it to your business and then implement it in your business. And the Sales Playbook, I’m going to go through a little bit more of that today. So you guys understand today primarily. I’m also going to be digging into the appointment setting basics and how to do that, and then talk a little sales process in next week’s session, how to run sales meetings with prospects. And then session four is really more about the QBRs and making customers for life.
[00:06:11.520] – James Kernan
And then session five was all around creating and presenting proposals, and I’ve got a lot of tips and tricks for everybody on that. So in Q and A, I want you guys to answer a question for me. It sounded like, based on last time, most of your business owners that are on the live class, and so I would assume you don’t have dedicated marketing people or admin assistants. But to me, it’s an important question. I want to find out.
[00:06:41.210] – James Kernan
Just say yes or no. Do you have a marketing department or an admin or some person in your organization that can help you with any of your marketing? So no. Yes. Okay, so probably a little mixture.
[00:06:59.610] – James Kernan
No to both. Admin Assistant okay, so if you guys remember what I said last time, my very first hire, when I broke off on my own, I bought a technology company in San Diego called Network Plus. And my first hire was really my old admin assistant at my old company. And I hired her as the marketing manager, and she worked very closely with me to help me implement a lot of the sales and marketing plan that I had spent the last month really working on. So regardless if they have marketing experience or not, remember, a lot of the content we’re going to give you and what I’m teaching is for you to create your own plan.
[00:07:40.710] – James Kernan
We might not need a whole lot of creativity from someone, so they don’t need to be a marketing whiz, but you need a strong admin person. It could be an intern. Many of you haven’t really done this before, but you could run an internship program for a marketing assistant or admin assistant to help implement some of these things that you guys don’t have time to do. And just take a lot of the ideas that I have and basically we create the plan and delegate the execution. And you can delegate it to employees, you can delegate it to interns, or you can even delegate it or autotask it or outsource it to companies.
[00:08:20.540] – James Kernan
And if anybody wants any outsourced companies that can help you with things like that, email campaigns, creating content, webinars, physical events, speaking engagements, I’ve got resources for all of those. So just message me and I’m happy to go through those. But my point is, just do what you’re capable of doing. Let’s see, Jim had mentioned that he doesn’t have a marketing department or any staff to help them with this. And if you’re too busy to get anybody now, then fine.
[00:08:55.570] – James Kernan
Well, let’s just kind of pick one or two real simple campaigns that you can kind of roll out and that will be what your plan starts with. I just want to challenge everybody just to do one more thing, one more campaign each month than what you’re doing today to really get some legion going. Okay? And I’m going to walk through some examples today and before I move on, I wanted to ask last week I shared a lot of content and I had a lot of conversations with people as well. My intentions are not to overwhelm you, but to deliver tons of great valuable content for you, for you to kind of work on and move forward with and grow.
[00:09:37.020] – James Kernan
The main document that I gave everybody last week is it’s a Microsoft Word file, and it was just called the Sales Playbook 2022. I’m going to walk through more of that today and explain a little bit more about what’s in there. But that’s yours to keep and it’s yours to kind of customize and it’s more of a moving forward strategy. As you grow your business and you add resources, just make sure that you keep that document updated because that’s really your plan of what you’re doing. And especially when you bring on additional employees that will be really helpful.
[00:10:11.250] – James Kernan
If you’re not doing any marketing at all, then just do the 90 day marketing plan. Most people are doing referral campaigns where you gladly accept referrals. Some of you might be doing networking events where you go to a BNI chapter for lunch every week. If you’re not doing that, that might be something to add. I think the networking groups are working really well right now.
[00:10:34.470] – James Kernan
And then many of you are doing meeting with your existing clientele. And I call that a QBR or Quality business review and put that on your marketing. Those are three quick examples. If you’re not doing any marketing now, start with the 90 day plan. If you’re already doing a lot of marketing, then the annual marketing plan would probably be something that you would want to take a look at.
[00:10:59.160] – James Kernan
Okay, so that’s basically it. Really the only homework I wanted you to do is just kind of review all the materials that I had sent out and then just kind of get in the mental mindset of we’re going to be updating that Sales Playbook as you guys continue to move. Okay, so that was it in a nutshell for today from a homework review. So I wanted to talk a little bit about appointment setting in general. Now, most of today I’m going to talk about appointment setting over the telephone.
[00:11:32.610] – James Kernan
But there’s so many different ways that you can get appointments. Okay, and I’ll talk a little bit about those today. But leverage other resources like social media, like email, like email signatures, things like that. You can put a Catalan lee link, some type of electronic link to your calendar. Calendar.
[00:11:56.790] – James Kernan
I’ve got the spelling in the link up on one of the slides. I’ll show you guys here in a little bit. It’s a perfect example of something you could put. Here’s a link to my calendar to schedule an appointment. Make it easy for people to schedule appointments with you.
[00:12:13.660] – James Kernan
Don’t make it hard and you could spend a lot of time wasted going back and forth over the traditional telephone with people just to try to, hey, when are you available? I’m available Wednesday. Oh, I’m not available Wednesday, but I’m available Thursday. You go back and forth. It’s just a huge waste of time.
[00:12:32.170] – James Kernan
I love using the electronic link to your calendar call and Lee, for example, several of these have free access to the calendar free accounts. And again, it just makes it simple. You can put those links in social media if you’re making any kind of social media posts. Hey, if you have questions about security or you have questions about managed service offerings, schedule an appointment with me and I’m happy to meet with you. So social media is a great one.
[00:13:03.050] – James Kernan
Again, when people send out email campaigns, there’s typically one single call to action on every single campaign. An email, for example. You don’t want to have 15 things for them to do. You just want one thing to do. And normally it’s to schedule an appointment.
[00:13:20.880] – James Kernan
So in an email campaign, make sure you put a link in there, make it easy for them to sign up. And then events are another great way, networking events. You can just schedule an appointment with people right then and there. Don’t say you’ll follow up with them and get something on the calendar. We’ve all got technology.
[00:13:41.310] – James Kernan
That’s part of our responsibility as business leaders and business owners to show our customers how to use the technology in their business as a competitive advantage, right? So let’s use it ourselves and not make it too cumbersome. But it’s really simple. Just hop on your calendar and get something set up when you’re physically meeting with people. So the whole point is use technology to make it easy for people to get appointments.
[00:14:09.240] – James Kernan
Okay, so I’m going to talk a little bit more about that here in just a little bit. But let me kind of segue into some of the other sales and marketing, and then I’m going to dig into appointment setting over the phone and what that looks like. So something I wanted just to talk about, I always think of by perseverance, how did the snail reach the arc? Think about that.
[00:14:34.030] – James Kernan
Through perseverance. Right? It took them forever to get there, but they got there. And sometimes, unfortunately, that’s how sales is. I grew up in sales.
[00:14:46.210] – James Kernan
That was just kind of second nature for me. I had a lot of professional sales trainings, and I just made it fun and I enjoy it. So following up with people is really the nature of the beast. So here’s some shocking sales statistics that some of you have probably seen before. But I just want to kind of point out a couple of key ones to really motivate you guys to not give up.
[00:15:10.590] – James Kernan
If you follow up with someone and they don’t respond, that’s really quite normal. Okay? 48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect in the very beginning. If they get a lead or referral, they don’t even follow up with them. Almost half of your competition is doing that.
[00:15:27.160] – James Kernan
25% of sales people don’t even make a second contact and stop. They just give up. 12% only make three contacts and then they stop. So right there, we’re almost at, what, 87% or 85%? Right there, 85%.
[00:15:44.440] – James Kernan
Give up after three contacts. I’m going to show you guys some different ways of just staying in touch so we’re in the right place at the right time for people to set up appointments and when they have an opportunity. It may not be today, but through constant drip marketing, we just want to stay in touch with them. So when they do have something, they pick up the phone and call us. Or they click on the link on your email and schedule an appointment with you.
[00:16:10.920] – James Kernan
Okay, so here’s something else that was a little bit more shocking. There’s some research that shows prepandemic and post pandemic. Okay, so prepandemic, it used to be ten, seven calls to have a conversation with the prospect. Now it’s 18.24.1 conversations with someone, you get a hold of them and you start having some dialogue and then Emotivate them to get a meeting. Now it’s 6.7.
[00:16:43.940] – James Kernan
Okay, number of calls to book a meeting used to be 44. Now it’s 121. So the point is, it’s harder than ever to get a meeting with someone. So number one, I’m just going to go through a lot of the tips today about appointment setting and how to do that, but I just want to share a little bit of the data key thing. It’s a mindset thing.
[00:17:06.980] – James Kernan
Don’t give up. Make it easy for them to schedule an appointment. Give them a good reason of why you want to meet with them and what you’re going to talk about. Be resourceful and educational. Be that thought leader like we talked about, and then don’t give up.
[00:17:23.040] – James Kernan
You’ve got to follow up dozens of times with people and jokingly. I used to tell my prospects that. I say, hey, listen, I’m going to keep calling you every day for the rest of my life until you give me a chance to earn your business. And if you give me a chance and it doesn’t work out, great, I won’t bug you anymore. But I’m pretty confident that I can be a great resource for you.
[00:17:46.200] – James Kernan
So please let me bid on your next opportunity. Let’s talk about your next service ticket. I’d love to be that resource to earn your business. And that aggressive style of marketing wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. I’m sure I’ve offended people in my life.
[00:18:02.800] – James Kernan
I got lots of unsubscribed or even seriously, I got a death threat because I would email or call people so often. But the reality is you’ve got to be consistent. You never get what you don’t ask for in this world, okay? So I think that’s important. So in the sales process.
[00:18:21.570] – James Kernan
Here’s kind of where we’re at. The value based selling really has seven steps. I’ve added the eight step for ongoing sales because I don’t want to just sell something once to someone and then move on. I want to have them buy from me for the rest of my life. Right?
[00:18:38.080] – James Kernan
But today we’re really going to kind of dig into the prospecting part, the prospecting and the qualifying part. So this is kind of where we’re at in the sales process. So I first want to start by reminding everybody, when you are in sales mode setting up appointments, you’re typically going to be doing a lot of activity, maybe a lot of emailing, a lot of phone calling. And it’s really a mindset. And I go into businesses all the time, and I laugh because it’s like, James, I want to build out a sales department.
[00:19:12.730] – James Kernan
Come in my office. Let’s do a tour. Let me show you around. And I’ll walk into an office and I’ll look at everything, and all the lights are off. There’s no energy, there’s no noise.
[00:19:23.890] – James Kernan
It’s super dark and quiet. And there’s five engineers just doing chat tickets. And it’s like, you’re going to put a salesperson in this office or an appointment setter in this office, they’re going to die. They need energy, they need excitement.
[00:19:41.890] – James Kernan
Get the coffee cups out. Let’s start pounding coffee. And that’s why I like saying that if you can, I’d rather you, instead of having a one full time appointment setter or one full time salesperson, I’d rather you have two part time appointment setters that work side by side that they can kind of feed off of each other. Okay? So it’s important, it’s competitive, it’s hard work, especially when you’re the one and only person in the office and you’re making phone calls.
[00:20:16.290] – James Kernan
So if you can put the sales people in another section of the room or divide them, put a wall up, it would be more beneficial if there was some kind of privacy or noise barrier because salespeople typically are loud. But my whole point of this is it’s a mindset and you block out time in your calendar. I’m going to plow through 100 phone calls today, and I blocked out my calendar. I’m just going to go get it done. And you kind of get into a rhythm, and I don’t know if any of you can understand or relate that.
[00:20:50.690] – James Kernan
I mean, it’s almost like if you’re programming and you kind of get your mind into what you’re doing, you can’t get tons of interruptions. It’s really hard. So if you’re the one doing the appointment setting, block out time on your calendar, shut your door, don’t let anybody disturb you. But get into that mindset and get fired up, drink a cup of coffee, and then start having some fun. Okay?
[00:21:18.940] – James Kernan
So the first part I wanted to talk about was really starting with the end in mind, what’s the whole goal and purpose of why I’m doing what I’m doing. So regardless if you have someone making your calls for you or you’re the one doing it, I want to create a mini goal. And here are some examples of things that you can track and keep track of. And that’s why I said it was competitive. When you’re making 50 or 100 phone calls, it can be really boring.
[00:21:49.910] – James Kernan
Most of the time you’re not going to get a hold of people and you’re going to try to leave voicemail. Sometimes you’re going to get blocked by the gatekeeper, and I’m going to talk about that here in just a little bit. But it’s all about maintaining good energy and having a strong, confident voice. And to me, what gives me confidence is if I know what the goal is in the very beginning, like, I’m going to make 50 contacts a day. So that would be a goal that I would want me and my entire team in the business development side knowing, and maybe you’re just super busy and you don’t have a whole lot of time.
[00:22:24.970] – James Kernan
You know what, maybe two times a week, carve out 1 hour and just make ten calls. So my goal is 20 contacts per week because I’m going to do two 1 hour sessions. But it will never happen with you guys unless you put it on your calendar. So start small. Number of contacts, maybe number of new opportunities that you could track.
[00:22:51.470] – James Kernan
The number of appointments. You know, there’s different terminology. First time appointment is FTA and another acronym, SQL. You might hear me talk about that. Sales qualified leads.
[00:23:04.670] – James Kernan
After you talk to them on the phone, you kind of size them up. You realize they’re in your local geography. It’s not too small or it’s not too big. Okay, this kind of fits the bill. They’ve got a need that I can serve.
[00:23:17.830] – James Kernan
I’m going to go meet with them and spend time. That’s to me, a sales qualified lead, for example. Okay, keep track of maybe the number of appointments, sometimes the number of assessments. To me, that wasn’t that important. I was more about the number of contacts, number of appointments, and the number of proposals.
[00:23:38.330] – James Kernan
Those were the three big things that I wanted to track for my team and hold everybody accountable and accountability. As I’ve talked about, it’s really easy. Just we set the goals, train everybody on the goals, and then I just communicate through transparency. Here’s exactly where we’re at every week or every day, if you have the ability to do that, but share the goals and share the results with anybody doing this for you as often as you can, just so you can kind of keep track of your progress. I hope that makes sense.
[00:24:13.560] – James Kernan
Okay, so start with the end in mind. Put your goals down and then keep track of the goals and the actual performance. Okay, so I talked about this a little bit already, but make sure you’re using technology. Nothing’s more frustrating than just making lots of phone calls and trying to chase somebody down. I would make a phone call and then do a follow up email to that same person, and I’d have a link on my calendar on that email to make it really easy.
[00:24:44.430] – James Kernan
If they did want to meet with me, then they click on that. They go in and pick a date and time that works for them that’s already available on my calendar, and then bam. It just magically appears. I get an email notification that a new appointment was set. Make sure that that still fits my calendar, but it will automatically sync and show up on your calendar.
[00:25:03.910] – James Kernan
So use the technology to help get appointments. It just makes it a lot easier.
[00:25:14.070] – James Kernan
So let’s kind of talk about the person. The person as an appointment center. There was mixed feedback here of people that have people in their team. Doesn’t look like many of you have dedicated sales or marketing people, but several of you have access to an admin assistant who is more than capable of making phone calls on your behalf. Or maybe you’ve got an intern.
[00:25:40.950] – James Kernan
So let’s kind of talk about what the nature really looks like. So normally it’s someone that you’re trying to groom for sales, and it’s a great entryway into sales. Being an outside salesperson in the technology industry or being a small business owner can be very lucrative if you’re doing it right. And it’s very desirable for the next generation. Kids coming out of school, they want to learn how to be a six figure salesperson or go into the technology business or sit side by side with someone like you that’s super knowledgeable and has your own technology company.
[00:26:23.430] – James Kernan
Don’t forget the value of knowledge and wisdom that you have, regardless if you think you’re doing really well or not. I want to share. Be confident, because there’s lots of interns and lots of people just getting out of school that want to learn from you and shadow you. Okay. In an appointment setter is a very great example of an entry level position.
[00:26:49.670] – James Kernan
You could hire someone part time in the very beginning and get things going. But I normally liked bringing people up as an appointment setter first and grooming them into sales. Okay. The type of personalities that I felt worked really well in cultures that I’ve led were people that have athletic backgrounds. They’re very competitive and professional in appearance.
[00:27:15.070] – James Kernan
Okay, so let me unpack that a little bit. When I talk about athletic backgrounds, I like finding people that either in high school or in college, they played some type of competitive team sports football, baseball, wrestling, basketball, whatever. And why is because I know that they’re competitive. They’re used to team sports. They’re used to relying on each other to do different parts of the plan.
[00:27:42.750] – James Kernan
But more specifically, it’s all about accomplishing the mission and they’re just much more competitive in my professional opinion. I always look for athletic backgrounds for that competitive spirit because I always constantly would be pushing out the numbers of here’s what our plan was, here’s what the goal is. Here’s the number of contacts and the number of meetings, for example. And I want you to know every day how you’re doing before you go home. I want you to know if you had a good day or not so good day.
[00:28:17.390] – James Kernan
And it’s my responsibility to share that data to keep them motivated. Okay? So that’s that part when I talk about being professional in appearance, to be real blunt, it’s a lot easier in this world if a female appointment setter has a beautiful voice and she has nice features and she’s professional in appearance, it makes so much difference.
[00:28:48.010] – James Kernan
That tone of voice, that professionalism, that’s really critical. And I want to make sure that we portray that, that people know that. And when you take them out in the field and they go on a meeting with you, some of those people there was an all American basketball player, a female, beautiful gal, blonde hair, blue eyes. And I hired her. She knew nothing about computers.
[00:29:16.810] – James Kernan
She became my top salesperson just because, one, she was confident and she was a great door opener. And then she would get appointments like crazy for us, and we would go in and meet with the right people. And it just seemed to be a lot easier for her. And some of it had to be her appearance. Okay, so if you can I always liked hiring the captain of the football team or the head cheerleader or competitive athletes.
[00:29:46.570] – James Kernan
And then they also need to be able to write and communicate well and present and speak well. So those were some things that I always look for as kind of core foundational things to groom them into a sales position. Okay? And then you do just role playing and training. You can’t train someone to be an appointment setter in 1 hour, throw the yellow pages at them and expect them to succeed.
[00:30:13.690] – James Kernan
It’s ongoing training, and it shouldn’t take up a ton of your time. They can shadow you. You make some calls with them. You let them make some calls, and you shadow them and then keep working with that person. Salespeople require a lot of energy, and I don’t want to use the term hand holding.
[00:30:31.590] – James Kernan
They just need a lot of communication and feedback. That’s why I like sharing the numbers and getting the right candidate in the very first place. Okay? So when you’re getting ready to make calls, it’s really important to kind of research and prepare. Nothing is more intimidating than calling into an account blind, especially when you’re brand new and you just want to take a few minutes and you can see.
[00:30:58.070] – James Kernan
The person is the president of the company. His name is John Smith. Works for. ABC toy company. Just Google it.
[00:31:04.530] – James Kernan
I would just Google it first, go to LinkedIn, look at social media, and very quickly you’ll find all sorts of links on Google of who the person is, what the company is all about. And it gives me a couple of talking points. It’s like, oh my gosh, the guy went to school in the University of Nebraska, so did I. Or from a school that I dislike. So I can tease the person and use your personality a little bit.
[00:31:29.910] – James Kernan
But you want to find something in common when you’re preparing so you can make alignments and find things in common that you can talk about instead of just trying to be all business. Okay. And you want to make sure you also understand what the company does. Just go to the website and nothing bothers me more than somebody wanting to meet me and then they sit down and go, well, tell me about your business, what do you guys do? Well, don’t you know what we do?
[00:32:02.630] – James Kernan
You said that you wanted to work with me and companies just like mine. Well, why did you say that if you don’t even know what we do? So just be prepared and you don’t have to spend a ton of time just a few minutes before each call. So when you do get a hold of someone, then you can speak a little bit more intelligently. Okay?
[00:32:21.730] – James Kernan
So the other key thing for really any salesperson or business development person working in an appointment setting capacity, the goal is not to sell anything. So don’t think that you have to sell them something. All you’re really trying to do is just set up an appointment. You’re going to ask a few basic questions to see if they are qualified to be someone that you want to meet with and then create some interest and then turn right around and set up that appointment. It’s really that simple.
[00:32:54.920] – James Kernan
Okay, I’m going to go through a script in just a minute and kind of walk through so you guys can understand what I’m talking about. So let’s talk about the Crabby gatekeepers. I’m sure any of you that have made calls and been in sales have run into gatekeepers that are the blockers, right? They are doing everything that they can and some of you may have gatekeepers that work for you. I like gatekeepers.
[00:33:21.940] – James Kernan
The goal in the long run is they should be your biggest friend at the end of the transaction. You can create an alignment with the gatekeeper if you treat them with respect, give them the benefit of the doubt, understand what their role is and how to try to work with them. But you’re going to try to build a little bit of rapport with them. Treat them like a human being, treat them with respect. Write down the gatekeeper’s name and any little clue that you can find out about them.
[00:33:58.810] – James Kernan
Maybe the gatekeeper got in late to the office the last call because their child just broke their arm. And you’re going to want to take notes of that and keep it in the system. So when you make the next call, hey, how’s your son doing? I remember you telling me that he broke his arm and you were getting into the office late last time. How are things going?
[00:34:20.410] – James Kernan
Okay. Be honest and forthright about your solution, what the point is. Hey, I’m just trying to identify when I talk to the business owner and talk to them about the goods and services that we can provide. We work with several companies just like yours in the surrounding area, and I was hoping I could get an opportunity to talk to you guys.
[00:34:44.210] – James Kernan
You’re not being real sales. You’re just trying to set up an appointment to see if you are a fit. And I think people would appreciate that. So assume the assistant is a decision maker and it has a lot of power and influence. When you’re either in the meeting or when you’ve built a little bit of rapport.
[00:35:05.300] – James Kernan
You don’t want to ask this question right out of the get go. But one of my favorite questions is there’s typically a gatekeeper or an information gatherer that you’ve been pushed into and they’re just gathering the info needed. You want to understand who else is in the decision making of what they buy and who they buy from. So just a really simple question in your questionnaire that you should ask towards the end of the phone conversation or during one of your first meetings is, hey, above and beyond yourself, who else is involved in the decision making of what you buy and who you buy from? Obviously the owner.
[00:35:43.510] – James Kernan
We’ve got that person’s name and they’re coming into the meeting. But who else is involved? Is it the CFO? Is it the HR person? VP of sales?
[00:35:52.990] – James Kernan
Let me know who that is because that’s important for me to know and understand. So understand who else is involved. And then the goal is really to become the gatekeeper’s friend or advocate. You want to build some rapport with them because they’ll make your life a lot easier. Now, if all else fails and you can’t get through, one of the things that have worked time and time again is call early in the morning before the gatekeeper gets there.
[00:36:22.010] – James Kernan
You could call at lunchtime or you could call after hours. I liked calling early in the morning. Typically the business owner who you’re trying to get a hold of, they work longer hours than their assistant or the gatekeeper, and it’s a lot easier to get through when the gatekeeper is not there. Somebody did that to me. They called and left a message at seven in the morning.
[00:36:45.130] – James Kernan
Then two days later, about 715, I pick up my phone because my assistant wasn’t there and it was the same person. And I remember them calling a couple of days ago, it didn’t bother me. I had a little bit more respect for him, if that makes sense, because I was always told the early bird gets the worm, and that Midwestern work ethic. I’m going to get up early and work hard all day long. I had a little bit of respect for the person because they were working early in the morning.
[00:37:17.050] – James Kernan
Now, it’s a lot easier if you’re in different time zones, but I’m assuming that you’re calling people right in your own backyard. Okay? So call early in the morning. Call after hours when the gatekeeper is not there. It’s an easy way to get a hold of the person so the gatekeeper can’t just block you.
[00:37:34.120] – James Kernan
Okay, so here’s a couple of other tips. Here’s something I just wanted to talk about briefly about following up on proposals. Now, when you’ve met with someone and there’s a general interest and you’ve kind of talked about some things, I don’t get too far ahead of myself. I’ll talk more about this in session five, but I don’t like the idea of just saying, hey, I’m just calling to follow up on the proposal. I was like, well, what are you calling for?
[00:38:03.540] – James Kernan
Just say why you’re calling. Hey, I want to make sure that you received the proposal and to see if you had any questions. Okay? That’s what you should say. So tip number two, and this is a really important one for those of you that have a proposal template, make sure that you have an expiration date on the proposal.
[00:38:23.840] – James Kernan
You know, the hardware prices are going up and down. It seems like every day you get a quote from a distributor or a manufacturer, they’re allowed to change their price. So you should be able to as well. When you put an expiration date on your proposal, I would make sure that it’s no longer than 30 days. And normally you understand what the customer or the prospect’s buying pattern is, how long it takes them to get through their process.
[00:38:50.750] – James Kernan
Put the proposal expiration date very close to make sure it’s motivating. I always like doing it no longer than 30 days, but make sure you understand you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot if they tell you upfront. That’s going to be 45 days to get through and put 45 days on the proposal expiration. Okay? So I think that’s really important.
[00:39:16.610] – James Kernan
And then I constantly would hear prospects or customers apologize for not calling back. And my immediate response would always be, hey, no, that’s my responsibility to get a hold of you. Don’t leave it on them to call back. You’re going to leave a voicemail. And 95% of the time, people aren’t going to call you back, but they’re going to remember what you said on their voicemail.
[00:39:40.940] – James Kernan
So you want to be very deliberate. And I always said there are five things you want to say on every voicemail. Here’s my name here’s my company’s name, here’s the reason why I’m calling.
[00:39:54.270] – James Kernan
If it was a referral or elaborate on the why and then here’s how to get a hold of me. And I’d always say, here’s how to get a hold of me. But I never expected anybody to email or call me back. I’m going to follow up with them and make sure I get a hold of them. Okay?
[00:40:09.340] – James Kernan
And the hot tip is when you’re face to face with a prospect, always try to schedule the appointment before you leave. Again, I’m going to talk more about this in session five, but for those of you that want to eliminate getting ghosted, nothing’s worse than meeting with the prospect. They’re all fired up and hot to trot. And then you try to schedule the next meeting after you leave. Schedule the next meeting right there in the conference room before you get up and walk out.
[00:40:37.890] – James Kernan
So again, you could grab your phones, grab your iPads, your laptops, hop on your calendar and just find out when an appropriate time was. That’s a big trick just to stay sticky. They can always call and cancel, but always get the next appointment set up before you leave. Okay, so I wanted to spend a little bit of time in the sales playbook. I’m going to show you this in just a minute.
[00:41:03.240] – James Kernan
There’s some additional scripts that are listed out there and on page 1819 and 20 in the sales playbook. There’s some examples. This one is one of my favorite ones. That’s a separate document. It should be in the handout section up in the university.
[00:41:22.420] – James Kernan
But I wanted to walk through what the, I call it the Microsoft phone script. Most all of you are Microsoft partners or at least a registered partner. If you’re not, it’s free. You guys can go ahead and sign up to be a Microsoft Partner. And regardless if you’ve gone through the education or not, it’s pretty simple just to become a partner and maintain a partnership with Microsoft.
[00:41:46.450] – James Kernan
There’s obviously different specialties from there and there’s different certification levels. Many of you are aware of that. I do encourage you to take a look at those trainings and certification levels if that’s appropriate or applicable to your organization. It was important to me and some of the companies I was with were Microsoft Gold Partners, which is really hard to get to. My last company I was with when I sold it, we were a Silver Partner.
[00:42:14.760] – James Kernan
But I worked very closely with Microsoft and most every consumer out there, most every business has Microsoft running in their office. That was a real simple thing. I would always ask like, hey, do you ever buy Dell or Hewlett Packard or Microsoft? Because we’re big partners of those. I like to name dropping things that they’re bound to just shake their head and say, yeah, we use Microsoft.
[00:42:39.390] – James Kernan
Great, we’re your local partner. So let me read through the script you guys should all have copies of this. But if you’re calling someone blind, okay, because there’s lots of reasons to call on prospects. They could have raised their hand at one of wanted to be a webinar or maybe you met them at a trade show or you met them at a networking event. There typically is a reason why you’re following up with someone, okay?
[00:43:08.580] – James Kernan
Sometimes there’s not. If you have a prospect marketing list and you’re calling Cold, that’s hard work. If you’re calling and you’re gutsy enough just to say, hey, I’m just trying to identify the business owner and find out who the person is in your organization that makes the decision of the goods and services you buy technology wise. I’m just trying to update my database, maybe meet with them. That’s a tough call to make, okay?
[00:43:35.630] – James Kernan
Those typically don’t work really well, but if you have something of value, something educational or a referral, a name that you can drop, I’ll talk about that a little bit. But to me the Microsoft phone script was one of the easier ones that would warm up a Cold prospect faster than others. So let me just kind of walk through it. It’s like, hey, my name is James, I’m calling from Current Consulting. The reason that I’m calling is I’m your local Microsoft certified partner and I’ve been assigned to your account to see if you qualify for a network security valuation valued at $495.
[00:44:14.820] – James Kernan
Let me unpack that a little bit. So I’m just saying, here’s my name, here’s my company and the reason I’m calling is and I also point out that I’m a Microsoft Certified partner. So don’t say that if you’re not. That’s not what I’m saying. But it gives credibility if you can point out that you have some type of credentials and that when you say I’m your local Microsoft partner, it very quickly just goes down from the 10,000 competitors to just you.
[00:44:48.720] – James Kernan
Now to play on words a little bit. But if you are a registered partner, there’s nothing wrong with that because there are other partners out there. And then the other key thing I wanted to point out is if you have the ability through tools or I’ve got access to just some questionnaires that you could say that you’re doing an assessment, you’d never want to just say that it’s 100% free without saying what the value is of what you’re giving them, okay? Because if you don’t put a value on it, they won’t care. And if it’s free, they could take it or leave it.
[00:45:25.920] – James Kernan
But if you say that, here’s something complimentary that will do for you or free of charge. It’s normally valued at $495, it puts a lot of credibility behind things and you’ll typically get people’s attention a little bit more, okay?
[00:45:44.410] – James Kernan
And then basically all you’re trying to do is say, hey look, this is a no obligation offer. It’s completely free, no strings attached. I just have a couple of questions for you to see if you qualify. Do you mind if I ask you just a couple of questions? So it sounds like it’s a really quick questionnaire.
[00:46:02.230] – James Kernan
You’re only going to ask a few questions and then based on the answers that people give you, they’re either going to be chatty, which is rare, and then you can ask more questions if you want to or you think you need to, but try to keep it just to a couple of questions. How many computer workstations do you have at your office?
[00:46:22.070] – James Kernan
How do you back up your data? Or do you have a Dr plan in place now? Do you have an on site It department or do you outsource that work to someone else? Those are just a couple of real three basic questions that kind of helped me size things up. I already knew where they’re located, so I knew they were in my own backyard.
[00:46:40.530] – James Kernan
And this is now a qualified opportunity. If I say, hey, when’s a good time for me to meet with you and your It department? It typically just takes 30 to 45 minutes sometimes when you talk about assessments and some of you have done this before and it’s hours and hours of work, it sounds like it’s going to be hours of their time. So everybody’s busy. Nobody wants to have someone come over to their office and meet with them for several hours.
[00:47:09.030] – James Kernan
Make it sound very seamless and painless that, hey, usually it’s 30 to 45 minutes. I only need you for about 15 minutes of the time to kind of give me credentials or there’s different tools that you don’t need the credentials on that are maybe more workstation based like Galactic Advisors. Many of you have access either through your RMM tool or through other assessment tools. And if you don’t have one and you can’t afford one, just contact me. And I’ve got simple questionnaires that you can ask a lot of the basic questions and see if there’s any kind of simple vulnerabilities that are there.
[00:47:48.050] – James Kernan
And really all this is a sales appointment where you’re there trying to understand what they’ve got. And the whole point of something like this is you’re providing something of value. You’ve built a little credibility by presenting yourself as a local certified partner or local registered partner and that you’re going to give them a printed security analysis. And even if they say, oh, I’m pretty sure I’m in good shape, are you certain you’re in good shape with your other provider? Let me just come out and do this and then I’ll prove to you if you’re in good shape or not.
[00:48:23.260] – James Kernan
You probably are, but if I were you, I’d like to know for sure and no strings attached. So to me, this was one of the more successful campaigns that you can run that will get first time appointments from cold prospects. So wanted to kind of walk through that process. That should be a separate handout that I’ve given everybody in the electronic documentation. So I wanted just to take a quick minute and walk through.
[00:48:57.050] – James Kernan
I wanted to walk through the sales playbook at a real high level, just some of the important pieces out of it. So all of you, I just saw a note from James that found all of the information online, and the links are working as you showed at the beginning of the class. So thank you, James, for the confirmation. The sales playbook is probably one of the more valuable documents because a lot of the stuff I’m talking about is in the playbook. So if there’s one thing you download, I’d make sure you grab that one.
[00:49:26.110] – James Kernan
So let me show you a couple of things in the playbook. It’s 35 pages of total content. Again, it’s a Microsoft word document, and I did it on that way on purpose, because even though it’s my intellectual property, I’m giving it to you for you to use in your business and customize it. There are several script examples specifically from pages 1819 and 20 and beyond. There’s a table of contents I’ll walk through in a minute, but I made it really easy for you guys to use.
[00:49:59.240] – James Kernan
So this is page one. I think there are four pages of the table and contents. Now, this is a big picture. It’s almost a combination of your employee handbook, sales compensation plan, sales strategy, it’s everything. And that’s why I kind of bring it all together into the sales playbook.
[00:50:18.030] – James Kernan
It’s already done for you, so it’s not like an exercise that you have to complete, so just read through it and make sure that these, like, the vision and the mission and the core values, they’re all kind of generic, but it hopefully is good enough for you just to go ahead and implement. I’ve got things in here like your company universal selling proposition, the USP. The sales procedures, sales process, how to leave voicemail, how to answer the phone, a lot of good stuff on the bottom here. I’ve got things like how to qualify. Basically, it’s phone scripts of what to say and when.
[00:50:57.610] – James Kernan
Either a prospect calls in to us, they’re following up on a campaign that we did, or when we’re calling them. Okay, this is basically, I think, page five, and it really just kind of lists out the core values, mission statement, the vision of the business. If you guys haven’t done that before and you’re no different than over 50% of the other business owners that I always talk to normally, the answer is no, I haven’t done that yet, James, because I’m too busy doing tickets, so quit asking me. So there’s that one page business plan. That was one of the handouts that I gave you guys in week one.
[00:51:40.080] – James Kernan
That’s a great exercise to go through to help define some of this stuff. If you want to spend a little bit of time on that, okay? And especially as you grow your team, you recruit and train new people and kind of mentor them. This type of stuff is really important. Okay, so here’s another one of the pages in the, in the sales workbook that our sales playbook, you know, sales procedures, dress code, how to answer the phone, how to leave voicemails, what the purpose.
[00:52:17.770] – James Kernan
Here are some of the scripts. Basically on page 18. I think this is page 19, how to make prospect calls. So I don’t have time to read through all of these, but there’s a lot of good scripts in here that will just give you the basics of what you can say. And as you start using this, you’ll see how to tweak it for your own geography and your own skills.
[00:52:40.310] – James Kernan
Some of you, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and just kind of adopt and adapt to what your style is. The whole point is I just want you to be comfortable in what you’ve got. This is on page 20, and this is some of the script of closing an appointment. If you’ve got somebody on the phone, here’s what you want to try to do. So I just wanted to walk through and tell you a little bit more about the sales playbook itself because there’s tons of content in there and I think many of you haven’t seen that yet.
[00:53:14.500] – James Kernan
So, again, there’s 35 pages of content like that that is available. So I wanted to kind of bring things and wrap things up. There’s a lot of really cool calendar tools that make it easy for prospects or customers to schedule appointments with you. Timetap, HubSpot, Flex, Booker, Thrive is a really good one that’s kind of big in our industry. CA is another one.
[00:53:42.050] – James Kernan
C-A-L-E-N-D-L-Y. That’s actually one that I use and I’m really familiar with. And there’s free versions and then there’s paid versions. In the very beginning, don’t sign up and start spending lots of money. Just sign up for the free one or do a trial and then kind of get used to how that works and make sure that works for you.
[00:54:04.430] – James Kernan
And then you can elaborate. And if you want to have like, calendar will only let you set up one style of appointment, maybe a 30 minutes consultation. If you do a paid subscription, then there’s multiple ones that you can actually ask question wise. So that’s what you do. But just remember, if you do have a tool like that, put it in your email signature line.
[00:54:29.690] – James Kernan
I think that’s smart for people to book appointments with you, if that’s what your goal is, okay? Especially on any outbound email campaigns that you’re sending out, either in the body of the email or in your signature line, you’re going to want to make sure you have a link to your calendar and then it works really well on social media. And if you ask me the question a couple of years ago what social media platforms are good for prospecting, I probably would have said just LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is almost like an online rolodex. It’s good for recruiting.
[00:55:08.190] – James Kernan
You can get prospects with it, but you don’t want to be too salesy on LinkedIn because then you’ll turn people off or get blocked. And we’ve all connected with someone on LinkedIn and then they turn right around and 2 seconds later you get 14 emails or in mails from them. I’m not a fan of that. You need to build rapport and earn an opportunity to talk to them. Don’t just try to get on their calendar right.
[00:55:34.730] – James Kernan
As you connect with them on LinkedIn. It’s an opportunity just to build credibility. What I see also working today, believe it or not, even with B to B, is Facebook and Instagram. Those are working really pretty well. From a lead gen standpoint.
[00:55:53.440] – James Kernan
If you’re not doing any social media now, maybe just consider using one platform. And to me, the default would be LinkedIn. Just use LinkedIn. It’s a little bit more professional. But think about how you could use your social media platform.
[00:56:09.390] – James Kernan
Start connecting to more of your customers. Start connecting to more of your prospect, your vendors, your suppliers or distributors, your employees. And before you know it, your audience is going to be pretty big. So wanted to talk about that. So here’s a hot tip.
[00:56:25.620] – James Kernan
I want to tell you if you do this, you’re going to beat 50% of the competitors, but keep your verbal commitments. Most all of you are business owners, your business leaders. I’m going to give you a real simple. This is a workshop that I did, a professional sales workshop early in my career. And the golden nugget that I got from that 30 every day event was really this.
[00:56:49.030] – James Kernan
And it just follow through on what you tell people you’re going to do. So number one, if a customer or prospect says, hey, James, I need that proposal by 05:00 tomorrow, can you do it? Think before you commit. Okay? That’s hard for me.
[00:57:03.560] – James Kernan
I’m a natural people pleaser salesperson, encouraging. I want to say yes to everything because I want to make people happy and meet their expectations. But think, do I have the time? Do I have the resources? Should I add additional time?
[00:57:18.080] – James Kernan
So think about that before you commit. If you feel like you’ve got the time and the resources, then it’s okay, yes, I can do that. Write it down, put it on your calendar so you’re not going to forget that you need to get it done. And then the most important part is if I can’t get that proposal done by 05:00 like I promised someone, 99.9% of the time I know in advance if I’m going to get it done or not, right? Don’t wait till after the deadline for them to call you yelling at you because you didn’t get it done, you renegotiate ahead of time.
[00:57:52.490] – James Kernan
It’s like, look, I’m looking at my calendar this afternoon. I’m booked with appointments. I won’t get this proposal done to you. Is it okay if I get it to you by noon tomorrow? Yeah, everybody normally is very cool about things like that.
[00:58:05.630] – James Kernan
So renegotiate if needed. I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to just help you be a better salesperson. It’s going to help you be a better leader in your business. It’s going to help you be a better human being with relationships. Follow that simple technique.
[00:58:21.290] – James Kernan
Follow through on what you say you’re going to do. Okay, so I’m going to go ahead and wrap up. So today we talked about the mindset of being an appointment setter. It’s a different mindset than what you might be used to. We talked about basic tips on appointment setting and some scripts, tips on getting past that mean crotchety gatekeeper.
[00:58:40.720] – James Kernan
There’s certainly techniques on that. And then how to follow up on proposal. The homework really is I want you to look at that Microsoft phone script that we have and consider using something like that customized a little bit for your office and take a look at the handout of the sales playbook. So I want you just to review those things. Just read it because I want you to familiarize yourself with the content.
[00:59:07.780] – James Kernan
And then we will be back a week from today, same Bat channel, same Bat time. So August 23 at 11:00 p.m. Central on the same link. So we’re right up at the top of the hour. I’ve got a minute.
[00:59:21.830] – James Kernan
Does anybody have any questions? So Kevin dropped a note up here. I found that you have select complete unit to the first two units and see the extra resources. So the extra resources on the very bottom, that would be where the sales playbook would be located. Yes, you’re right.
[00:59:41.430] – James Kernan
So good. It looks like everybody’s finding those handouts. And if there’s any problem, if it’s not working for you, just email me. I’m happy to chat with you guys. There’s my phone number, there’s my email address.
[00:59:56.990] – James Kernan
And connect with me on social media if we haven’t done that, and I will see everything back next week. Okay, take care. Thanks everybody. Have a great week.
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