How to make a research call for more sales

The reason why cold calling deserves' its reputation of being annoying and ineffective is because agents pitch the same on every single call, without doing pre-call research, establishing the decision making process or the baseline current situation.

Usually, you can only get past the gatekeeper 50% of the time.

With this approach, you will be able to get past the gatekeeper about 95% of the time as well as qualify them in or out BEFORE talking to a decision maker AND you get to probe for any potential hot buttons or pain points which will help you on the 'real' call with a decision maker.

The first thing you do is establishing the decision making process in the company's buying centre. This gives you control of the sale later on, as well as the strategic landscape of relationships in the company:

So you have done the research on the company, but you want to know for sure who in the About us section deal with what you sell:

'Hi this is Matthew speaking from ABC company, we provide XYZ products. I have a few names here. Paul Black, Roger Brown, and Sarah Jones.
Can you tell me, if your company were considering changing your product CBA which of these people would be involved in the decision making process?'


Or if they don't have this information listed, simply:

'Hi. This is Matthew calling XYZ company and provide ABC products and services. I am NOT looking to speak with anyone at the moment, however can you tell me who would be involved in the decision making process if your company was looking at buying CBA product?'

Let's assume that the gatekeeper is compliant and tells you it is Sarah Jones.

The first thing you must ask is:

"What is Sarah's role within your company?"

"Thank you, can you give me Sarah's job title?"

If you only get one name you follow up with..

"And who else would Sarah consult with in your organisation if she were considering CBA products?"

If you get "Nobody".

"Ok thanks. who is the business owner (or Managing Director/site manager)?"

These questions are asked in this order to increase the chance she'll tell you the answers to what you want to know.

From here with the GK, you qualify the opportunity using your criteria you know you must know from your qualifying criteria. (business size, deal size, industry etc)

Here's how you might transition from asking decision making process questions to qualifying:

"Can I ask who your company uses for XYZ product right now?"

She tells you it's GHI product:

"And how long have you been with GHI Competitor?"

"Ok thanks, and who uses the GHI product regularly?"

At this stage of the call you have the decision maker names, what products they are using, and hopefully the name of someone in the business that uses the product which you'll be talking to next..

Some additional questions to ask:

"How long have you had XYZ product?"
If the product is relatively new, it is likely a low probability sale and you should back out.

"How many XYZ do you have?"

"Do you use XYZ just in head office or in your branches?"

And here's my favourite killer question to finding a hidden current need.

"Are you aware of any problems, issues or frustrations with your XYZ product or GHI supplier?"

Or

"What would you change about XYZ if it were up to you?"

Now often you will get a NO to this answer, but on the few times you do get a YES you know that this a high probability prospect and can use this information to form a strong case of an appointment on your decision maker call.
Lower level staff will happily complain to you about something even if it's something the higher ups are not aware of. These are 'hidden' needs as they are literally hidden from the awareness of decision makers.

Once this phase of the call is done, you then ask for the GKs name and what their role is:

"Thanks for all your help, may I ask your name?"

"And what is your role here Sam?"

You can then end the call like this:

"Great. Do Sarah and Paul have email addresses that end with your company web address prospect.com?"

"OK, so the format is the same. First name followed by surname then @prospect.com?"

"Fine, thanks very much. Do you have any of their direct dial numbers handy?"

"That's great, thanks very much for all your help today. Have a good day. Good bye Sam".

With getting the decision maker process, the baseline of situation as well as potentially a hot button or two, you go into the call knowing that you can control the sales cycle, as well as qualifying the prospect in or out quickly BEFORE the decision maker call.

There is a second part of this process where we speak to A USER of the product which I'll be posting later on.

Doing this research and qualifying process takes maybe 3 to 5 minutes max. If it takes you 100 calls to get one appointment using 'traditional' cold calling techniques, with this system you will only have to do maybe 20 to get the same results.

I'll be posting the rest of this method soon,