"I am already getting all the business I need", rebuttal?

That's one of the biggest of the BS lines a prospect will ever come up with. Do you have all the money you need? Does he?

Sadly, it's impossible to challenge a prospect when he's telling you a bold face lie. When I've come across this, I just go with the flow and say something like:

"That's great Joe, not many people can say that in this economy. I know there's no lack of competition in your business, mind if I ask how you manage to keep your customers coming back over and over?"

Here's a piece of business reality; every business loses 10% of their customers each year through death, attrition, and relocation. Do the math on that. If he only has repeat business and does nothing to bring in a steady stream of new business he won't be around long. Assume he's got a profit margin of 50% he's out of business in just a few years.

This is huge and so true yet sadly ignored in this day and age. While what he said may be true or it may be false in the end it was a line to get rid of you. If you continue to contact him it is likely he will view you as someone he can trust which will lead to a meeting.

And that takes about 5 seconds to get out, couple that with 5 seconds to greet, and 15 seconds to say why you are calling, and BAMMO, the average call where you arent pitching a real prospect takes 30 seconds, 60 max. You are dialing 60 numbers per hour if you arent closing a deal.

Maximum, 2 five second rebuttals and they are qualified in or out, on a "cold" call.

So this makes my point again, if your average call is 4 minutes to disqualify, then you are only dialing 15 people per hour, and that doesnt cut it.

He just doesn't see the value. I have to find some way to convey that he needs my services. I guess I will keep following up and try to feel him out about what his goals are.

Agreed, but I saw this one as a challenge and good opportunity to experiment with some advanced sales tactics. Plus, I don't exactly have a ton of other wealthy prospects at the moment.

Two things out of interest.

1. What is his business?

2. You said it was not a cold call but a warm lead. Did someone give you his name or did he contact you? Either way there would have to have been a reason however tenuous to your offerings. What was it?

Dan

Bamm, there it is. Combine that with a little greed and you will sell more
websites then you or your team can ever build.

If your thinking... how do i pitch the greed factor.

Think Population and potential percentages of population buying from them.

OR. take it from local level to worldwide level ...

Its a one .. two ... knock out punch.


Greed is a HUGE seller. Knowing that your selling a tool that helps facilitate the greed
is an unbelievably strong sales tool. Seriously it is equivalent to a Nuke.

IMO it takes a big man to say that, and Im not just saying it because I spend half my life apologizing. lol

(Sorry, I couldn't help myself )

Misterme; Honestly, I had to read that post about three times to get it.

And I agree with everything you said. But...BUT.....BUTTT!!...
Actually, no "buts"...good post.

I'd imagine that huge companies aren't the most likely to invite a cold caller in on the first call and do business. Might take weeks, months or years to get in. But if the OP is going to put food on the table this week, he's got to get work from clients who probably aren't Fortune 500 Dream Clients.

He's got to spin plates.

If you're to the point where you are struggling financially you have to eat first. So I get that part of it. First things first, so you have to pay the bills, put food on the table, get some savings, get some certainty in your life.

But at some point, things change. As you start to become successful you start to realize that you only have certain resources, and the most valuable of those resources is time.

I find that the ROI is better going after the prom queens over just walking to each wallflower and asking for a dance and being satisfied. If you're closing 1% of your cold calls, and nexting everyone. I'm going to concentrate on honing my message so that I'm going to have less volume but also close a MUCH higher percentage(10-20% eventually).
　
This is the way it works in the real world. A small mom and pop plumber wants to service an area roughly 10-15 miles around their home base, they have no desire to go bigger. If you got them 50 extra calls a month, they couldn't handle it. They'd end up ticking customers off, or not having the money to hire another crew, or blowing off customers who are too far etc. They don't want to service an area like greater Philadelphia.

However you get a big player, we're not talking one campaign they want run, they are looking at 10-20 different websites, multiple PPC Campaigns, etc. That's why they pay you more. One of my biggest clients has 18 different locations and pays me $600/mo for each location. They are moving into another large metropolitan area and are planning on 5 locations year one, and 10-12 in year two. This is one client, one relationship, and one check monthly. How many clients like this do you need?

So, yes I go all out for this type of clients. No is not in my vocabulary. If you're going to spend $1,000 in man hours or direct mail to get 10 clients that will make you $10k. I'd rather spend that same $1k to get the whale that's going to pay me $10k per month. Most people can comfortably handle 20-40 clients. Would you rather have 20-40 clients, and make $4-8k a month or $20k-50k a month?

As much as I love you John this is the offline Forum not the telemarketing forum. The answer to all seems to be just keep dialing. I just disagree, there are other ways to approach business. And it honestly doesn't cost much more money or time to market to the really good clients. Telemarketing is a tool that works perfectly in the midst of a full blown marketing campaign. I don't really like cold telemarketing, but warm telemarketing on the heels of direct mail can double or triple response. That's when it really shines. Although it's more telemarketing for appointment setting rather than telemarketing for sales as it's very difficult to close a $1k+/mo deal over the phone unless you are coming in as a referral.

I think it comes down to some very important things. First an absolute certainty that you are absolutely the best around, that you can without a doubt give them an additional $100k-200k-500k in income. Do you have that type of certainty? Can you deliver those types of results?

You have to know what your ideal date looks like. You don't just marry the first girl who says "yes" to a date, you should pick who you dance with. I like multiple location clients, they are my specialty. I want clients who NEED to pay me $5k a month to dominate their competition.

I would question these statements made:

"Not the few whales out there who'll take years to close. You'll starve before then."

"Might take weeks, months or years to get in. But if the OP is going to put food on the table this week, he's got to get work from clients who probably aren't Fortune 500 Dream Clients."

Just because I subscribe to Chet Holmes Dream 100 model, doesn't mean that I specifically am working with Fortune 500 clients. In fact the plumber with 8 trucks isn't a ton different from the one with just a single truck. It doesn't take years to close them, but I'm also not going to be lackadaisical about the way I approach them. I'm not going to let them blow me off the phone in thirty seconds or less. I'm going to put together a real campaign to land them as a client. I might do crazy things like pay for a fedex package delivered or gasp a 5-10 step direct mail/telemarketing campaign. It all comes down to ROI. The investment of time and money to reach a really good local client isn't much different than getting with a smaller client. You just have to do your homework first.

I'd rather woo a client who can afford to pay me $5k a month for two to three months, over taking the first one who will pay me $500/mo and then being stuck with them. Wouldn't you?

M
　

Honestly i will say "Thats wonderful to hear with times being the way the are" hang up and call his competition and say after my intro "I was just speaking with Joe at ABC company and he was saying he is flat out hows business for you?"

Some may agree with my approach others may disagree both are fine with me, i find that it works well

You can ask him who the current person is, and say something like Oh I can actually vouche for that company, they have a strong reputation, but their prices are outstanding and the service is comparable to what I am offering.

Would you consider taking a look at my offer to see if it would fit your business needs. I know your customers are repeat, but if you had 6 new clients ready to buy into your services today, would you turn them down?

If he considers looking at your package, send him more then enough information. With so much marketing material, he will see that you are serious with your promotions. If you are willing to go as far as content overload just to get your information infront of someone, what are you willing to do for the business owner in order to get more business. Now that's a rebuttle.

I'm a little late to the party but I was thinking about it this morning.

Typically, in most businesses there are bursts of traffic:

Accountant - tax season
Restaurants - week-ends / special occasions
Realtors - spring

So yeah, during those periods I could imagine them saying "I'm getting all the business they need" but what about the rest of the year?

I have yet to see a restaurant that's constantly full on a tuesday at 2pm.

And even if they were that hot that they could pack their business full of clients 7/7 365/365, we could still help them increase the value of the transactions. For example if they're "packed" because they offer deep discounts, they would benefit more by getting full paid customers.

I'm by no means a telemarketing expert but from now on I'll try to have this flow:

Dave - "I don't know, we're getting all the business we need"

Me - "That's great to hear Dave, but is this the case all day every day all year long?"

If he says yes, you know it's BS, and if he says no, then the path is pretty clear to the sale.

The answer that I personally use (not on this thread)...

'Do you have clients that are worth more than other clients?"
"Sure"
"Would you like to attract more of the most profitable clients and less of the unprofitable ones?" (Now you'll know if he's blowing smoke)
"Yes"
"Then we should talk. I can attract the better clients that spend more money. Let me show you how we do that."

I've had the objection a few times, and this worked better than other things I've tried. But usually the objection is nonsense. I like the idea of asking about how work fluctuates with the seasons. (Thank you Robert Domino) I hadn't thought of that before.

Once upon a time, as the owner of a real estate appraisal company, I had all the clients I could handle.

I wish someone had called me not to get me new clients (I really was at capacity) but to show me how to change my set up so I could handle more clients.

My set up could have been much better, and my top 3 clients, the ones I loved the most... they were not so great, when looked at the right way. The top one brought me 25-33% of all my business and paid without arguing, when the bill was due, not a day late. And they had people that were a pleasure to deal with.

They also used up some 40% of my resources (They always had a property that needed to be appraised that was at the edge of the world... Well, lots of the properties we appraised for them were 20-30 miles farther than the properties we appraised for others.

I found that out when I raised my prices and they wouldn't go along.

Point? Don't go into rebuttals, go on a fact-finding mission... Then propose a solution to a problem he does have (even though right now he's not aware of having that problem).