In the News > From the Daily Herald, May 5, 2005 (www.dailyherald.com)

Ask for Herb: He can help you make successful cold calls

By Jim Kendall
Small business
Posted Monday, May 02, 2005

If you can count to 14, you can master cold-call selling. Just remember to ask for Herb.

The trouble is that most of us have never heard of Herb, and we don’t like to get on the phone and make sales calls anyway.

“You have to,” explains Stacia Skinner, president of Creative Training Solutions Ltd., Arlington Heights, a DEI Management Group franchise. “You have to pick up the phone and look for new business.”

Skinner practices what she preaches. She’s been successfully making cold calls on behalf of DEI, a sales training company, in the Chicago area since 1996 — and on behalf of her own company since 2003, when DEI began franchising. That makes her approach worth checking out.

To start, admit that you have to sell.

“No one really needs your company,” Skinner says. “Otherwise, they’d be calling you.”

Make your first appointment with yourself.

“Put looking for business on your day planner,” Skinner says. Vary the schedule, but “get making calls on your calendar everyday.”

Keep calling.

“Selling is activity driven,” Skinner says. “To get one appointment, you’ll have to get 14 ‘no’s.”

That’s OK.

“Look at ‘no’ as a positive. This is interruptive marketing,” Skinner says. “The initial response is going to be negative 99 percent of the time.”

But, in Skinner’s plan, if you make enough calls, you’ll get the “yes” you want.

You’ll hear fewer “no’s” if you ask for Herb — the Highest Executive Responsible for Buying. That might be the president. It could be the vice president of sales.

“Find the person who makes the decision,” Skinner says.

How do you do that? Start at the top.

“I’d like to speak to your CEO,” is the way Skinner begins. “Would you put me through, please?”

Skinner’s strategy is that it is better for your phone call to be bucked down from the top than to try and work your way up to Herb from below.

“Trickle down is easier than climbing up,” she says. Along the way, “Remember to keep your referral source (Herb) informed about how things are going.”

Know what you’re going to say when Herb answers. Be ready with something akin to the 15-second elevator speech networkers talk about — who you are, what you do.

“I don’t sell,” Skinner says. “I ask for an appointment. ‘I’d like to come and see you, to talk about how I can help you do what you do better. How’s Tuesday at 2 o’clock?’ "

Skinner is always specific about the time for an appointment — assuming, as part of her strategy, that the answer will be “yes.”

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