Establishing a Group

416-621-9348 cgreaves@chrisgreaves.com
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Prospecting Tools (Home); Unsolicited Mail ; What Criteria? ; Researching the Prospect ; Establishing a Group ; The Introductory Kit ; The Follow-up Call ; First Day's Experience ; The Second Version of the Harvester ; My Working Documents ; Scripts ; My Experience

The days go by. Each day usually nets me one extra contact.

At the end of two weeks I might decide to get in touch with pharmaceutical firms with requirements for document processing.

Into the contacts database I go, and out I come with three hanging folders.

I review my hard-copy notes, decide on a "package" to send them, and dial my prime name in the first company.

I hate lying. A friend of mine, a consummate salesman, suggested I start with "Howard McNamara suggested I give you a call". If the contact adopts an attitude of "Who He?", I am to say "He met you at a business convention function last year" and hope that that gets past that hurdle.

I hate doing that. I hate lying. It is so much easier to stick to the truth.

The truth is that I learned the name and organization by reading press releases in Canada News Wire; there is no need to mention my brilliance with Weather Vain. The source of my data is Canada News Wire, so I say so.

The purpose of my call is to determine who I might speak with about document processing, since my business is document processing and their business is the {use of} {production of} {provision of} document processing.

I match my terms to theirs. If they do Distance Learning, that's what I do too; I don't do Correspondence Courses any more.

Remember that my dossier holds everything I can find about them; I've re-read it just now and am using their vocabulary, their phrases in my conversation. I am almost one of them already!

This is going to be as brief a call as I can make it. I'll answer two questions at most, then I'll return to asking fro a contact, but this time I'll ask for "a contact to whom I can send a one-time email describing what I can do for your company", not just "a contact".

Strangely the executive usually offers a name, and I write that down on paper, reading back the spelling to confirm my work.

I thank them, and promise to send the email, and ask all in the same sentence 'Can you please spell out his email address". They do.

Last question: Would you mind if I cc'd you on this first email so that Gerald knows where I'm coming from? After the first email I'll drop you off, but you'll be able to see that we have established contact".

The answer is always "YES".

Another thing I learned from Howard is "Hang up the phone the second you've made the sale". I've made the sale (obtained two email addresses and permission to use them) so I say "Thank you very much Mr. Green", and politely hang up. Howard says, don't indulge in any wind-down chatter. You will be wasting their time, and you'll be giving them a chance to have second thoughts.

He's right.

What if they had a question to ask, "Who are you?", "What's your email?", "What's your phone number?", "Where are you based?", and so on. Well, they'll just have to wait with keen anticipation for my cc'd email, which will reach them tomorrow.

In the meantime, it being early in the working day, I'm hoping that my telephone contact will prep my primary email contact when they bump into each other in the cafeteria at lunchtime. A mention of my name will help to pave the way for the arrival of my email.

I repeat this process for each of my three hanging folders, and in less than 60 minutes I have obtained two emails for each of three companies, and have permission to issue them an Introductory Kit .

Toronto and Mississauga, Sunday, December 05, 2010 9:12 PM