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Okay, I am going to start
with a confession here—if you are reading
this article thinking that you are going to
learn how to increase the rate at which prospects
call you back, then I have deceived
you. First, let’s re-emphasize a point
from a previous article (“Accept
it Dude, She’s Not Gonna’ Call”):
if you wait for a call back, you will wait forever.
The ball will forever remain in your court.
So whose call-back rate are
we talking about? You guessed it…Just
as the headline read: It’s yours.
We have all been there, especially
when it is a part of our prospecting routine.
Whether we are making that first phone call
to a prospect, or the tenth, making the necessary
dials is something many of us sometimes put
off until it is too late. I am just as guilty.
The block scheduling approach
is one technique to overcome this problem—to
have your weekly/daily schedule set up in blocks
of certain kinds of activities. Phoning activity
is one of them. One very experienced sales trainer
once told me that he recommends no more than
two hours per day to make phone calls—so
that two hours should be set aside and nothing
else is done but making phone calls for setting
appointments.
When following up on an email,
a previous phone call or a pre-approach letter,
here is one suggestion that may very well increase
your own call back rate exponentially:
First, have
your week set up so that there are blocks of
time (such as two hours) set aside for nothing
but calls. That is marked on your calendar just
like any other appointment.
Second, when
we send out a pre-approach letter, email or
any other communication, most of the time we
just say that we will “…follow up
by phone in a few days to schedule a visit.”
If you are telling the recipient that you are
going to call, why not take it a step further?
Tell them when: “I will call
you next Wednesday, August 14, at 10:20 a.m.,
to schedule a visit.” Mark it in your
calendar, within that time block, accordingly.
You have just scheduled an
appointment. If you do not show up, you are
going to look pretty foolish.
Third, when
making your call, have your next call back tentatively
scheduled. This way, if you do not get through
to your prospect, you will be prepared to announce
in your voicemail (or to the person taking the
message) that if you do not hear back from them,
when you will be following up. If that is the
case, schedule the activity and follow through
CONSISTENTLY until you make a live connection,
and get a clear cut answer on an visit: Yes
or No (If the answer is no, as my manager says,
wait six months!).
This gets back to an age-old
adage about congruence: do as you say; say as
you do. By committing yourself to following
through in a very intentional manner, you will
increase your accountability not only to your
prospect, but to yourself.
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