A while back, one of my salesmen, Juan David, had some car trouble, so I offered to drive him to work.
Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to do a little one-on-one role play, I suggested we review some phone appointment scheduling skills.
I have a long-standing, well-established statistic that you only have eight seconds to get an executive's attention every time you pick up the phone.
Juan David was a little skeptical about my eight-second standard.
He looked at me and said, “Boss, eight seconds is too short a period of time!
That's not enough time to take a deep breath, let alone make a meaningful opening statement.”
We were waiting at a red light when he said this.
When the light turned green, I kept my foot on the brake and started counting: “One thousand and one, one thousand and two…” People started honking.
By the time I got to “one thousand and four,” Juan David was begging me to get moving.
By the time we got to the sixth second, the guy behind finance directors email lists us was starting to get out of his car and Juan David was looking for a place under the floor to hide.
When I finally arrived at eight, the intersection was a symphony of honking horns, pointing fingers and screaming mouths. I stepped on the accelerator.
Juan David never again questioned me how long eight seconds really lasts or whether you can have an impact in that amount of time.
opening statement
8 seconds are enough to make someone smile!
If you've been reading my blogs, you understand what motivates people to buy; you know the relevant details about your product, service or solution; and you have a good idea about the strategies at your disposal to reach out to people who can bring you new business.
When you get ready to pick up the phone and call an executive, what do you say?
I'm going to assume that your goal in picking up the phone is to develop new business.
I'm also going to assume that:
You have decided to use the phone to do this, either through a follow-up call to a written communication (see my previous article on this topic) or as your first contact with the target business.
Your goal is to get an appointment or create the next step with a senior executive who is the person who can actually buy whatever it is you are selling.
You have three big goals when it comes to developing a working opening statement. You want to:
Make it sound conversational.
Deliver it with confidence.
Get a favorable interruption, one that will put your prospect in control as soon as possible.
Five key components of the opening statement:
You're picking up the phone to call your prospect. For now, let's assume you actually reach out to the executive. (You should read last month's column to learn exactly how to get past the gatekeepers.) Here are the five key ingredients your opening statement should contain:
Introduction . Typically, when an executive (or anyone else) answers a hotline, they’ll say their name: “This is Jane Smith,” or “Jane Smith speaking.” Your first step will be to repeat this person’s name. Keep things formal for now: use Mr. or Ms., then the contact’s last name.
Prospect: This is Pepita Jimena.
You: Mrs. Jimena?
Prospect: Yes.
This first step will get you all of Ms. Jimena's attention. Whatever she was doing before you said her name, she has now stopped doing it. She is paying attention to you, and that's a good thing!
What most salespeople do now, despite repeated and repeated evidence that they shouldn’t, is say something like this: “Hi, Ms. Maria. I’m Max Perez from SMF360.”
Unless your name is, say, James Bond, or your company affiliation is, say, NASA, I can tell you exactly what will happen next on the vast majority of those calls: The prospect will respond to this counterproductive “verbal handshake” by disconnecting, asking you to send information in writing
, pretending the building just caught fire, or disconnecting from the call.In short, you will only have been on the line for about twenty and a half seconds, and you will be done.
The joke. In your opening statement Here's an alternative plan. What I'm about to tell you will contradict what you've been taught.
Do it anyway.
When Pepita Jimena says “Yes,” she’s going to respond with something positive and enthusiastic, something that doesn’t directly identify you, your company, or the product or service you eventually want to discuss.
It's too early in the relationship for you to be able to convey that kind of information in your opening statement.
Instead, you'll use a joke, like one of these in your opening statement:
“It’s an honor to finally talk to you!”
“Thank you for picking up the phone!”
“Thank you for taking my call.”
“Your time is important. Let me get to the point.”
Get the idea? Each and every one of these compliments will do a much better job for you than simply volunteering your name and company affiliation at the beginning of the conversation.
Or saying something totally lame like “How are you today?” or “Do you have a minute?”
The hook . In the opening statement, immediately following your joke, you are going to grab the person's attention by using a hook that is directly connected to something that is likely to be of interest to this potential customer.
“We’ve helped (three of the top five widget corporations reduce overall costs by twelve percent this quarter, and they did it without laying off staff or sacrificing product quality).”
Now there's a tangible benefit if there ever was one!
Keep your hook focused and only one or two sentences long, and you can't go wrong.
