Transcript of Bryan McCrae and Clive Miller discussing a planned seminar on finding more sales leads. The video was part of the seminar marketing.
This article lists the 27 ways to find more sales leads.
Bryan: So if you're going to talk about 27 ways to find new opportunities for more business. Surely there are only three or four basic ways of finding your business.
Clive: Well, it's not finding more business, if you remember, what I said was finding new leads and business opportunities. You've still got to turn them into business right, so this is not the entire sales process but how you get it started.
What's the most common way that you, suppose you haven't got enough leads or not enough opportunities to work on, what you do?
Bryan: Pick up the phone.
Clive: Yes, anything else?
Bryan: You might go to some trade shows and put up a stand and try and collar people from there.
Oh! Trade shows. That's not on my list. (grins)
Bryan: You might send an email
Clive: What else?
Bryan: You might put an advert in the Yellow Pages.
Clive: I haven't got that one on there yet!
Bryan: You might go knocking on doors.
Clive: You mean literally door knocking, Chimney Stacking.
Bryan: Chimney Stacking? I haven't heard it called that before.
Clive: I didn't put that on the list because I thought people would think that's too much like cold calling. I mean most of these things have to turn into some kind of an approach, obviously.
Chimney stacking is what they used to call it in the days before we had mobile phones and maybe even before cars where all the factories had chimney stacks, right? So you go to a town and you look across the houses and you see where the chimney stacks are and that's where you go, right, and then you bang on doors.
But now in the modern age of course it's just a matter of when you're about places you look around and see what companies there are there who might fit the profile of of the customers that you're looking for. People who are likely to have a need for your stuff.
Bryan: OK so it sounds like your approach to all this is let's have some guided missiles instead of shotguns.
Absolutely yes and then use a rifle shot and narrow it down, narrow it down. A story I should probably tell on the day again:
There's a Master archer and three apprentice archers and they're outside practising.
The master archer says to the first apprentice, "Do you see that clay pigeon in the tree over there?"
He replies, "Yes Master."
"I'd like you to sight up on it."
So he puts an arrow on his bow and draws it. Before the Master instructs him to let the arrow fly he asks, "What do you see?"
And the apprentice replies, "I can see a tree in an orchard and it has a clay bird pigeon in it."
So the Master says OK, take the shot.
The arrow clatters through the branches of the tree.
So the second apprentice archer steps up to do the same thing. As he gets ready to make his shot the Master asks him the same question, "What can you see?"
The apprentice replies, "I can see some branches some leaves and a clay pigeon."
The Master said OK and the apprentice fires his arrow and it passes quite close to the clay pigeon.
The third apprentice steps forward. This is the one that practices all the time. He is really a pain in the neck about it but he is the best of the three.
He came forward and the master asked, "What can you see?" The apprentice replied, "The eye of the clay pigeon." The Master asks again, "What else can you see?" "Nothing" is the retort as he lets the arrow fly.
Where did the arrow go?
Bryan: In the eye.
Clive: So the point of the story is, obviously, to figure out exactly who you're looking for. And if you do, if you are precise enough, those people want you to call.
Bryan: So what you're saying is rather than try and contact the thousands of people who might possibly one day be interested in your stuff, find the hundreds who look like a much better fit.
Clive: Not a hundred, you can't call 100 people. If I give you 100 people to call on Monday morning how many have you got to speak with by Friday?
Bryan; 150 if you're lucky.
Clive: Not even 50 because if every one of them engages with you in conversation because they're interested you get through five at Best. You've got five appointments and five proposals to do, right?
So, OK, that's an extreme example but that's how it works. This is also not what I'm particularly here to talk about but it's a starting point. I might tell that story at the beginning if not too many people have watched the video.
Bryan: Hand up everybody who's watched the video.
Clive: Exactly, that's exactly what I'll say.
OK, I'll tell a different story.
So the methods are you say, you pick up the phone randomly, I mean even if you're going to do the phone call thing, you just start at A and work your way to Z or start at Z and work your way to A. if you decide who you are going to call and you only call people who are, if you've only got bread to sell and you only call Hungry people, you are going to make some sales, but nothing I'm going to talk about in the seminar has anything to do with making cold calls.
OK, it is eventually so let me give you a simple example. Everybody knows about Google alerts right? Supposing you put things into Google Alerts that are the sort of things that your customers might write in a forum if they were inquiring of their friends about them.
Could you, might you be able to come up with some phrases that people might be using?
I don't know if you've got global reach. A lot of people have these days but even if you haven't, supposing I want local sales training leads, I might put "I need sales training in Reading" and if I put that into a Google alert, well sure I'm not going to get many hits. If I get a hit I'd better be on it quickly, right, because everybody in that forum is going to be saying "Oh I've got a friend who does that". So that's just a simple example of something you can do which is completely outside of cold calling. It's absolutely focused on real results and I've got another 25 or 30 of those that I can step through and we can have some fun with.
Bryan: So it sounds like what you're going to be talking about are creative ways of generating new opportunities, a bit out of the box, the sort of things that your competitors might not all be doing so you're going to spot opportunities that they're not going to see or before they get to hear of them.
Clive: Absolutely. Well, the strangest thing right, everyone, well most people, I'm sure you would have got to this in terms of the question at the beginning. Most people say, "Referrals. we get a lot of our business through referrals." OK, so I ask an audience though, exactly what do you do to get referrals and most people are not being at all proactive about it.
And I ask, "When did you last get a referral?" and sure maybe one or two in the last few months, and that doesn't just seem like somebody's really leveraging ferals to me. And there are about 15 different ways to get referrals and quite a few of them in the 27.
One that I wrote about in an article in the newsletter last month was quite simply, you go along to talk to the customer to ask them to help you develop your services. We say "I'd like to come and hear about your business, hear how it's going, understand what you might need in the future, and see if we can tune what we do to better support what you're doing. Could we do that?" What customer is going to say no?
I'm just going to go and listen, right. And if you're good, if you're a skilled communicator, you can shift that around to the right topics. Make it their idea and have that conversation because if you've listened well, the problem is listening well, they will come to feel grateful for you listening to them. And that's the point at which you can get them to talk about the possibility of sharing referrals.
And there are lots of, if you want to read the article, there are lots of specific steps. You will find that on the website, salessense.co.uk and well you must be on the site if you're watching this video because this is where you'll find it, unless you found it on YouTube, and look in the sales drive journal and you'll find it, you will find the article listed in the ways to find new business.
Bryan: So why should somebody give up a day to come to our sales drive?
Clive: Well, hopefully, I've whetted people's appetite for the 27 ways to find new opportunities and leads without making cold calls. They are genuinely separate practical things that anybody can do. I'm not saying you have to do all 27 but you will at least go away with some alternatives that you like.
Bryan: And what makes you think these 27 ways are going to work
Clive: Because they all work. OK, they all work in the right circumstances. I mean obviously, somebody's got to use them. Anybody can make Google Alerts. OK, you might say well my business is very niche, nicher the better. The more niche your search term the more qualified any hits you get are. In any case, once you've done it, all you have to do is find some way of having a look to see if you've got any emails once a day, and if you use your main email address then it just comes in as an email. You know, a Google Alert. This person said this in this forum. I'm not saying, it's not an avalanche on its own, but it's a minimum-effort thing to do and once you've set it up with 100 or so Search terms, really tuned search terms, you just forget about it.
Bryan: What we're talking about really are smarter ways of generating opportunities that aren't going to necessarily cost lots of money or take lots of time, but which you may not be doing at the moment.
Clive: An obvious one is if you find it complimentary, this one's done the rounds, I expect some people in the audience will have tried it and probably stopped doing it. You know, as you find things that work and you do them for a while and then they kind of fall into disuse. And some of the people who are in the audience for this seminar will think, "I used to do that" so it's part just reminding people to go back to it. So for instance, if you talk to a bunch of complementary suppliers, most businesses know of others who sell to the same customers things that aren't exactly competitive and you have a lead-sharing thing, and you get together once a week, once a month, or however often seems appropriate and you just compare notes and ask well who, "What new prospects are you talking to?" and "Could I have an introduction?" At least get the inside information. And so, that's just straightforward, and there's another one of them. And you ask me do they work? Well, what do you think?
Bryan: Well, I know you've been in sales for longer than most people can remember. You've been very successful at selling and in helping other people learn to be more successful and so, yeah I know these aren't things you've just made up off the top of your head. You know this through bitter experience. You've walked the paths, you've knocked on the doors and you'd have lots of other people do it more successfully.
Clive: Thank you, Bryan, I'll pay you later. (laughter)
Bryan: So Clive what sort of return on investment do you think people might get from coming to our sales seminar?
Clive: OK, well the main thing is the time, the cost of attending is minuscule, really. If people book early, it's £65 quid. If they want to sit in the front row and come and have lunch with us and get some of the other goodies then it's £135 so it's a very small amount of money for most organizations who might come along to this. Certainly, that's my customer set anyway. One sale is going to pay for much more than that, but it depends on the organisation of course. I mean it's, as with all these things it's an opportunity to get out of the normal environment and think about how to improve things, so some of the ideas could come from the individuals themselves. They don't necessarily have to, or from networking over lunch and the breaks. They don't have to necessarily come from the stage, from the people up front, but there's going to be literally hundreds of thoughts and thinking and good ideas put out that day. It just stimulates people and gets people to think about things that they're not doing now that they could do. I'd be very surprised if people don't get a tenfold or twentyfold kind of return.
Bryan: Clive what guarantee can we give that people are going to get a positive return on investment from this.
Clive: Well, we guarantee everything we do. The guarantee says if you don't believe that implementing the ideas we teach, or some of them in this case, won't get you at least five times return on what it costs you, then you can ask for the money back, and we will stand by that.
Bryan: So it's a cast iron bulletproof absolutely risk-free seminar to come along to.
Clive: Absolutely, the cost is your time, and let's face it, if we are terrible after five minutes you can get up and walk out.
Bryan: But that's never happened.
Clive: Well, I mean strictly speaking, have we ever had to pay our guarantee back? Yes, we have, on two occasions now in 15 years, and on both occasions, they were in-house jobs where we managed to miscommunicate or there was a difference in expectations so we didn't set expectations correctly.
Bryan: What sort of people would come to our sales Drive Seminar?
Clive: My focus is entirely on business-to-business people. Those selling business to business, however, I will say this particular seminar, because of what you're doing Bryan and your experience and working with loads of SMEs, I'd say it's much broader than that. The techniques that I'm going to be talking about aren't just focused on business-to-business. My focus is people who sell IT Solutions, software, telecoms, and that sort of thing, however, the methods are appropriate for all businesses, and people selling to consumers as well. I think the ways of finding people who want to buy your stuff and the different ways you can go about doing it are just as practical for the most part, some of the ideas I'm going to talk about won't work in B2C but many many of them will and I know that all of your stuff is absolutely valid in that environment as well.
Bryan: So is this seminar meant for salespeople, sales managers, owners of companies, reluctant salespeople?
Clive: All of the above. The sales managers, managing directors and owners of small businesses will get a host of new ideas about how to manage their salespeople if they have them or to manage themselves if they're doing the selling. For what you're doing on motivation but also a whole bunch of practical ways to go and find new opportunities without having to pick up the phone. Unfortunately, you still have to approach those people, but if you have found people who clearly have a greater potential than just random selection then it's much easier, usually, to engage them in conversations.
If you need to find more targeted sales leads, we can help. Telephone +44 (0)1392 851500. Alternatively, send email to info@salessense.co.uk or use the contact form here.
