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Cold Calling Success With Your Cleaning Business

Cold calling is one of the hardest things to perform successfully. Knocking on 50 doors a day, and only getting two or three promising leads would lead even the most confident person to give up. That’s the downside of sales is any industry, whether you’re selling yourself, your service or a product it can become demoralizing pretty quickly. When I first started out with my cleaning business, cold calling was relatively foreign to myself. I had the marketing background, but selling was certainly not my cup of tea. It took me months to land even a solid two or three leads, but eventually I started to turn the corner and the leads became customers.

After growing frustrated, I turned to some reading and a friend who’s been in sales for as long time in hopes of revamping my strategy. I cut my number of calls down, but spent more time researching and weeding out prospects before picking up the phone.  Here’s what I learned and how I became friends with cold calling again.

Plan Before You Call

One thing I failed at miserably was planning ahead before I made the cold calls. I used to think that by dropping in with a business card would be enough and the business would start to pour in. Boy was I wrong! I realized through a lot of trial and error that it’s not about the quantity, but rather about the quality of the cold calls. Who will you be calling? When will you be placing your calls? These are questions you should answer the day before you make the calls. Since there are many businesses, target a certain section of the city or certain types of businesses. This will help you stay organized and delay your travel time. Since I was employed full-time, most of my in person cold calling took place in the evenings or weekends. The upside to this was that it gave me an opportunity every evening to sit down, block out sometime and organize myself ahead of next day’s cold calling.

Research  Before You Call

This point could very easily tie in with planning before you call, but I wanted to separate it to simplify the process. Researching ahead of your cold call seems pretty tedious, but the success of your call totally depends on how well you arm yourself before the call. The more you know, the better you’ll be off when you walk through the doors. Simply stop do a Google search on the company ahead or even look up the prospect on LinkedIn before you make the call. Even if you’re not going to use the information, you will come across more confident and more powerful when you have information on the other person and their company.

Seek Out a Personal Connection

Whether through online research or during the phone call itself, you should try to find a personal connection with your prospects. Your research might reveal that you share the same view on a mater or have a past connection with the same company. During the call, you also might discover a common interest. Let’s say that your kids and your prospect’s kids play hockey, this would be a great way to break the ice and ease the pressure on both sides. More importantly, it will give you insight about the prospect on a deeper level.

What Can You Do For Your Client?

Never forget this: People don’t care about you, they care what you can do for them. Ask a lot of questions during the call, rather than talking about yourself. Show your prospect that you care and are there to help, rather than just do another pitch like all the other predecessors. Learn about your prospect’s business needs first, so you can more effectively tailor your pitch.

Careful Note Taking

Since you’re likely a start up or relatively new in the cleaning industry – you likely don’t have a proper professional note system on your computer. However, that shouldn’t stop you from taking careful notes after your cold calling session. What works well for me is my notebook. It’s a simple 250 page notebook that I write down all my thoughts, ideas, sales visits, and other notes pertaining to the business. It’s easy to follow, as all my notes are dated and more importantly it’s all within one place. Often this notebook doesn’t leave my house, but anytime I leave the cold call session I ensure to take a business card with me. Generally I make a couple of quick small notes on the back of the card, which I later revisit and transfer into my notebook.

Final Thoughts

Sales calling is never an easy process, but not following any of the above suggestions makes cold calling that much more difficult. Rather than only going up against a potential prospect, now you’re fighting against yourself due to lack of proper research, preparation and planning. Get into a routine of doing the above steps, and soon enough this will become second nature, but more importantly your cold calling success will become greater and eventually the sales will start to flow in over time.

Readers, could you suggest any other tips for cold calling?

First Rule of Sales: Never Knock the Competition

Never forget this: The first rule of sales is to never knock the competition. I’ve never don much sales cold calling in my career, so my experience was limited until I started my office cleaning company. And over the past three years I’ve learned a lot in terms of sales as a whole, cold calling and approaching potential clients. One of the first rules I was taught when I started making my way around and pitching my cleaning services was to never know the competition. It’s sales basic, yet many relish at the opportunity to bash the competitors.

Even though you’ll behave yourself when you do your sales pitch, one thing is certain is that you can’t control what others will say about you or your business. What if you walk into a potential client’s office and through your pitch they let you know something negative was said about you by your competition? Maybe your potential customer is making it up or maybe it’s true, but how can you tell? One thing is for certain is that you have to respond.

The question is: How do you respond professionally without sounding defensive?

Here are a few tips on how to respond to a “knock on you or your business” in a professional manner.

Accept the Reality

Being prepared is half the battle to successfully responding to criticism. You must accept the reality that others will talk about your business or at times about yourself in an unfair and untrue manner. That’s how certain sales people stoop low, without much regard for the other side. Over the course of your business life span and cold calling career, you’ll have ample opportunities to respond to some form of negativity aimed at your business. Be prepared and know what you’ll say in return, the last position you want to be is pondering your answer.

Good Response Example

“Company 123 is a tough competitor. They’ve been in the industry for many years, and we know this because we compete with them on a daily basis. Like any other business, if they weren’t good they wouldn’t be in the business or competing with us. I try and stay in tune with my competitor’s products and services as much as possible, and rest assured that when it comes to quality, top notch service and reliability, our company is second to none in this market”.

The above would be a solid response in my books. Regardless what was said about you, you’ve risen above by elevating yourself above the fray. More importantly you come across as a class act towards your customer, and all because you didn’t allow a comment to affect you. Furthermore, whether you use the above response or respond in your own manner, the key is to put together a response on the offensive and not come off defensive. This will show your confidence and in turn you’ll avoid a long unnecessary explanation.

Some Reasons Why Your Service or Product is More Superior

Here are three reasons I’d focus on in your response:

  1. Quality of your product or service
  2. Customer service
  3. Yourself and what you bring to the table through your company

Emphasize why your product or service might be superior to those of your competitors, and don’t be afraid to use numbers. For example, I generally try to give the customer a rough schedule of what I’d do during the clean if I was cleaning his facility. Next, I try to emphasize on how we can make full use of the time were there, such as possibly only dusting once a week and using the extra time to focus elsewhere. Finally, when you mention something your company offers, be sure to remind the customer what the benefit is to him or her.

Final Thoughts

From time to time you may have to deflect negative statements some of your competitors make about you or your company, but staying true to sales professionalism well never all yourself to be sucked into the competition contest of “they said”.  Being prepared with your response will keep you on the offensive and prevent you from having to back peddle.

Readers, have you ever walked into a situation where you were called out on what your competition said?

Cheers.
Eddie

Photo Credit (playpennies)

The Five Types of Sales People

 

Salespeople are a special bunch of people, and when it comes to managing a salesperson, it can be simple or quite difficult. Deeps down we’re all a salesperson to some degree. Some of us sell products for a living, others sell a service, and we all have to sell our selves at some point or another.

Top producing sales people are typically strong-willed, independent, and ultra competitive. I believe that there are five types of sales people, so which type of sales person are you?

Here are five types of salespeople you may recognize. Let’s hope you’ll be honest with your self, and recognize your self as one of the five types.

1. The Lone Wolf

No rules can define this sales person. They do it their own way, and more importantly they follow their own rules.  This type of sales person is heavily defined by their lack of notes and desire to redo things their own way, even if the suggestion of a new sales tactic seems too good to be true.

2. The Problem Solver

The best way to describe this type of sales person is that they are a customer service rep in a sales rep’s  clothing. They are heavily focused on post sale execution, and making sure any area’s of concern are addressed.

3. The Hard Worker

This type of sales person is eager for feedback. They welcome and appreciate constructive criticism. The hard working sales rep is in early, and doesn’t mind staying late. They come prepared everyday, and try to bang out as many calls as possible in the allotted time frame.

4. The Relationship Builder

This type of sales person is the classic type of sales person. Someone who is very generous with the customer. The relationship builder focused on building long term relations, and can talk about anything and everything in between the sales talk.

5. The Challenger

This type of sales person is often looked as the debater. They come in with a provocative and often unique points of view. They try to make or save the customer money that the customer might hadn’t realized before.

Which type of sales persona am I?

I’m definitely “The Relationship Builder” type. I enjoy building long term relationships, and can converse with the potential customer about anything, including his kid’s hockey game this past weekend or the latest happenings from the world of sports.

Which type of sales person are you?

Eddie