Sales jobs and gaining access to the right customers

It’s a fundamental part of any sales jobs, getting in front of the right, and indeed enough, customers in order to sell. I have seen many talented individuals who were excellent in front of the customer fail simply because they were unable to get in front of enough of them.

In practise, the critical skills and techniques required here are neither complicated to learn, or difficult to execute. It’s more a question of realising that ‘access skills’ are a critical and necessary part of the sales process. To date, generating access may be one of the least enjoyable parts of the process. How many people in sales jobs would tell you they love cold calling! Well read on, it’s about to get more interesting!

Gaining access can apply to a number of scenarios from getting trying to get put through to the right person on the telephone, to persuading someone to let you book a face to face appointment and even knocking the front door of a business to try and sell. Strangely, I learned the skills for generating access on my first ever sales course PSS III (Professional Selling Skills 3), but never really realised how powerful this was until years later.

The concept is utterly simple. To maximise your chances of gaining access you must always ‘give a reason for your call’…..’which is of benefit to your customer’. In nearly 20 years of selling, never has such a simple concept been either ignored or poorly delivered on such a regular basis. To do this well, you simply need to apply a little bit of thought to your reason for calling, and the key lies in the second but, ‘which is of benefit to your customer’. You need to find a reason which will obviously tap the nerve of the person you would like to see. A second important point here, is that the more specific your reason, the greater chance you have of by passing a gatekeeper such as a receptionist.

Let’s consider a couple of examples.

At present I am Managing Director of a small business. As a result, we get heaps of calls coming in asking ‘to speak to the MD…the guy in charge if x, y, z, the sales manager’ etc. Well I’m sorry guys, the standard response to this one is ‘send me and e-mail, and if I’m interested I’ll respond.’ Now take a step back and consider my job. My task as MD is to generate as big a profit as possible. I do this either through finding ways of selling more, or finding ways of reducing costs.

Now I get a call through from a guy selling phone packages (we get lots) who claims he could take up to 50% off my phone bill. If I ignore him, and he’s right, I’ve missed a clear and easy opportunity to move towards my objectives, so more often than not this call gets through. Once through, he’s got to persuade me pretty quickly why his claim is genuine, however, the hard part is over, he’s got to speak to me.

Of course it would be easy if we could all generate a straight 50% cost saving, but what if our product is more expensive? This is where your marketing needs to be creative. You need to look at the benefits of your product and create a path back to my objectives, ie. How it could either increase sales or reduce costs. So, for example, a more expensive product may be far more efficient, save me time and therefore save me money.

I’m a medical sales rep visiting a surgery and trying to persuade a receptionist to ask the doctor if I can see him. Last time, I turned up and just asked if I could see him. I was frustrated that she picked up the phone and said “you don’t want to see a rep do you?”, the response was predictable! On this visit we consider the doctors task, to make people better, save lives even. My task is to find a reason for my call that taps into these basic tasks. Also, remembering the rule above, the more specific the reason is, the greater chance of passing the gatekeeper. Part of the reason for this is that the more detailed the reason is, the greater the chance the gatekeeper will pass the request on word for word.

I’m selling a Statin, which is for lowering cholesterol, which is important for your heart. New research shows this class of drug can reduce heart attacks by up to 40%. So we try this “ I have a clinical paper looking at treatment which can reduce heart attacks by up to 40%, I wondered if I could catch the doctor for 5 minutes to run through it”. Firstly here, you have immediately removed the gatekeepers option to simply say, “I don’t think he would be interested”. Even “I think he’s too busy” would sound pretty poor when you’re claiming you have something which will save many more lives. So what actually happens is she picks the phone up and as she gets through, uncertain of the specific details calls over to me asking what it was again, I repeat my reason, and sure enough she repeats word for word “there’s a rep here with a clinical paper looking at reducing heart attacks by up to 40%, he wondered if you’d be interested in having a look”. How can he say no, I’m in.

There are only two key aspects to doing this well enough for dramatic impact on your sales results, being skilful at working out your buyers primary motives and constructing a reason for you call which meets these motives. Secondly, is remembering to do it!…on every call you make.

No strategy in sales jobs is 100%, of course, but this strategy, used consistently will have dramatic effects on the number of customers you are able to get in front of, and consequently will increase your sales results.

Good luck.