New clients often come to us insisting that the only person they want to pitch to is the President or CEO. Everything else is “a waste of time” because the President signs off.
We don’t buy in to this. We subscribe to the belief that no conversation is ever a waste of time, and a successful pitch will always get you one step closer to the sale.
Cold calling is really a numbers game. Out of 100 dials, you may speak to ten people, and one decision maker. How can you use the other nine conversations to win more business?
I can’t think of even one position title that doesn’t benefit when a company makes the move to a managed services contract.
Through the course of the next eight weeks, I’m going to review how and why you should pitch different points of entry in your sales process. I’ll explain why we try that door, and what might be behind it.
I will share suggestions based on what we have learned from the over half a million managed services cold calls that our team made this year into all kinds of companies, all sizes of companies and all geographic markets.
The roles I’ve selected for this series are the following:
1. Pitching the Receptionist
2. Pitching the Office Manager
3. Pitching the Controller
4. Pitching HR
5. Pitching Sales
6. Pitching Marketing
7. Pitching the IT Department
8. Pitching the President/CEO
I am going to focus primarily on two sizes of companies – the 10-20 user company and the 20-50 user company. After that, I will outline some differences between the two, and provide suggestions on the best ways to approach both.
I hope you’ll follow along, and if you have any questions or comments, you’re welcome to email or tweet me. If you want a more in-depth overview, I’m happy to provide one, just send me a note or call. We’ll talk.
Look for posts every Monday, starting August 18th.
As always, thanks for reading and Happy Selling!