Get Your Foot in the Door with Big Companies

Cold calls to big companies can work...if you start with the right message. Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and founder of SellingToBigCompanies.com provided valuable insights during a recent ZoomInfo webinar. Here’s a brief summary:

Pay the price of admission.

Within the first few seconds of your voice mail -- or first line of your email message -- demonstrate that you understand your prospect’s business or industry. For example: “Bob, Jill Konrath calling. I’ve researched your company and I noticed that a primary challenges for you is...” or “I see in today’s news that your company just announced...” or “We’ve been working with other manufacturing companies like yours.”

Watch your language.

Certain things go on the “must never say” list - if you don’t want prospects to hit delete. Avoid these things:

• Self-promoting puffery. When prospects hear words like “impressive,” “leading edge,” “industry leader,” etc., they know you just want to sell them something. Remove any language whose purpose is to make you look better than competitors.
• Technical tripe. Leave out words like “robust,” “state of the art,” “scalable” and “cutting edge.” Even if you have the most state of the art solution, the prospect believes that a competitor will up the ante soon. Technical information that makes your product sound better than others just doesn’t work.
• Creative crap. Eliminate words like “innovative,” “next level,” “big ideas.” They are just braggadocio that bore your prospects.
• How it works. Words like “proprietary methodology” are irrelevant and not enticing. Your prospect doesn’t care how your product does what it does. They want to know how it can help them reach their goals and eliminate their problems.

Lead them into temptation.

Here are three good ways to temp your prospects to want more from you:

• Provide a strong value proposition. What difference does your product make? Your value proposition should have movement, like “reduce cycle time” or “increase operational efficiency.” It should address a change that the prospect needs to make.
• Tell customer success stories. Tell them specific results obtained by one of your customers. Make them wonder, “Wow, how did they do that?” For example, “One of our clients just experienced a 15 percent reduction in shopping cart abandonment.” Numbers get attention. Include them whenever possible.
• Bring new ideas, insights and information. Professionals are always interested in information. Provide new ideas. Share an article. Comment on an article you saw on someone else’s site. Salespeople can be a resource, too!

Want more suggestions from Jill? View a recording of the complete webinar.