BRX Pro Tip: Booking Sales Discovery Calls
Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, when it comes to establishing a consistent, productive professional services practice, I’m operating under the impression that it’s really important that you have this consistent flow of qualified sales discovery calls. And I think a lot of folks don’t have enough.
Lee Kantor: Yeah, 100%. This is one of the biggest mistakes I think entrepreneurs and we deal with a lot of business coaches. This is a mistake business coaches make all the time.
Lee Kantor: What happens is they need clients. So then they start doing what they got to do to get these discovery calls. And then all of a sudden, they got a couple of clients, and then they stopped doing discovery calls because they’re serving the clients. But you have to have a machine that you’re working. I don’t care how busy you are. You might be able to throttle this machine back and slow it down a little, but you cannot turn it off. There is no reason ever, ever to turn off your sales discovery call machine. You cannot have a time when no discovery calls are happening. If a week is going by and you’re not having a discovery call, your machine is not working. I don’t care how many clients you have. Then make a waiting list. There’s no reason to turn off your sales discovery call machine.
Lee Kantor: If you’re not getting some sales discovery calls every week, you’re doing – something’s wrong. And here are some of the things you’re probably doing wrong. That means your outreach isn’t being targeted. You’ve got something going on where you’re just throwing it out there and hoping that it’s going to work, this pray and pray kind of thing, where I’m going to just blast a bunch of people and then, you know, people trickle into my circle.
Lee Kantor: If you’re not getting the calls, that means that’s not working. You’ve got to be able to align your messaging to your ideal clients’ pain points in the industries that they’re in and do something that is creating some compelling reason to contact you. You’ve got to personalize it enough to spark curiosity and convey some relevance. And this kind of broad mass things just don’t get that job done.
Lee Kantor: And then you’re probably not following up enough. Your machine has to be able to kind of be touching people time and time again, because most people aren’t ready to buy whatever it is you’re selling today. That’s just a fact. The odds of you stumbling upon somebody who today is the day they want to buy whatever you’re selling is a lottery ticket. That is just not how sales work. You have to be there, top of mind, at that moment they need whatever it is you’re selling. And in order to be there, top of mind, at that moment, you have to follow up. There has to be some messaging that’s getting into them to remind them that, hey, this person can solve that problem, I should contact them.
Lee Kantor: So, most sales are going to happen after multiple touches. It’s when the client’s ready to do business with you, not when you’re ready to do business with a client. So, if you’re going to give up after one or two messages, you’re going to miss out on leads down the road. So, you’ve got to have a machine that is following up relentlessly in order to be top of mind at that moment they need you.
Lee Kantor: So, if you fix these couple of areas, you’ll see that you’re going to be making more discovery calls. Your calendar is going to fill up more predictably because ultimately, consistency is what wins in sales. You know, being there all the time, being ubiquitous all the time, is what is going to help you in sales because your business ebbs and flows.
Lee Kantor: You know, when you have clients today, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have them tomorrow. So, you always have to kind of keep, you know, people in the loop. These discovery calls have to happen every week. And that’s what’s going to guarantee your success in the long run.
