NOT getting the meeting

This post is dedicated to any entrepreneur, salesperson, business development, or account executive that's first goal is to get a meeting with their prospect.

Getting a meeting with a prospect always puts you in the right mood.  Sometimes you need that one person to believe in talking to you to reinforce what you're doing is great.  Anyone that regularly tries to bring new meetings to their business understand the many facets of getting a meeting.  What happens when you don't get the meeting?

It's frustrating.  You might have a quota but your pride may affect you more.  People saying no is never the problem.  The issue has always been people that will talk to you for a duration of a an initial phone conversation yet refuse to officially "commit" to a meeting on the calendar.

I've had quite a few prospects I've had great conversations pertaining to their business.  They acknowledge there is a challenge there and they don't know how to solve it.  They speak candidly on their business challenges and it feels like I'm being positioned to save the day!

Sadly, no.

They have a challenge but they aren't really thinking about it.  They don't want to take an "official" meeting because they know they won't/can't buy what I provide.  It took me a long time to realize this and it makes a lot of sense.

A previous post of mine mentioned how people hate to give a clear yes or no answer.  Humans love to be appreciated-especially sales professionals.

Stroke their ego, and challenge them a little bit and you get better conversations which eventually lead to "official" meetings.

Why re-purpose crap?!

I was on my Facebook timeline looking at obnoxious web humor. (It's like junk food-Not good for you but tasty in spots)  I'm friends with a few people that work in digital marketing that posts articles daily.  I saw an article that immediately captured my attention-in the wrong way.

How to create marketing content when feeling lazy?

There are quite a few things wrong with this title.  Grammatically, it abuses preposition rules(Grammar nerds consider this a big topic).  It also breeds a sense that creating content is so easy that you can recycle it.  There's some truth to this but you have to be truthful to yourself.

When creating content, is your content so memorable that you can re-purpose it?  I'm willing to bet only a small fraction of your content can be re-purposed.  This is not a list post on why you should re-purpose.  It's really not that hard.  There's nothing wrong with re-purposing content toward various marketing platform channels(twitter says, hello).  The main issue I have is people reusing content that is questionably weaker just to meet a "quota."

I love great content and I dislike when I see people looking for shortcuts to build relationships with customers.  Building a brand takes time and a lot of work.  Great content is facing noise, and a "me me!" attitude.

Create quality.  I'll take 3 very good content pieces over 12 average pieces.  If I can take those 3 pieces and promote, I can get by farther than flooding timelines with average content.

Practice what you preach VP's

Story+Rant= This..

I've not yet experienced the responsibility of being a senior leadership member.

I'm probably about 5-10 years away from that even being in the equation-Unless my entrepreneurial skills transcend to that status.  There's been hundreds of articles on the art of cold calling and every sales leadership executive still believes in its benefits.  These VP's of sales and marketing tell their managers how many more dials are needed and why it's important to cold call.

"The more touches you make, the more sales we get Fred!"

Quite a few of you sales VP's have said this multiple times in your life.  You empower your sales teams to hit the phones with reckless abandon and not take no for an answer.  If you are annoying your prospect, it's the last thing you're thinking about.  The word "touches" repeatedly comes up so much it sounds like a HR could be knocking on the door.  You constantly look at metrics.  When you have a bad quarter, you REALLY start looking at the metrics.  You're stressed because you have to report a President and he/she has to report to a board on why things aren't going well.  Never mind the fact that you are in a mature market, you still go to your managers saying..

"Pound the phones harder.  We need more activity." 

Your phone rings constantly everyday.  Over half of them are cold calls from sales executives that want to help your problem.  You have team meetings upon team meetings trying to figure out what everyone in the room knows is the problem. You get out of that meeting and walk to back to your office.  Someone's calling your phone...

"Hi ___, My name is Gavin from solutions services. I wanted to_X

You immediately shut down.  If you haven't already hung up the phone, your guard is up and you just don't want to hear it.  Despite the fact that you tell your team to listen, show empathy, and be professional, none of this applies to you.  You hate sales calls  and the older you get the more you hate them.

What happen to you?  What triggered you to be so cold to cold calling.  You tell your teams that's the only way the business will succeed yet you refuse to practice what you preach toward others.  There are some bad sales people out there and I can agree it will frustrate you.  Instead of shutting down, why don't you try to disqualify yourself from salespersons list.  They are just going to do what you've been teaching your team.

Call and call until they break your will and you take the meeting.

Everyone's a critic

Disclaimer: This is a rant.  There is no perceived educational value to this rant.  It's just my opinion and does not reflect the opinions of others.

Nowadays with social media really contributing to narcissistic views, more than ever there are more critics.  There are couch coaches, as well as actual consultative coaches.  Everyone is saying the same damn message and just re-purposing it for their benefit-not yours.  I wonder if there's a study about lack of productivity due to reading a million articles telling why you should work harder.

How many people are actually reading these memes and posts only to get sidetracked and read 5-6 more posts that detail the same message.  one hour later, you still haven't accomplished much.  It's like reading instructions on how to build an IKEA table for hours only to not have done one thing to put it together.

Everyone having an opinion is not a bad thing-but it's not great.  For every great idea, there is always a skeptic that believes they spot a problem or constraint.  Part of validating your ideas involves your ability to "fight" through the criticism and not take things personal. Ultimately, we as marketers need to know when to listen and when to ignore the noise.

Abusing adverbs is a no no

I seriously started seeing my writing was clearly not being effective.  I would send emails and eventually, if I was lucky, I got a response and it was not always what I wanted.  I definitely needed to improve my writing because it was clearly holding me back. -Gabe

You see what I did there?

Adverbs wreak of nervousness in your writing.  There's a lack of confidence when a writer abuses adverbs.  I look at sales emails all day and I count the number of unnecessary adverbs in paragraphs.  You'd be surprised how powerful your writing can be without beating around the bush.

You see that's a negative with adverbs-they let you beat around the bush and prevent you from asking for what you want.  Mark Twain has a quote that sums up the abuse of adverbs.

"I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. ... There are subtleties which I cannot master at all,--the confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me,--and this adverb plague is one of them. ... Yes, there are things which we cannot learn, and there is no use in fretting about it. I cannot learn adverbs; and what is more I won't."- "Reply to a Boston Girl," Atlantic Monthly, June 1880

 I agree with Mark.  Adverbs do not excite me either.  They take away the power a sentence can give for call to action.   Let's be honest, prospects know you want something from them.  We don't just call(most of the time) asking how they are.  They know this.  We need to stop insulting the intelligence our prospects have.  It's a challenge, but by removing unnecessary adverbs, you can help your writing stand out from the rest.

For information on the various types of adverbs, I love Grammar Girl.