Make Pipeline Generation a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Generating leads and filling the pipeline is a challenge that every salesperson faces. Soon after you close all the deals that were on your forecast, there had better be some business waiting in the wings if you want to have another successful quarter. And, if there isn’t a host of revenue automatically rolling in, then you need to find a way to regenerate your pipeline, and fast.

For years, cold-calling has been the chosen prescription offered by sales trainers and managers alike. Simply pick up the phone and start ‘smiling’ and ‘dialing’ until you find someone who might be interested in your product or service. Sales is a numbers game, a cold-calling advocate would argue, saying, “If you want to increase the size of your forecast, simply make more calls.”

While I do agree that salespeople need to initiate contact with some number of potential customers in order to create activity that will ultimately fill the forecast, I disagree completely with the notion of cold-calling.

To me, cold-calling is a huge waste of time. People hate to make cold calls and they don’t want to be on the receiving end, either. There’s a reason that most sellers have elected to be on the ‘do not call’ list—it’s so they won’t be bothered at home or during dinner by cold-callers. The net result of cold-calling is that a lot of effort gets expended, and after having incurred tremendous rejection, the sales funnel is still anemic. Anyone else ever experience these feelings of hopeless futility?

This is one of the many places where Question Based Selling diverges from traditional approaches. To me, there is a big difference between having a solid pipeline and what one could instead be characterized as a pipedream.

“But Tom, how am I supposed to fill my pipeline without making cold calls?” Ahhh, grasshopper, that’s where “Turning Cold Calls into Lukewarm Calls” (Chapter 12 of my first book, “Secrets of Question Based Selling) becomes the sharpened skill of a gifted salesperson. The technique is simply to make yourself sound more purposeful, relevant, credible, and valuable. How exactly does one do that? That depends on your situation because the context from one call to the next can be very different. But, the strategy of sounding more purposeful, relevant, credible, and more valuable remains consistent.

Let me give you some examples to solidify the point. If I came to work for your company, I might try to meet with one of your top product managers. During that meeting I would ask them, “What are five or six topics you think we should be talking with customers about?” Of course, they would gladly fill my cup with talking points, which would then allow me to easily make this call.

“Hello, Mr. Prospect, my name is Tom Freese of ABC Company and I’m on the team that works with manufacturing accounts in Southern California. I had a meeting with one of our product managers last Thursday just after lunch, and he brought up a handful of issues, two of which I thought might directly impact your manufacturing platform, one of which is time sensitive.” At this point I can either ask for a call back if I’m leaving a voice-mail or ask if I caught them at a bad time of they answered the phone live.

After a relevant and purposeful conversation with that prospect, it would be easy for me to pick up the phone and call another one saying, “I just got off the phone with one of your colleagues in another account and two issues came up that raised a flag and might also impact your business as well. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

I say, if you’re calling for no reason whatsoever, then my feeling is that you shouldn’t bother calling. But if you are calling for a purposeful, relevant, credible business reason, then you might as well make it sound like that if you want to be perceived as valuable. Of course, the more conversations you have with prospective customers, the more reasons you have to follow up with their “colleagues” in other accounts. Likewise, the more internal conversations you have with key people within your own company, the more fodder you gain for initiating contact with other potential buyers.

Put it this way, I don’t network just to meet new people. The real skill in networking is leveraging your contacts in an appropriate and purposeful way, such that the next person you contact appreciates that you thought about them and are calling to help in some way. At that point, making those initial sales calls creates more opportunity, and filling the pipeline becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me say it like this. When was the last time you got “thanked” for making a prospect call?