Every Action Needs an Objective: Calls

Don’t confuse rep (or your) activity with results. Unfortunately, people get into routines and stop thinking before doing. In sales, everyone especially needs to make it a habit to define the desired outcome of sending an email, making a call or joining a meeting.

Example: calls
Do your reps know beforehand what outcomes they want from each call they make? A plain cold call can have a variety of different objectives, such as (in order of value):
“Set up a future phone call to learn about their current situation”
“Learn about their business to determine if an appointment is worthwhile (or not)”
“Get an appointment to meet in person”

And that’s just cold calls.

No-nonsense call planning tool: “AAA”
Forget those complicated call planners that are so complex they become worthless. This can be simple stuff. Take 5 minutes to consider:
* What anwers do I want from this call?
* What attitudes do I want the other party to have about myself and my company/product?
* What actions should we have after the call to move the ball forward?

This is a quick and easy way to take a little time to shape your desired outcomes before jumping on the phone.