News: Articles of Interest

Pre-call Planning Is a Powerful Sales Tool

by Shelley Hall, Principal, Managing Director
Catalytic Management LLC
www.catalyticmanagement.com
as published in "Branch Manager's Letter" August 2007

"You win not by chance, but by preparation."
‹Roger Maris, baseball great and former single-season home-run champ (1934-1985)

"Pre-call planning is planning to succeed. It means collecting and analyzing the information necessary to develop your account entry strategy," states Shelley F. Hall, Principal, Managing Director of Catalytic Management LLC (Stow, MA). Learning about the client and their business helps you identify how you can add value to the relationship. And that dramatically improves your chances of making the sale.

Properly planning a call helps you determine exactly which questions to ask. It gives you a direction specific to each sales call. Selling is basically skilled questioning combined with a strategy that encourages the prospect to tell you exactly what, why, how, and when they will buy.

Hall has firsthand experience with the benefits of pre-call planning having spent over 25 years selling products, services and consulting. "My second job out of college was selling advertising for a radio station in Durham, North Carolina. I sold to small businesses and first had to sell the benefits of advertising and then the benefits of our radio station," she says. "I loved the selling process and thus began a career in sales. I have sold to and for small businesses and multinational corporations in a variety of industries."

Builds Trust

While pre-call planning does take time, effort and discipline, it's a smart investment. When you're prepared, you feel more confident during your sales presentation. You have a game plan or strategy for the call. The prospect will perceive you as being more informed and professional. Being prepared and knowledgeable signals clients that you are willing to invest time and energy to learn about their business and to uncover potential needs. "Effective sales professionals, especially those in banking, must establish trust with the client as quickly as possible," Hall says. "Becoming a 'trusted advisor' to the business client is vital to establishing long-term relationships."

Clients must believe that "you want to help them, that you can help them and that you will help them". Building trust in your first meeting is crucial and clearly depends upon how well you have prepared. "At the initial stage of the selling process when it's obvious that you have something to gain, a lack of preparation is a sure sign to the client that you're not going to give your best after the sale," says Hall.

Involves Two Activities

Regardless of the company's size or revenue potential for your institution, pre-call planning must take place. Does the process take a lot of time? "How long it takes you depends largely upon the resources you have available and the size and complexity of the prospective company," Hall says. "Large, complex sales will require more time but the payoff for your work will be worth it. Consider what you stand to lose if you don't plan and strategize adequately!" Pre-call planning involves two activities:

1. Gathering basic facts about the prospect's company. Facts include company size, number of employees, industry trends, competitors, key decision makers, information about their current financial institution and their key competitors.

2. Preparing your needs analysis questions. Use the basic facts you gathered in step #1 to formulate your questions. Design your initial set of analysis questions to uncover the prospect's needs and wants.

That First Call

"The goal of a first call with a prospect is to learn if they have a need you can solve. No need, no sale," says Hall. To discover real needs, always...

Successful sales professionals help prospects uncover a need they didn't even know they had just by asking the right questions and listening. "Ask questions that will reveal the prospect's needs. Doing so helps you determine the focus of your solution presentation," advises Hall.

TIP: As you begin the discovery process, ask the prospect for permission to ask questions that will help you identify their needs and determine if you have the right solutions. "If you just jump into questioning, you can make the prospect feel it's an interrogation rather than a 'sharing of needs and ideas'," Hall says. "Uncovering the prospect's needs is not a linear process. You may need to move in and out of the types of questions based on how the conversation flows." Preparing your questions in advance will ensure that despite a back-and-forth flow, you won't forget to ask the critical questions.

Needs Analysis Questions

Meeting real needs is crucial to building client loyalty. The fact is not every prospect needs every product and service you offer. There are four categories of Needs Analysis Questions and you should have several questions prepared for each category. Questions you could ask during an initial meeting with a prospect, says Hall, are:

1. Situation Questions - facts and details of the current situation.

If possible, you should know in advance: how many people they employ, their revenue, their products, and their current financial institution. If this information can't be found, asking questions to get these basic facts would be considered situation questions.

2. Problem Questions - problems, difficulties, and dissatisfactions.

3. Implication Questions - consequences or effects the problems have, determine urgency to justify action.

4. Needs / Payoff Questions - benefits your solution offers.

Catalytic Management assists banking executives in moving beyond just a service culture to a proactive sales culture that drives deposits and builds long-term financial relationships. Catalytic Management's services include consulting, training and coaching in sales effectiveness, service quality and process improvement.

back to main News page...