Chapter 11
Creating an Initial Benefit Statement
In the early stages of World War II, the Germans invaded Denmark and attempted to convert the Danish monarchy into a puppet government on behalf of the Third Reich. But one bold man stood in their way: the leader of Denmark, King Christian X. Although powerless to militarily defeat the German war machine, he did, nevertheless, attempt to thwart German efforts to recruit Danish men into the German army.
On the morning after German occupation, King Christian spotted a Nazi flag flying over a public building. Furious at the arrogance of the Nazis, King Christian summoned a German commander and ordered the removal of the flag. When the German commander refused, the king informed the German commander that if he did not remove the flag, he would order a Danish soldier to do so. The German commander made it clear that he would shoot any soldier who attempted to remove the flag. “I think not,” said the seventy-three year old king, “because I will be the soldier.” King Christian removed the flag.
Weeks later, the Germans ordered all Jews living in Denmark to wear a yellow armband so that they could be identified and searched by Nazi troops. The day after the order, King Christian emerged from his royal palace wearing a yellow armband. In open defiance of the Nazi order, King Christian went for his daily horseback ride wearing the yellow armband in public. Within days, the yellow armband was seen everywhere, becoming the most popular item sold in Denmark.
Tired of the king’s defiance, Hitler ordered his arrest, and King Christian was forthwith removed from the palace and imprisoned. Seeing their king imprisoned was the last straw for the Danish populace. In the dark hours of the morning following King Christian’s arrest, thousands of Danish men slipped out of their homes and cottages, made their way to the coasts of Denmark, and launched hundreds of fishing boats toward England to join the Allied forces.
The Power of Boldness
Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.
—Robert Green
King Christian’s courageous defiance of Nazi occupation is a great example of the power of boldness. King Christian did not deliver a stirring speech or print anti-Nazi flyers or pamphlets. He simply set an example by resisting the Nazis himself. He was bold, but he was gracefully bold. He chose not to be obnoxious or overbearing, just resolute and persistent in his brave but calm acts of defiance.
Obviously, being bold can be difficult, but it can also be rewarding—especially in sales. This is why one step of The Initial Benefit Statement is to make a bold value statement. The bold value statement is not an obnoxious brag statement. It is an assertive declaration of achievement, and is, I believe, the most important step in The Initial Benefit Statement.
The Power Prospecting Model
In order to fully exploit the prospecting stage of the sales cycle, it is important to use a clear and usable prospecting model. The Power Prospecting Model outlines the strategic steps of a cold call. It provides sellers with a clear methodology to make effective prospecting calls and consists of an Initial Benefit Statement, The DNA Selling Method (see chapter 14), and a commitment-based conclusion.
The Power Prospecting Model maps the cold calling process and ensures that sellers do not miss vital steps in the prospecting stage of the sales cycle. By utilizing The Power Prospecting Model, sellers enhance the quality of their cold calls and increase their call-to-close ratios.
The Power Prospecting Model
Figure 11.1
The Initial Benefit Statement
The first step of The Power Prospecting Model is the Initial Benefit Statement. The objective of the Initial Benefit Statement is to obtain the customers’ consent to advance the call to the investigation stage of the sales cycle. In fact, the objective of every step of the sales process is to advance to the next step of the sales cycle. You want buyers to agree that it’s legitimate for you to ask them questions or meet with them personally.
Since the early 1970’s, opening cold call statements have been popular in the selling industry. To varying degrees, they have been effective. Salespeople have been trained to provide Strategic Benefit Statements, Implied Benefit Statements, Opening Benefit Statements, Direct Benefit Statements, etc. These sales openers are often referenced by their acronyms SBS, IBS, OBS, and DBS. Unfortunately, some of them are just plain BS. Many opening sales statements are too long, too wordy, and too difficult to execute.
Note: Effective opening cold call statements are tactical and concise. They are strategic, intelligent statements designed to generate interest, qualify leads, and set appointments in an interesting, brief, and powerful manner.
Effective opening cold call statements imply value, an implied benefit to the buyer for staying on the phone and engaging in a sales conversation. Thus, we refer to the opening cold call statement as an Initial Benefit Statement.
Your Thirty Second Commercial
Brevity is the soul of wit.
—William Shakespeare
An Initial Benefit Statement should be thirty seconds—never longer than forty-five seconds. Anything longer makes potential buyers antsy and frustrated. Longwinded cold calls force buyers to interrupt sellers just to get a word in. We’ve all experienced long-winded sales calls in which you literally wait for the seller to take a breath and then jump in and say, “Sorry, I’m not interested.” We cut cold callers off because they talk too much and take too much time to get to the point.
I received a cold call from a real estate agent whose brevity was brilliant. He called and said,
“Hi Mr. Hansen, I’m John with ABC real estate. I sold your neighbor’s home at 888 Willow Street. Are you or anyone you know looking to sell a home?”
Granted, some cold calls are impossible to make this brief, especially business-to-business cold calls, but the point is to keep cold calls as concise as possible without compromising critical information.
Elongated, wordy messages are boring and ineffective. Make sure you can get through the opening statement at a reasonable pace in approximately thirty seconds. With a concise, power opening statement, you pique the interest of buyers without boring them.
Creating an Initial Benefit Statement
There are five steps to the Initial Benefit Statement:
1.Introduce yourself, your company, and (optional) your location
2.State a common reference
3.Make a bold value statement
4.State the purpose of your call
5.[Walk Away Statement]
Many training participants have asked, “Do I really need all this to make a good cold call?” My answer is always a firm “Yes” because if you leave out or try to defer any of the recommended steps, you will not be as successful. It’s really that simple. People want to know to whom they are talking, what the purpose of the call is, and why they should listen.
It is not a coincidence that the benefit statement parallels the questions receptionists and secretaries ask when they receive unsolicited calls. “May I have your name please?” “Who are you with?” “What is this in reference to?”
Note: Steps two, three, and four and five of the Initial Benefit Statement can be reversed, combined, or remain in that order. The primary concern is not that you use them in precise order but that you use them.
Step 1: Introduce Yourself, Your Company, and (optional) Your Location
The purpose of the first step of the cold call is to gain the buyer’s attention and to preemptively answer questions about who you are, who you represent, and from where you are calling. You don’t want these questions to linger in the back of the buyer’s mind while engaged in conversation. Even though this sounds fundamental, I mention it for one reason—most cold callers do a poor job of early identification.
How many times have you had to ask a first time caller, “What is you
r name?” “Who are you with?” “Where are you calling from?” These are questions buyers should not have to ask after the first sentence of the opening statement.
Using the buyer’s name to open the call is the most important, surest, and easiest way to gain the attention of a buyer. Names have power.
I learned the power of using a person’s name in high school. My junior year I had a history teacher who perturbed me immensely (probably not nearly as much as I perturbed him). I did anything and everything I could to torment him. For instance, in the middle of his lectures I would raise my hand and ask him if he knew what Mr. Rogers’ opinion was on the matter, or I would rearrange all of the desks before class (all facing the opposite direction of the chalk board of course). Placing his chair directly against his desk and gluing it to the floor didn’t turn out to be a big plus for my GPA. You get the idea.
This particular history teacher was once walking down a very crowded hall in which students were everywhere scrambling to get to class. When this teacher approached, I stood up on my heels and yelled at the top of my lungs “Mr. SMITH!” He turned his head in both directions, wondering who on Earth was calling his name. As soon as he would put his head down and start walking again, I would yell, “Mr. SMIIIITH!” He would stop and frantically, nervously look around. I repeated this process at least four or five times, and was amazed that he kept falling for it over and over. At the time, I surmised that his name was a magnet too powerful to ignore, even after he realized it was being called out for no purpose. Each time, it got his attention even when he realized it shouldn’t have. My point is that using a person’s name has a way of gaining a person’s attention. As legendary author Dale Carnegie stated, “A man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
If you are calling from an information list that does not list the first or last name of the contact person, you have three options:
1. Say, “Hi this is (your name)” and skip mentioning his or her name.
2. Say, “Hi this is (your name), with whom am I speaking?”
3. Call ahead of time and ask for the name of the person with the title to whom you wish to speak.
A frequently asked question by training participants is, “Should I use a prospect’s first or last name when I cold call?” “Should I say, ‘Hi Bob’ or ‘Hi Mr. Jones?’” I typically respond to this question with a question. “Does it really make that much of a difference?” “Is a prospect not going to buy because someone called him Bob instead of Mr. Jones?” Our research indicates it’s a moot issue; however, when in doubt, use Mr. or Ms.
After stating the contact’s name, state your name and tell him or her who you are. If you don’t feel comfortable giving your last name, then don’t, but make sure you give them some point of reference and identification.
After stating your name, identify the name of your company and tell them who you represent. When sellers don’t identify who they represent, suspicions are sometimes unnecessarily aroused, and prospects wonder why the caller doesn’t just come out and state who they represent.
Just prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I received a cold call from the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce asking me if I wanted to place an ad in their Olympic directory. The caller had a fairly decent opening statement. He stated, “Hi Mr. Hansen. This is Scott from The Salt Lake Area Chamber of Commerce.” It was nice and clean, and I knew exactly to whom I was speaking and what organization he represented.
Mentioning Location
Identifying your location should be a calculated decision. Some sellers swear by it, others swear against it. If used mindlessly, or just out of habit, mentioning your location may actually hurt your sales call. Some sellers swear by it, but other sellers swear against it. I recommend the following rule when mentioning locations: Only mention your location if it will pique the interest of the buyer and build credibility. For example, mentioning that you are calling from Billings, Montana, probably isn’t going to impress an executive in New York City. However, if you are selling western antiques to country stores, mentioning you are from Billings, Montana, might spark an interesting conversation.
I consulted with a software company that sells technical solutions to manufacturing facilities primarily in large, industrial cities. The location of the software company was nowhere near a major industrial city. When we started the cold calling process, we initially included the corporate location in the script. It was not a wise choice because many of the buyers would say things that insinuated that we couldn’t possibly know what they needed if we weren’t local or from a similar industrial city or state. Although the insinuations were false, it was like fighting the tide, so we took the location reference out of the script.
Caution! If used mindlessly or just out of habit, mentioning your location may actually hurt your sales call.
Pleasantries
There is enormous debate over whether or not to inject pleasantries into the initial introduction. Some sales people find it comfortable and conversational to inject statements such as:
• How are you today?
• How are you doing?
• How’s it going?
Pleasantries can provide a natural pause, communicate courtesy, and provide subtle permission to continue when answered positively. However, pleasantries can also come across as “salesy,” phony, and insincere. Used disingenuously, they can also diminish power, tonality, and authority. PHI’s advice is to use pleasantries if they add comfort, cadence, or confidence to your introduction.
Courtesies
Similar to pleasantries, injecting courtesies into the introduction is not without controversy. Many sellers feel comfortable releasing tension early in the sales call by offering prospects an “out.” The rationale behind courtesies is simple; by extending prospects the courtesy of picking the best time to speak, they will be more open and receptive to your call. Some experts teach that by offering prospects the ability to pick a better time to talk, sellers disarm the instinctive propensity to end unsolicited sales calls. Courtesies include:
• Is this a good time to talk?
• Is this a bad time to talk?
• Can you talk?
• Do you have a few minutes?
• Did I catch you at a bad time?
The danger of injecting courtesies is their propensity to solicit an immediate “no” instead of a “yes.” Additionally, courtesies can inadvertently put sellers on the defense. For example, by asking a buyer, “Do you have a few minutes?” buyers often respond by saying, “No, I’m busy right now. What do you have?” This response can put sellers into “data dump” mode.
Communicating Power and Authority
Three important traits of highly successful sales people are confidence, power, and authority. The most impactful attribute you can communicate is confidence. When cold calling, sound authoritative and unapologetic. Your voice and attitude communicates your confidence, power, and authority. A powerful tonality grabs attention and conveys command. Be authoritative. Speak with confidence and know that your tone of voice can impact a prospect’s perception more than the actual words you use.
Projecting power and sounding authoritative is especially important in the first 30 seconds of your introduction.
Sample Introductions
• Hi Mr. Prospect, this is Ayn Rand with ABC Corporation.
• Hi Ms. Jones, my name is John Galt. I’m a consultant with XYZ Company.
• Good morning, this is Dagny Taggart with American Widgets.
Step 2: State a Common Reference
Stating a common reference piques the interest of buyers. We are all interested in things, people, and organizations with whom we are familiar. For example, if you are the president of a bank and I mention the names of other banks I’m working with, you will more than
likely be interested in what I have to say. If I am a life insurance agent and mention your neighbor across the street or a person you go to church with, you will more than likely perk up and listen. If you are a software distributor and I drop the names of major software companies I’m working with, you will take notice.
Stating a common reference also establishes credibility early in the sales call. In every major industry, city, and market there are individuals and organizations that are recognized as industry or market leaders. If you work with recognized individuals or businesses, use them as common references.
Note: As mentioned in Chapter Seven, conducting pre-call, online research equips sales people with insight and information that can be used to develop an effective common reference.
Years ago, I consulted with a company working on a major sale. In fact, it was by far the largest sale they had ever tackled. We hammered on this sale every day for months using late night telephone strategy sessions, unexpected last minute flights, product adjustments, last minute RFP (request for proposal) changes, etc. We won the sale.
The organization that purchased the product was an industry-known name from a major city, so I advised the company with whom I was consulting to immediately insert the “win” into their prospecting scripts. We trained a team of full time cold callers to use the name of this particular buyer with every cold call. In other words, we injected a common reference.
Every person we contacted heard about this sale—every voice mail, every message. The cold callers would state that “ABC Corporation” recently purchased “X product.” By using the name of this purchaser, we established instant credibility in the minds of buyers, and within six months, news of this particular sale swept the entire industry. We went a step further and announced the sale on the website, in magazine advertisements and literature, posting product testimonials and favorable quotes from the sale on industry “listservs.” We made certain this sale was mentioned in every sales presentation by creating a PowerPoint presentation with quotes, testimonials, decision criteria, and competitive comparisons.
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