Puzzle

Company President: "My sales team (12 strong) has learned the disqualification model for selling from Jacques Werth, president of High Probability Selling, but after almost a year of telephone prospecting and working with Jacques we are still getting fewer appointments than we feel we should.

"This is especially confusing, because we hired 10 of these people after adopting HPS, and even had them take behavioral profile testing so we would find people that are suited to the disqualification model.

"We've tried several things to get over the hump, but they didn't work well and now the salespeople are frustrated with management as well as their own lack of success. In fact, we've had an unusually large turnover as a result, and that's costing us a ton."

Diagnosis

In talking with the prospect, we determined that the team truly does "get it" when it comes to HPS, and that they really didn't need any additional training or assistance with the process itself, other than some minor changes to their offerings.

However, we did determine that the salespeople were doing nothing but HPS cold-calling, and this was causing them to waste enormous amounts of time, because in the HPS model you prospect for only three to four hours per day.

So in addition to crafting some results-focused offers, we decided to focus on all other aspects of marketing and selling – such as networking, lead-sharing groups, cold-letter writing, and so forth.

We agreed that the initial engagement would include a diagnosis effort followed by a one-day, strategic-planning session with the entire group. Simply put, we would tackle whatever came up.

After interviewing the executive team members, listening to taped recordings of dialing sessions and speaking for 30 minutes to two hours with every salesperson, we verified the idea that their knowledge of the HPS system itself wasn't the problem – all of them clearly "get it."

Instead, we decided to focus on solving three primary issues, followed by some strategic planning related to non-HPS efforts.

1. At least half the prospects to whom offers are given do not understand what is being offered. They are therefore saying, "No" by default.  
2. Salespeople are not listening closely enough to prospects and are therefore not answering direct questions – they were adhering too closely to scripted responses.  
3. Management and the sales team are actually on the same page with their thinking, but both believe the other "doesn't understand us."  
4. In their non-prospecting time, all salespeople should be encouraged to try additional things.

Solution

During the one-day, strategic-planning session with management and the sales team, we tackled the following issues:

1. Get everyone on the same page, so we eliminate the tug-of-war that has developed as a result of the failed efforts, high turnover and general frustration that occurred during the past year.  
2. Encourage salespeople to add their own personalities into the disqualification process – allow them to think on their feet a bit more than they were – and evaluate them on their ability to listen more closely, not on the words they choose for their responses to questions from prospects.  
3. Conduct a session on offer creation techniques and then a brainstorm session to create some offers to use immediately – attempt to generate some quick wins that will keep the momentum going.

Results After Initial Engagement

Management and the sales team members seemed to be in closer agreement as to their goals and the methods to be used to reach those goals.

Salespeople are encouraged by the fact that management wants them to experiment with the disqualification sales process, instead of following a canned system verbatim.

Everyone is willing to try the new offers, and to work together to perfect these offers until they reach their targeted offer-to-appointment ratios.

Salespeople are encouraged to use their non-prospecting time more effectively – setting up lead-sharing groups, trying cold-letter writing processes, networking, association participation, etc.

Management has clear guidelines for making additional improvements during the coming months.

Check out the follow-up engagement with this same client.