Ditch the Decision Maker?

“I’m having a hard time getting decision makers to agree to a (phone) meeting. A colleague recommended that I start contacting “influencers” instead of “decision makers”. The theory would be that the influencers would become strong proponents and would push internally for our solution. Is this a wise strategy?”

My biggest concern is the “why“. As in “why aren’t the decision-makers wanting to meet with you?”.

It’s either you are contacting the wrong type of prospects or it’s your sales approach.

Either way, focusing on non-decision makers most likely won’t help you close more sales.

So let’s try and pinpoint why the decision-makers won’t meet with you.

1) What’s your “objective” for the call?

If it’s to “set a meeting” and that is what you are focused on, you will get resistance. Put yourself in their shoes… would you agree to meet with someone that you don’t know and that just called you out of the blue? Before picking up the phone, you need to know your strategy. And that strategy should be to get them to WANT to meet with you, rather than try and get the meeting. There’s a difference.

2) Your intro: Are you doing a mini sales pitch after you say “hello, my name is…”?

If so, that’s part of the problem right there. Your intro’s job is to pique interest and get you to the next step (qualifying phase) of the sales cycle. Doing a “data-dump” won’t help you achieve that.

3) Do you know the first three questions you are going to ask your prospect once you’ve passed the opener?

Knowing which sales questions to ask, and more importantly, WHY you are asking them is vital to your success. Those questions are your lifeline to executing your game plan. If you don’t know what questions you should be asking and why, isn’t it time to fix that?

There is nothing wrong IMHO with contacting an influencer to get the party started.

But if you do it for the wrong reasons, you will end up with the same results you are getting now.