Organization is the key to success in voice prospecting. The better organized you are, the more calls you can make. The less you have to think about your tools, the better your focus will be on making effective presentations.
I have often been asked, what is the best way to organize yourself for a voice campaign. There are many systems for doing so. This is mine.
I prefer to use an Excel spread sheet for my call tracker. It allows me a great deal of versatility and many data bases are formatted to open in an Excel work book. Excel is flexible allowing for fields to be laid out exactly in the order you want to see them.
So, what information are you going to need on a call sheet? Going from left to right, I start with the name of the company, first and last name of the contact, title, telephone number, email address, street address, city, state, zip code, website URL, industry, and comments. I hide all columns except company name, contact name, title, phone number and comments.
The reason that I do this, is because I want to have the data accessible to refer to, but I don’t want it cluttering up my call work sheet either. While on the phone, I want quick reference to who am I calling, how to reach them, and their title. Too much information, too many columns, just bogs you down, so hiding the columns is important.
Should something positive come from the call, you have immediate access to the full picture with a simple left click of the mouse. Also, should you need to access the prospect’s company web site, just click on the URL and it opens immediately. How many times has someone asked you if you know what they do there, or you have wished that you had more in depth information at your disposal?
Another reason that I enjoy Excel as a prospecting tool, is that it allows me to design the size, style and color of the font, column and row to my optimum preference. When someone refers me to another person in the organization, I can add a row right below the name of the person who provided it. All of your data is together in the same location, so there is no need to hunt for it later.
With all of these rows of information, how do you know where who you have called and what the results of the call were? Referring back to the comments section can be slow and tedious, as you may have to read several entries on various rows, to locate the data that you need.
The use of color instantly brings organization to life. Calls where I reached voice mails, I use yellow. Calls where I spoke to the contact, but the answer was no, I use green. Bad numbers/fax numbers, no longer with the company calls are light gray. When I need to call someone back, purple stands out. When I make a sale or generate a lead, red. Obviously, the ones still in white have yet to be attempted.
I can look at my sheet and easily know at a glance, who I’ve called, what the results of the call were, who I need to call back, and find detailed notes of what happened in the contact section for each. It isn’t rocket science, but it works awfully well for me.
My PC is set up to dial my out bound calls for me. I copy and paste the number into the dialer and hit enter. While the phone is ringing, I copy the next number on the Excel sheet, so that I am ready to make another call immediately, should my attempt go to voice mail, or be a wrong number.
While it is ringing, I have highlighted the Excel row for the contact I am calling. I place my cursor on the yellow color block (for voice mail), so if I reach voice mail, I can instantly click the color to record the result on the work sheet, then go to the dialer and hang up, enter the next number, and dial the next contact. In just a second or two, I am on to my next call.
Sales is a numbers game, so the more efficient that you can be, and the more dials you can attempt, the better your end results should be.