If you saw my LinkedIn clip from last week, you'll be familiar with the start of this call. 90% of the time, whatever the prospect tells you up front is some form of a lie. There are a number of different lies, white lies, exaggerated lies, deceptive lies or in this case they can lie by omission. They don't struggle to find good bilingual sales people, it's managed out of the US. This is what I was initially told. We outsource all of UK business development to an agency. We hire SDRs locally i.e. we would never hire a German speaking SDR in London to prospect into German speaking markets. Some journey we went on there. I know that every business has problems with hiring sales people. When they tell me it's not a problem, I don't believe them. When you're speaking with your prospects no that they are never telling you the full story. Keep asking them questions and challenge them where appropriate. You'll get the truth out eventually.

Last week I talked about ditching the pitch. Most sales trainers promote them, most sales people use them. My thoughts on them have changed, however. You can open up a conversation much quicker by leading with a question. If that's the purpose of a pitch, why not just do that? The question then becomes, what question to ask? If you're using a pitch, you can take the biggest problem you know prospects are experiencing and turn into that into a question. In my world of recruitment, I know that finding good bilingual sales talent is difficult. They're in both short supply and high demand. I also know that the best ones aren't actively looking for roles but could be open to exploring new opportunities. When businesses only rely on job ads to collect applicants, they're going to be missing out on good sales people. And good salespeople pay for themselves. Using all of this knowledge, I can create a number of questions from it but all I'm looking to do is open up a conversation. So I start with an iteration of this one... 💬 - "I speak with a lot of tech businesses, often I hear that finding good bilingual sales talent can be difficult. I assume that's not something you've experienced in your world?" I could ask... 💬 - "Do you find hiring bilingual sales talent difficult?" But it's too direct. You will want to add some context to the question to both soften it and make it more relevant to the prospect. More prospects will open up. The question is framed to get the answer no. I either hear, no it's not a problem or no it has been a problem. Conversation started.

Since I started prospecting in the world of recruitment I've ditched it. Of course, I'm talking about the 30 second pitch here. And I have to say, I prefer it. It's not the first time I have opened my calls by leading with a question. I did use it in a scenario where the product I was pitching was niche and listing off 3 problems just didn't make sense. I wanted to get straight to the point. What I didn't do back then was think about how leading with a question could be applied to a product/service that solves multiple problems. It is more challenging to navigate a call this way. More challenging but not impossible. There are also some benefits to leading with a question: 1️⃣ - Less people reject the call upfront. 2️⃣ - I get to a conversation much quicker. 3️⃣ - I can disqualify quicker. Pitches can work, of course they can. I've spent years using them but they were never perfect, nothing is. Here are three problems I've noticed: 1️⃣ - Asking for 30 seconds might not seem a big ask but in the context of an unsolicited call, it is. Prospects just want you to get to the point. Who are you and why are you calling? And this is the reason why you hear "Well what's the call about first?" You end up having to go in with a question any way. 2️⃣ - Pitches contain a lot of words. They can be hard to follow and when they don't recognise what you're talking about they will likely switch off. It's easier to craft a well thought out question than it is to craft a 30 second pitch. 3️⃣ - The purpose of a pitch is to open up a conversation and direct the conversation down the right path. Does this prospect recognise any problems that you can help fix? If you can do that be leading with a well crafted opening question, why not do that? - - - If you're not going to ask for 30 seconds, you're opener will need to change. Here are two I've been using. "I'll be upfront this is a sales call, up to you, you can hang up now or I had a few questions for you?" "I'll be upfront this is a sales call, I had a question for you, after that you can decide whether we carry on talking or not, sound fair?"