Take the three steps

 A Best Practice is defined by answering these four questions

1	How many times will you call someone over the next few weeks before you have called them enough? You have to decide how many times in a row is enough. You have lots of folks to call, so you don't want to spend too much time on any one target. Three to 5 attempts is typical, depending on where the list came from.
2	How often will you make those calls? Call every day and you are stalking. Every two weeks and targets don't remember any of your calls. For most prospectors, a call every week is a nice, professional pace.
3	If you don't reach them, do you leave a voicemail? If you have their email address, when to send an email?  After the voicemail? Leaving voicemails and sending emails is a topic of debate. Most sales trainers and consultants recommend it, since targets do call back and even a small percentage of callbacks will have dramatic impact on your performance numbers.
4	If you don't reach your target after the pre-defined number of attempts, do you put them away and start another pursuit in a few months?  If so, how long before you start that next pursuit? If your product needs a business development model, a pursuit every six months is a popular pace. If you need a 'drive by shooter' model, you would call targets once or twice and move on.

These questions design the framework of a Best Practice.  Now, we must message the Best Practice.

Each call should have the perfect voicemail and email to deliver if there is no contact with the target.  Delivering consistent messaging will improve responses and improve brand mindshare with those you don't catch during this pursuit. 
 
Voicemail and email messaging is important and not easy to build.  Done poorly, they can be damaging..  (That's one reason why we have Training Partners.) 

To determine how many targets you can pursue,

• Click here to download our calculator for determining how many targets you can call.
• Click here for the companion tutorial to guide you through the calculator logic.

 
The key variables to calculate how many targets you can pursue each year are 1) time spent on the phone, 2) quality of the list being called and 3) the Best Practice used to pursue them. The calculator will allow you to model this simple, immutable arithmetic.

The more important task is to develop a high quality list of that size. The challenge is to whittle our Marketing Territory to the smaller Prospecting Territory that we will pursue with the telephone. The Marketing Territory is every target we could pursue - the Prospecting Territory is the smaller number of targets we actually can call.

To build a quality list, define what an ideal target looks like; and then, figure out where to find targets that fit that description.

To define what your ideal target looks like -

• Look at your current customers - what are their profiles?
• Are your current customers the ideal profile? An odd question, but sometimes bit all of your current customers are desireable.  If not, what would you change to make them ideal? 
• If the ideal profile is still unclear, consider developing several profiles and making  calls into each one and compare results.  

 
Whatever you do, quickly assemble a list and get the process started.  The only thing worse than calling into a bad list is not calling at all.

Now, where to find them?

1. If you have a local territory, the best source is to Canvas. If you can only reach out to, say 800 targets a year, you can find all 800 through Canvas visits in a few weeks time.  Local territories also give you the advantage of joining local networking groups.
   
2. Past leads.  These are folks who believed they were in your profile and may still be a viable opportunity.
   
3. Don't dismiss out of hand your past customers.
   
4. Finally, there are the traditional sources where you purchase names.  You will likely buy fewer of them now that you know how many you can actually call.  But don't be surprised if you remove over half of your list the first time through.
   
   Fact: Great lists are not purchased; they are built over time.  And, the way you build a great list requires a plan to determine what to do with each target depending on how the pursiut ended. 
   
   This chart depicts a sample plan where Cold and Warm targets are pursued.  Depending on the outcome of the pursuit - No contact, Conversation Only, Appointment - the target is either 1) declared a Success, 2) ReCycled for another pursuit or 3) Removed.  There is a special Follow-up cycle for recycled targets who you spoke with.  The Best Practice for Follow-up uses voicemails and emails to reflect that you have already spoken with the target. 
   
   Click here for a white paper on this topic - List and Territory Building Approach 

Click here to take a sample Klpz Class. (Takes 8 minutes.)

The Klpz learning curve is short. For most users, the eLearning suite is all you need to become efficient; the basics are covered in easy to follow, self-directed web-based courses. For Klpz Corporate customers, there are additional options of classroom training and instructor led web classes.

Metrics to win by

Peter Drucker famously said 'What's measured, improves.'

In 'dialing for dollars' this means that if I know my 'numbers' I can play smarter and win more often. Plus, if I know, accurately, how many dials it takes to generate an appointment, it makes the task easier to do.

The core measurements of any process are efficiency and effectiveness. For the process of telephone prospecting, those are defined as follows:

• Efficiency is the ability to generate conversations with decision makers. It is measured by the ratio of conversations generated to dials made.
• Effectiveness is the ability to convert those conversations into appointments. It is measured by the ratio of appointments set to conversations generated
  
  

Dials #	Convs. #	Appts. #	Convs. to Dials	Appts. to Convs.
31	4	2	12%	50%

Both of these metrics are captured in a single, simple, credible Call Block report. Here is a snapshot from a report that displays the two ratios.

Klpz provides multipe reports to measure (and analyze) many aspects needed to continuously improve your business process. The reports are real-time and do not require any data input from the sales person.

Contact Science provides calculators (all free, plus instructions on using them) for managers to model the impact on changes they could make to the various components of their Best Practice. Klpz provides metrics to validate those calculations.

For Klpz Corporate customers there are training classes for Managers on how to manage with metrics. Managers will learn to use Klpz reports to analyze performance and determine the right 'next steps' to improve performance. These are web based and instructor led by trainers who are knowledgeable about the metrics side of telephone prospecting.  Click here to learn more about the Manager Training class.

Video email available for Klpz Corporate users

For Klpz Corporate customers, an optional video email is available. For many products, video is a great way to deliver your message. A video can create curiosity and motivate a suspect to speak with the sales person. The Klpz video email option can be part of any step in a Best Practice.

When the suspect clicks on a link in the email, a web page containing a video and a reply panel is streamed to the suspect.

To see an example of how a Klpz video email can be used to tell a story, click the thumbnail.