That’s how The Crow Road by Iain Banks opens. The narrator has returned home for a funeral; Chapter One begins in the chapel of a crematorium in Scotland.
Although this is from a novel and not a commercial, it’s a great example of an opening line that compels the reader — or listener, or viewer — to stick around to hear what you’ve got to say.
In a print ad, it’s the headline. In a radio or television commercial, it’s the first sentence of your ad. Copywriting guru Dan O’Day calls it the “commercial for the commercial.”
If your opening line is good enough, the viewer or listener will stay put to hear the rest of your sales message.
The opening line has to grab the your target’s attention, and give them a reason to continue to pay attention. You either need to surprise them, intrigue them, or offer them, up front, a significant benefit.
If all you’ve got to say is “Family owned and operated since 1991,” they’ll change the station.
Photo by SeanPavonePhoto
That’s Copywriting Lesson #1 of The Crow Road. The first line was so good that I absolutely had to keep reading until I found out exactly how Grandma blew up. It took 22 pages to get to the detonation.
I was hoping for an epic blast, but the actual grandmother-explosion turned out to be a minor pop.
Before I got to Page 50, I put the book down. I never opened it again.
This brings us to Copywriting Lesson #2: Your opening line is a promise, and you’d better deliver on it.
As you read this article, somebody is watching television somewhere in the United States. The show they’re watching has just gone into a commercial break. In the next five seconds, they will decide to either
1. Pay attention to the first ad,
or
2. Tune the whole thing out and update their Facebook status.
If it’s your commercial they’re watching… how strong is your opening line?
[reminder]What’s the best opening line you’ve ever seen or heard?[/reminder]
There’s one sales approach more effective than a phone call.
Photo by Viacheslav Iakobchuk
Not long ago I told the story of my attempts to book a hotel room near the airport in Lexington, Kentucky. You can read the full tale here, and you should.
The sales lesson of the story was that a phone call is often much more effective than an online effort when you want to get a target’s attention and compel action.
After I put up the post, I heard from fellow road warrior and consultant Don Davis of Gabriel Media. Don is Senior Market Manager at Gabriel and a subscriber to this blog.
He pointed out that when a phone call fails, there’s an even more effective option:
Many years ago I was stuck in a small airport in Alexandria, LA after delays then cancellation of a flight. This was before being able to book a room via internet.
I made some calls to the few local hotels and was told they were full. I decided I might have a better shot if I stood in front of them asking for a room.
I took a taxi to the biggest hotel and went in and told them of my plight and asked if they had anything available. Somehow they found me a room even though they were “full” when I called.
In each case, there’s a trade-off: efficiency for effectiveness.
It’s faster and easier to look up hotel vacancies online than it is to call each hotel on the phone. But my phone call got results when online attempts failed.
It’s faster and easier to make phone calls than it is to take a taxi to one hotel. Don Davis found that an in-person attempt got him the room.
When you consider your prospecting options, you’ve got the same choices: the efficiency of a social media post versus the enhanced effectiveness of a series of phone calls.
And when the phone and keyboard aren’t getting it done, remember this:
There’s nothing more effective in getting a target’s attention than a human body on the other side of the desk.
Mostly on the phone, but he’s not against other methods. The key, he says, is to interrupt:
If you want sustained success in your sales career, if you want to maximize your income, then you’ve got to interrupt prospects. You’ll have to pick up the phone, walk in the door, send an email or text message, or ping a prospect on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook and interrupt someone who is not expecting you to contact them (i.e., you don’t have an appointment or they are not waiting for you to call or write) and with whom you are not currently engaged in a sales discussion.
Interrupting works. Here is a true story to illustrate:
How Phil Found a Hotel Room
A Sales Prospecting Parable
Last week I finished off a successful revenue initiative with a TV station in Kentucky. On Saturday, I attempted to fly home to Portland, Oregon from Lexington.
Bad weather stymied my first attempt. As I sat at the gate, my plane’s departure time went from 1:25 to 2:00 to 3:30 to 6:00 to…cancelled.
There were no more planes out of Lexington that day. United Airlines put me on a flight leaving the next afternoon. I was going to need a hotel room for the night.
I set my iPad on a vacant gate counter and began to search online. No dice. Every hotel website within range of Blue Grass Airport was completely full.
The Hampton Inn was sold out.
Courtyard by Marriott and Residence Inn had no rooms available.
Comfort Suites…America’s Best Value Inn…Holiday Inn Express…no vacancy.
It was time to stop looking at websites and start interrupting real human beings.
I pulled out my phone and began to call the same hotels whose websites had turned me down. Each time a front desk clerk answered, I got to the point quickly.
“Hi, this is Phil Bernstein. My flight’s been cancelled and I’m stuck at the airport. Is there any chance you could get me into a room for the night?”
The first three people I talked to were sympathetic, but it was simple math — every room they had was taken.
I hit paydirt on the fourth call. The clerk at Fairfield Inn & Suites said, “Hang on — we may have something.” I heard him tapping on his keys, and then he said four of the sweetest words on the planet:
“Got a credit card?”
Twenty minutes later I was in my room.
Jeb Blount sums up resistance to cold calling this way:
For thousands of salespeople, picking up the phone and calling a prospect is the most stressful part of their life. Many of these reluctant salespeople stare at the phone, secretly hoping that it will disappear. They procrastinate, get ducks in a row, and work to ensure that everything is perfect before they dial. Any excuse—and I mean any excuse—to do something else takes priority.
They work over their leaders, too. Whining that no one answers the phone anymore. Arguing that it is a waste of time. Complaining that people don’t like to be contacted by phone.
The complainers have a point: some people don’t like to be contacted by phone. If you call, they might send you to voice mail. Or hang up on you. Or curse you out.
Heck, not long ago I interrupted a car dealer. He cursed me out and hung up on me.
It’s the sort of thing that makes those hotel websites very attractive. They just sit there just waiting for someone like you to fill in the dates and hit “Submit.” No interrupting, no awkward conversation, no cursing. Just a few taps on the keys.
But on a recent Saturday evening, none of those websites had any opportunities. To get what I wanted I had to step out of my comfort zone.
How do you motivate yourself to make sales calls when you just don’t feel like getting on the phone?
Photo by Sevendeman
When someone signs up for my mailing list, I send them an email asking what they’re struggling with. These two responses echo many:
From a radio AE in the Midwest:
Call reluctance. Not because I lack the tools (I read your emails to improve my skills and learn, learn, learn!) but because it’s one of the least favorite things to do.
An East Coast Director of Sales had this to say:
My sales team struggles with call reluctance. It’s an every day battle.
They’re not alone. We all have days when we know it’s time to make new business calls, but we just…don’t…want…to. So the delay tactics start:
We check our email.
We reorganize our desk.
We go through our paperwork to make sure everything’s been filled out and turned in.
We go online to do some “research.”
We post something on social media.
We check our email again.
It’s not hard to kill an hour or two this way. We feel busy. We’ve accomplished nothing.
The problem hasn’t gone away. We still need that new business.
How do top salespeople beat call reluctance?
Some of the most useful advice I’ve seen on the subject comes from a blog post by Rory Vaden, author of Procrastinate on Purpose.
Vaden recommends starting each day armed with a list of people to call on.
…before you stop working on any given day make sure to choose the first person you will call on the next day. Going door-to-door 80 hours a week for five summers I always had significantly fewer butterflies on days where I knew exactly what my first house would be.”
Sometimes we don’t want to to contact complete strangers. On other occasions the problem is someone we know but can’t bring ourselves to call.
The late radio sales trainer and consultant Jim Taszarek used to call these “Chicken Accounts.”
Taz published a great newsletter called Quota Busters. The newsletter’s gone, but some of his wisdom is still available in his book The Best of Quota Busters:
We don’t like to talk about them, but we’ve all got them. They are the accounts that we’re just afraid to call on – for any one of one million reasons.
It’s a normal sales phenomenon called “Call Reluctance”. Everybody’s got it to some extent. We say that the accounts are “too big,”, they are “newspaper only,” they “said no” repeatedly, or we’re just afraid of them. What to do? Sit on them? No way. Try this – it’s easy and you’ll love the results:
Confront them by writing them down. Write ’em down – make a list of our Chicken Accounts in one column, then look at them (Sales Managers, if you ask your staff to do this exercise make sure you emphasize that the list is for the AE’s personal use only. The list will be shared with no one. Not turned into management. No role-playing, no open review of the accounts. That will have the opposite effect of what were looking for. Got it?)
In the 2nd column, write a comment next to each account, answering the big question, like, what’s the barrier? Why are we reluctant to call on them? What’s the big reason we hesitate when we think about calling on them?
In the 3rd column, write a dollar amount of what they be worth to us if we could pop a hefty little schedule out of them.
Then call on one of them a day or a week. And not a halfhearted call either, go for it – the real thing. But just one a week. Or one a day. Depends on you. Then what happens? You’ll connect with one of them. It’ll turn out that there’s a person who listens to you and they’re interested. And they’re not such jerks after all. It turns out we can cut those suckers down to size – if we do them one at a time. And, this is important – remember to reward yourself.
…They’re bigger in our head than they are in reality. Your Chicken List will disappear. Congratulations.
During my radio sales days, I tackled call reluctance by establishing a ritual.
My goal was to start the process with a list of 10-20 people to call. I’d set a cup of coffee on the left side of my desk, the list in the center, and the phone on the right. I’d pick up the receiver and recite the following incantation:
“Time to make the donuts.”
The line came from an old commercial (direct link here):
In my mind, “making the donuts” meant getting down to business; once I said those words I had to make my first call. I can’t tell you why it worked for me, but it worked.
The real secret to beating call reluctance is this: once you make that first call, it’s a whole lot easier to make the second, and the third, and the fourth. You’ve just got to make the first one.
If you can get yourself to start making the donuts, you’ll be on the road to making some dough.
[reminder]How do you get past call reluctance?[/reminder]
You’ve heard sales coaches like me preach the value of effective listening. You’ve heard the same thing from your managers. You’ve read it in books.
So how good are you? And how do you measure it?
Here’s a simple, low-cost way to make sure you’re listening rather than pitching during an initial sales call. All you need is a pen, a pad of paper, and the ability to be honest with yourself.
In the podcast, Green discusses the value of taking notes in a meeting. In addition to using his notes to remember important points of the conversation, he also uses them to track his listening effectiveness:
One of the things I want to remember is how many questions I ask versus how many statements I make. I just keep a little tally on my notepad. When I ask a question, I give myself a little tick. When I make a statement, I give myself a little tick. It’s a good meeting for me if I ask twice as many questions as statements I make. If you start tracking your question to statement ratio, you will become a better listener.”
Before your next sales call, add “question/statement ratio” to your notepad, and keep close track. Over time, if you’re paying attention, questions will rise and statements will drop.
As the number and quality of questions increases, so will your income.
