I recently facilitated a small business mastermind group where the topic turned to prospecting but with a slight twist.

Someone turned the conversation around from us contacting others to when we are the recipient of the call.

Most of us agreed that the average call we receive are not only poorly planned, it also became blatantly obvious (early in the call) that the sales rep didn’t do their homework.

Many of the business owners expressed sentiments that included . . .

“I’m insulted that someone would call a decision maker without knowing the basics of what I do etc”

“It’s a waste of my time to have to bring someone up to speed on things that a 5 minute trip to Google could have provided”

“If you can’t take the time to do your homework on me, why should I take time to talk with you?”

I could go on and on but I think you have the basic gist.

Failing to Pre Call plan typically comes down to a few things

1) Laziness because it’s just easier to pick up the phone and call more people. The sad thing is that this works to a certain degree but less calls that are more targeted will work better.

2) “Smiling and Dialing” is safer than admitting to yourself that you don’t have a clue on how to properly do your homework.

3) The testosterone in your sales department makes it difficult. I blame your sales manager for this one. Perhaps he or she is breaking your balls about making a kazillion dials or you’re a slacker if you don’t have the phone glued to your ear 24/7. In some cases, it’s your co workers pulling some kind of grade school peer pressure BS but once again, I blame your sales manager for tolerating it.

Having said that, I do want to acknowledge a serious challenge we all face.

On one hand, if we don’t take the time to research we miss out on the opportunity for a more valuable call.

On the other hand, if we go too deep into all this “preparation” stuff, we become more of a professional researcher and it can easily become a “call avoidance activity” to safely keep us from the horrors of rejection and so on.

That’s where I think a compromise might be in order . . .

I would save the timely research stuff for the biggest and best companies you’re trying to work with.

For everyone else . . .

How about setting the timer on your smart phone for up to 5 minutes while you do some preliminary research?

If you can do it in less time, great!

If you stumble on some amazing discovery, spend more time.

You can also tackle the research in pieces.

Perhaps for today’s call you could run to Google, their website and your contact’s LinkedIn profile.

Next time you could research additional things and just keep repeating that process each time.

And God forbid we do some of the more extensive research before or after “game time” each day. Again, you could set a timer so it doesn’t completely cut into family time or any efforts for you to have a life.

Have you ever seen this happen?

You’re talking with someone and you can’t remember an actor/actress who was in some movie, or maybe you can’t remember the band that played that kick ass song you can’t stop humming.

You pull out that handy dandy smart phone and you Google that bad boy.

Why wouldn’t you give something as important as your sales the same respect?

I want to be clear about something . . .

You are going to make less calls this way but . . .

You will no longer need to “smile and dial” because your interactions will become more meaningful.

Sometimes less is indeed MORE!

By the way . . .

We have a whole session on Pre Call Planning in our upcoming, online sales program. I even have a few things in there on how you can find information that the average sales rep will miss entirely. And just for the heck of it, we’ll discuss a cool (and totally free) way to save massive amounts of time without using Google Alerts.

All in all, there will be well over 100+ tips that I will share throughout the program! Oh, and we just added some really cool freebies which include eBooks, a free review of your responses to typical objections and a few more surprises that I don’t want to spoil for you.

This could be a great way for you to start the New Year strong and stop that whole “Doing what you’ve always done” thing.

And yes, I discount for 2 or more.

Click here for more info or if you’d like information on the pricing for 2 or more, email me (be sure to include an approximate number of reps that might attend) paul@yoursalesplaybook.com