Jill Konrath | Selling to Big Companies

"I made 13 calls this morning"

The new sales guy came back in the office early -  at 1 pm. He was beaming and dancing a jig.

Glowing with pride, he said, "I made 13 calls this morning ... and I could have made even more!"

"So what are you doing back in the office?" his boss asked in obvious frustration. "Why in the world would you stop when you clearly were on a roll?"

"Well," the new sales guy answered, "The last person I met asked me. .. WHAT I WAS SELLING?"

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Many thanks to Bob Van Leeuwen from Plus Technologies for sending me this sales joke which ties in so well with my article on "Promiscuous Prospecting."

Promiscuous Prospecting

"How many prospecting calls did you make last week?" That's the first thing my sales manager asked me every single Monday morning. I dreaded those meetings because they put me in a no-win position.

I hated to lie, but if I told the truth I'd get in big trouble. My numbers were significantly and consistently below the sacrosanct corporate standards which were established to help us be more successful.

Behind these expectations was the pervasive belief that the more calls you make, the more sales you'll get. Selling was simply a numbers game and I was clearly failing to do my job.

Yet month after month, despite my abysmal prospecting statistics, I outperformed and outsold my colleagues. This paradox confounded me. My manager was stymied as well since it was went against everything he'd been taught. But he didn't stop too long to examine what was happening. Instead, he pushed me out the door to make more calls.

Finding Decision Maker's Names

One of the biggest headaches in selling to big companies is trying to figure out who you should be talking to. The bigger the company, the tougher it is to identify the decision maker's name.

In my upcoming book I spent an entire chapter discussing this increasingly difficult and time-consuming issue.

That's why I was so excited when I discovered Jigsaw - a new online resource that gives you the direct phone numbers and email addresses for hard-to-find business executives, directors and mid-level managers.

Jigsaw is like a gigantic business card exchange where you can buy, sell or trade business contacts. Essentially you get access to the rolodexes of thousands of sellers who are joining together to build this database which currently has almost 1/2 million contacts and is adding 5000+ new ones each day.

With Jigsaw, there's no doubt in my mind you'll:
- Cut the time it takes to find new contacts.
- Break into new accounts much more quickly.
- Shorten your sales cycle.

It's not just me who's so excited about this new resource. The New York Times was so impressed with Jigsaw that they featured the company in an article last week.

To help you get started, I made a special arrangement with the CEO of Jigsaw to give you a 25 contact signup bonus.

Follow this link right now to check it out ...

           http://www.jigsaw.com?pc=FROGS

... To get your 25 gratis contacts, enter this code in the promotion code field on the signup form: FROGS

If you think your colleagues might be interested in Jigsaw, please feel free to forward this newsletter to them. They're welcome to use the FROGS code as well.

FYI, the 25 contact bonus I arranged is in addition to the ones you get when you sign up as a 'pay' or 'play' member. If you sign up for a trial first, you'll get these bonus contacts when you upgrade to an official Jigsaw membership.

Please note, this special offer is only good for 90 days.