A Sales Force Built Around Cold Calling

To thrive in a recession, the sales force at iCore Networks focuses on cold calling

The Hiring Process

1. An executive recruiter prescreens candidates to find reps with a few years' experience outside the telecom industry.
2. A first interview with sales manager Anthony Chapa. Only 10 percent of candidates advance beyond this stage.
3. Next, a candidate spends a full day with a rep door-to-door cold-calling. "We've had people leave halfway through, because the pace was too much for them," Chapa says.
4. An interview with Michael Bertamini, VP of sales
5. An interview with founder and CEO Stephen Canton

Compensation

Base salary + commission
Average first-year income: $92,000
Average second-year income: $121,000
Average third-year income: $150,000

The Sales Philosophy

"Without a brand name and without market share, the only way to close deals is through activity -- that means feet on the street and knocking on doors." -- Stephen Canton, iCore's founder and CEO

The Employee Handbook

1. Be willing to be coached and managed. Don't be set in your ways.
2. Be on time for the 8 a.m. meeting, and return in the afternoon to plan for the following day.
3. Be interested in a career track. The plan is to expand geographically, with account executives becoming managers and opening up new territories, starting with Philadelphia.

When Calling On Customers

1. On a scheduled introductory call, the goal is to discern whether iCore's system would be useful for a prospective customer.
2. After that appointment, cold-call every other tenant in the same building or office park.
3. If you get no further than the outer office, make sure you size up the age of the phone on the receptionist's desk.

The Expectations

Quotas are set by the number of "seats" the reps sell, which corresponds to the number of individual phones using the system.
Companywide quota: 8,000 seats a year
Experienced rep's quota: 1,500 seats a year
New hire's quota: 75 seats per month

The Results

Total revenue, 2008: $17,025,510
Revenue per salesperson: $1,418,793
Revenue versus quota, 2008: +25 percent
Revenue growth, 2007–08: +45 percent

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The Typical Workday

7:30 a.m. One or two new reps meet with their manager for individual coaching. "We use this time to help a rep who is poor in a particular area, like learning how to talk about the technology or how to set a realistic forecast," Bertamini says.
8 a.m. Reps gather to discuss successes and failures from the day before and to role-play how to overcome objections.
9 a.m. An hour of intense telemarketing (20 to 25 calls per rep) to cultivate companies that reps can call on later that day.
10 a.m. → 4 p.m. Reps head into the field for cold-calling.
4:30 p.m. → 6 p.m. Reps return to the office to enter the information they've gathered into iCore's contacts database and Salesforce.com CRM software and to research the prospects and places they intend to visit the following day.

Comments:
The discipline, focus, and persistence of the iCore team is impressive. The fact is though that many companies do not have the structure in place or the internal resources necessary to implement such a process. Full disclosure, I work for an outsourced cold calling and B2B appointment setting company - and if cold calling were easy or less time intensive, we wouldn't be in business. But it's absolutely effective. In fact, there's so much online and social media concentration right now that it seems that people are making fewer calls and I'd argue there's less competition than there was just 10 years ago.

Ron Davis
www.virtualappoint.com


As an iCore customer with 18 lines of service I can tell you that they did get our business through a cold call!!!

Cold calling works when you know how to do it the right way. Though pounding pavement is an effective technique, you need to also use the phone to get access to the decision maker at the company where you sized up the old phones at the reception desk. As an example, to massively increase the number of people you actually talk to, try getting the direct lines of the executives during the day, then phone stalking them after hours once the admins are gone for the day.

One has to respect the discipline instilled by sales management in order to perpetuate this sales methodology. At the same time, it strikes me as exhausting to iCore's people, time and money. What's needed is a marketing program that regularly communicates with the lead database developed by the calls and site visits. Constant lead nurturing, followed up by professional telesales to follow-up on long-term opportunities and maintain visibility, is required. I am a Sales Activation Specialist, and this is the process we use at www.salesactivationco.com. Our philosophy is based on the fact that timing is everything and all leads are not created equal.