Prospecting, deriving its origin from the act of mineral exploration, is an activity that seeks to determine whether something profitable can be gained from a prospect. By identifying the right prospects beforehand, prospecting maximizes the time you will spend in cold calling, ensures that you get high quality calls, and creates a huge impact on your return of investment – in other words, your time!

Most modern-day telesales professionals do not seem to realize the impact of prospecting on their overall sales results, that’s why it is ignored by so many. By disregarding this important activity, telesales professionals miss a lot of sales opportunities by turning the art of cold calling into a hit-and-miss affair.

Prospecting has evolved into a science that never fails to produce predictable yet excellent results. If you want to make the most out of your call list, you have to follow a system that is guaranteed to work effectively.

The aim of this chapter is to provide you with an effective prospecting system to help you explore for the “gold” in your calling lists!

(1) Be Prepared

Prospecting is a challenging activity and the degree of your success will hinge on your preparation. You should fully know and understand your products and services and be ready to answer questions about their applications and uses – as well as their features and benefits, too. You should also know your target market. Being acquainted with the type of people who will buy what you’re selling helps a lot in assessing your prospects. Knowing who your competitors are as well as what strengths and weaknesses they have, is also a valuable commodity for when you’re positioning yourself in front of your prospects.

(2) Schedule your Prospecting Sessions

Prospecting should be part of your daily routine. Set aside at least one hour each day to look for prospects with the right profile. Mark it down, as one of the top priorities of the day and you will resist the tendency to put off this important activity. To help you accomplish your daily prospecting sessions without fail, incorporate it into your time management system and then do it! Every day.

(3) Maximize your Calls

If your prospecting sessions last for only one hour each, maximize your time by making as many calls as possible. This also increases your chances of making more money in the long run, obviously. Before you start making the first call, eliminate all sources of distraction and set your desk phone to Do Not Disturb; prospecting requires your full and undivided attention. Turn the computer off, shut off the iPhone and all its cool Apps, and focus, focus, focus on identifying prospects who are receptive to your message, whilst disposing of the wrong ones quickly to enable you to move onto the viable conversation.

At a certain point, you will find your rhythm and each call you make will be better than the previous one.

(4) Be Brief and Concise

Make your calls as brief as possible. Give a short introduction, highlight the features and benefits of your product or service, and understand the customer’s needs so you can give a value proposition. All these things should be accomplished within 4-5 minutes, tops! The shorter your prospecting calls, the better. Why? Because you can make more calls within your prospecting hour, obviously. Be concise and to the point and talk with efficiency. Your prospects will actually prefer it that way, too!

Remember what the objective of your prospecting call is. What are you looking to accomplish? The green light to send some information through via email, or snail mail? A day and a time to call them back for a more in depth chat, perhaps after they have checked out your website? Or maybe you’re setting face-to-face appointments to go on over to their place of business and pitch them the good, old-fashioned way!

(5) Prepare a List

We went over this a little in the last chapter. Calling data, more usually described in this rock n roll business were in as ‘Leads’, are the lifeblood of every sales professionals prospecting sessions. Look to prepare a list of names or companies that would last for about a month at any one time. This way you do this little task only once every four weeks or so, meaning you can focus on the more important things – like prospecting and selling!

Having a list like this helps you organize your prospecting sessions and keeps you focused in meeting your goals. You can get lists from the internet, list brokers, or from a local business publication. Such lists are basically free, but you’ll no doubt have to spend a great deal of time weeding out the names that are not worth your time – or, get someone else to do it for you! Start building your own cold call list database if you want to stay ahead of the competition., and update it as and when you can – but, always on a regular basis.

(6) Prospecting During Off-Peak Hours

Sometimes things don’t go very well with conventional prospecting times so try to improvise by calling during off-peak hours. Decision makers, especially the workaholic types, usually work during off-peak hours. They don’t expect calls between 8:00 am and 9:00 am, between 12noon and 1:00 pm, and between 5:00 pm and 6:30 pm, so when you call within these times be prepared to talk when decision makers answer the phone – their secretaries and assistant probably wont even be in the office at these times.

Prospecting during off-peak hours can be a supplemental effort to your normal prospecting time or you can switch your entire prospecting time to off-peak hours, whichever is effective. I’ve done both in my career and they have served me both well – although I admit, I did become more of a lover of the Off-Peak prospect calling missions – just enjoyed catching the ‘big boss’ off guard! You can also vary the time of your calls if you can’t reach certain prospects at a particular time. If you fail to connect to the prospect after several attempts at a particular time, try calling on other days or on any other time during the day.

(7) Be organized

As I mentioned earlier, having a list serves as a guide that helps you keep organized in your prospecting sessions, but you need a sophisticated tool if you want to keep track of all of your prospects. Aside from maintaining accurate records, an good Customer Relationship Management (CRM – eg. SalesForce.com) System allows you to schedule a follow-up as far ahead as several years after making a call even!

You might encounter prospects that still have existing contracts, for example, but if they tell you to call them as soon as their contract expires then schedule a follow-up at the right time. The advantages of using a system like this are too many to list here. Check one out – there are tons of options. I’ve listed a few good ones in the Online Resources section of this eBook.

(8) Visualize

One powerful technique that will do wonders for your prospecting is the use of visualization. Before you start your prospecting session, visualize everything that is going to take place. Visualize every detail of your call and how it will unfold. You open your call with your attention-grabbing opening statement, or introduction and your prospect excitedly listens to your proposition. The final scene shows you scheduling the appointment, or confirming an important email address. Don’t be surprised if your prospecting calls turn out exactly as you have envisioned them – the power of a positive mind should NEVER be underestimated.

Visualization also helps you relax. It clears your mind, heightens your concentration, eliminates negative thoughts and helps you think positively. All these are benefits of visualization and they equip you to withstand any anxiety or negativity that you’ll encounter on your prospecting calls. Another benefit of visualization is that it builds up your confidence. Your ability to get the prospect’s nod on your offering will be enhanced by your confidence. Prospects are likely to buy from someone who exudes a lot of confidence.

It’s like an All-Star basketball player seeing the winning basket drop through the hoop before they even take the shot. They know it. They FEEL it. Get onto YouTube and search for the 3-Point Shootout from the 1988 NBA All-Star weekend. Larry Bird needs the final shot to drop to win the title. He releases the ball and whilst its still on its way towards the hoop, he is already on his way to the center of the court to collect his prize. Seriously watch it… THAT is visualization!

(9) Never, EVER Quit!

Prospecting is like a game. You win some, you lose some. You will also have your own share of rejections, but don’t let that discourage you. Consider it as a lesson to be learned and just keep going. Never let go of a prospect too easily. Most prospects will throw objections your way, or say ‘no’ in other ways at least a few times, before they say ‘yes’. So don’t quit. Quitting will only leave you with the bitter aftertaste of knowing that you could have won the game had you stayed on and kept playing.

Your persistence will impress on the minds of your prospects and they will start the wonder about the full value of your product or service – eventually, you’ll win them over.

This is a complete, FREE chapter from the upcoming release of “Telesales Magic – Proven Tips, Tactics and Techniques to Help You Sell More on the Phone!”, the brand new eBook/AudioBook companion course by 20-year telesales veteran, Chris C. Ducker which is due for release this coming Friday 18th February, 2011.

This is a guest post from Paul Archer

With the credit crunch biting many of us are keeping a close eye on our bank accounts lest they go into the red. If you do, be prepared for a hefty fine from the bank.

But what about our customer care bank account?

Keep your Customer Care Bank Account in Credit.

It’s a clever analogy really because it really helps us to focus on continuous good customer care. Let me explain Last month I was on business in Ipswich and stopped off at a Travel Lodge just outside of town on the ring road. The next morning I had to be in the centre of town for a 9am start. So how do I get into the centre of a very old city? Drive? Train? Bus?

No I thought I’d try the Park and Ride. And what a surprise. Easy to get to off the ring road with its own dedicated slip lane. Free and plenty of parking. A modern station where you could buy your ticket using credit cards and at only £2.80 return, a major bargain compared with parking costs and petrol.

A smart, modern and clean bus turned up every ten minutes and whisked you into the city centre within 10 minutes as this lucky new bus had its own bus lane. How cool. Especially when I watched all those angry drivers cooped up in their cars on the journey in.

I hopped off the bus and they’ve even thought of this. The exit was exactly the same level as the pavement so no hopping required. Brilliant.

And I was at my venue for 8.15 refreshed and ready for the day.

Ipswich Park and Ride has their customer care bank account well in credit.

Expecting an equally pleasant ride home I was mistaken. Road works meant the busstop had been re-sited but no one had told the bus driver this as he sped past us all waiting at the temporary stop. Very frustrating. So I trudged to the next stop to catch the next one. On the way out, there was no bus lane so it took double the time to get to the station.

But do you know what? I didn’t mind. Yes these were problems; some would say deal breakers, but the park and ride were well in credit with me and I let these two items flow over me. If they hadn.t built up a credit, I doubt if I would be as so lenient. The lesson. Make sure you always keep your customer care bank account in credit and your customers might let you off the odd slip. Would I use the Park and idea again? You bet I would.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com.

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

Test closes are brilliant ways of testing the water with your customers. We all use them probably without even knowing it as it’s

something you always hear top performing sales people doing.

Tell me the difference between these three

test closes:

• How do you feel so far?
• How does it look to you so far?
• What are you saying to yourself so far?
• What are you hearing so far?

They all attempt to do the same thing, in other words, test the customers’ views and thoughts so you can continue with the meeting. Classic test closing. I wonder which one you tend to use with your clients or when coaching.

And I bet one of them really hit the mark with you, or resonated with you more, or was a question you could personally relate to.

You see the four test closes are carefully scripted to appeal to your thinking style. NLP gives us visual, kinaesthetic, auditory and digital thinking styles and everyone has a preference to think predominantly in one fashion although we’re quite capable of using all of them. We just prefer one.

If you can gauge your customer’s preferred style, then change your language to suit their favourite. Do start with one of the four test closes from above because it’s easy to do so, gets you into the habit and you could start tomorrow, couldn’t you?

The best way to calibrate your customers’ preferred thinking style is to listen to their language or keep an eye on their eye movements. There’s a great article on eye movements in our knowledge bank.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

In Part I: We focused why asking the “How Can I?” question is the key to getting unstuck and achieving your objectives. Part II continues with more examples.

Creating an Entirely New Revenue Stream

Several years ago, I lost my two bread-and-butter clients when the investment community demanded better financial results. Both these firms immediately suspended all “extraneous” projects – which included all my work with them.

While in the process of rebuilding my business, I did some free consulting for a small magazine serving the entrepreneurial community. I became enamored with the vitality of these firms as well as their contribution to the economy.

But the failure rate was sky high. Good businesses being run by well-intentioned people were closing down because the founders didn’t understand how to sell. It about drove me crazy.

For months, I kept asking myself, “How can I share my expertise with these people and make some money doing it?”

It was a real conundrum. Entrepreneurs don’t have deep pockets. When they hire consultants, they want to squeeze as much advice from them in the shortest possible time. In short, despite the apparent need, I couldn’t figure out how to make a living.

But I kept the question open, choosing not to say ‘no’ yet. Instead, I kept researching and asking the question repeatedly – in multiple variations.

One day, the answer came to me: I’d create a website called Selling to Big Companies where I could give away lots of good sales advice for free. Plus, I could offer some premium content such as ebooks, emanuals and teleseminars. While doing this, I could still serve my corporate clients.

I knew I’d finally hit on a viable business model, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Trust the Questions

Over the years, I’ve come to trust this “How can I” strategy implicitly. Whenever I pose these questions to myself, the answers always come.

They’re better ideas than I could have ever thought of myself. While that sounds strange to say, it’s really true.

Right now, I trust the question again with the Sales SheBang – my online resource, conference and community for women in sales. I’m asking myself questions such as:

• How can I attract savvy saleswomen to the 2008 Sales Shebang Conference ?
• How can I fund this project so that I can make it bigger & better?
• How can I make it an incredible value for the women who come?

The good news is that the ideas are already streaming in. The bad news is that I appear to be a bottleneck in my own system. Too much is on my plate right now, so I’m adding resources to help out. In truth, it’s really not a bad problem to have.

But it all starts with that “How Can I…?” question. Without a doubt, it’s the best strategy in the whole world for reaching your unreachable goals.

Invite others to help you answer your questions. Track down a top salesperson and ask for their insights: How can I be more successful? How can I close more business?

Ask an entrepreneur: How can I create the company of my dreams? How can I get more done in the same amount of time?

The answers are already out there. You just need to ask the questions!

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com ]]> http://www.telesalesmagic.com/prospecting/part-2-tips-on-what-to-do-when-youre-totally-stuck/feed/ 0 http://www.telesalesmagic.com/prospecting/beware-of-the-status-quo/ http://www.telesalesmagic.com/prospecting/beware-of-the-status-quo/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:57:51 +0000 Chris Ducker http://www.telesalesmagic.com/?p=2356

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

Welcome to the most widespread objection today and its not price.

Apparently they’re starring at Glastonbury this summer. I’m talking about Status Quo the rock band whom my 71 year old father is going to see in concert later this month. That shows you how long they’ve been around.

But the status quo have recently become quite a problem for sales people and I’m no longer talking about the band – I’m referring to lethargy or not taking any action.

Apart from the Internet, it’s the status quo that is today.s newest and biggest competitor. Customers are inclined to take no action unless we allow them to see the danger of this course and maybe the cost of doing nothing.

This extra competition that we’re now up against, doesn’t allow us to use our traditional objection handling strategies as we’re not having to compare our product or service with the competitors or justify its value. Instead we have to make sure we let our customer see the problems of not taking our advice.

And we must weave this into our sales patter.

This is particularly important for financial services salespeople who sell an invisible product. There’s an old adage that life assurance is sold and never bought and this is even more prevalent today. Make your customer aware of the dangers of the status quo; ask them what might happen if they don’t protect themselves in the event of their partner’s death, the issues this might bring up in their lives.

Questions, questions, questions – that’ll help them see the perils on inaction.

Let them explore in their mind the consequences of doing nothing and treat the status quo as just another competitor that you need to avoid during your selling process.

And Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt from Status Quo can keep rocking all over the world until they’re ready to pick up their pension. I do believe Francis is 60 next birthday. Fantastic.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

A few readers wrote to me just before Christmas asking for help. Both were struggling to get in front of new prospects to sell their services and products. Both had excellent propositions but found call reluctance to be as problem and prospects unwillingness to speak with them preferring to “weather the storm” and batten down the hatches.

Have you experienced this as well?

I think we all have to some degree and unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’ll recognise that we are going through a downturn. Now I don’t sign up for the “business is better that it’s ever been, I’m busier than ever, what recession?” brigade; these people seem to be just massaging their egos when they print this stuff.

The plain fact is – we have to prospect more than ever before. Working harder and smarter at getting to speak with new customers, will help us succeed in this economy.

I think we’ve all got the phone sales skills but maybe haven’t had to use them so much over the last five to six years since there’s been plenty of business to go around.

So now’s the time to smarten up our prospecting tools, or client acquisition tools as this is now known as.

Here are some quick phone sales tips to help you.

• Examine your product and service and be crystal clear as to what problem it solves. Problems in recessions are all about saving costs and increasing revenue, getting invoices paid on time, preventing suppliers going bust and such like. Try to think like your customers and be totally clear as to what problems your product solves

• What is your customer segment? Be as precise as you can as to which type of customer has the problems that your product or service solves and then focus on these customers.

• Decide on your marketing to reach these customers. There are many routes to market that you can choose but the quickest and most decisive is still telephoning them to make an appointment to see them.

• Get over any phone sales call reluctance.

• Dedicate specific blocks of time in your diary to make calls to prospects.

• Aim simply for a face to face appointment nothing else. Don’t get into conversations, send out literature etc. These never work, although we think the do at the time, are easy to do, quite gratifying but divert your attention to the job of making appointments.

• Be up front with your prospect on the phone about the problem that your product solves and ask for an appointment.

• Don’t ask “if it’s convenient to call” you’ll lose sales if you do this. Instead say “if it’s convenient to speak right now I’d like to…” Subtle difference. And if you feel brave enough, don’t even ask, just launch into your opening.

• Learn how to politely persevere on objections twice and then leave the prospect alone. Keep coming back to the objective of asking for an appointment.

• Sticky tape the phone to your wrist and don’t put it down. Use the 60 second rule. This ensures you get onto the next call within 60 seconds, no longer.

• Spend a maximum of 60 minutes making appointment calls.

• Reward yourself when you.re done as making appointments is stressful, there’s no way around it. Yes alpha male macho types will tell you they enjoy it but you look at the burnout rate of call centre direct sales people.

It’s hard, full of rejection and people saying no, occasional rudeness and extremely easy to put off to-do another job.

We all need more prospects right now and making appointments via phone is the quickest and most effective method of doing so. Dig out all those customers that have connections to your company, old names and phone numbers. Those people who you never had the time to contact. Maybe buy some lists or leads and start to make those calls with the specific intention of making an appointment.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

When I was growing up, the folk rock trio of Peter, Paul & Mary sang an anti-war protest song called, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” It’s funny how after all these years that this tune came roaring back to me as I was thinking about disappearing prospects.

Don’t you just hate it when hot prospects suddenly stop returning your call. It’s especially hard to deal with when they’d been so eager to move forward with you only weeks before.

At first, you assume their lack of responsiveness is an isolated situation that will quickly self-correct. But after repeated failed attempts to connect, you start to question your own sanity.

You could have sworn they were interested, but their current behavior indicates otherwise. And, not wanting to appear too desperate or to come across as a real pest, you’re stymied in terms of what your next steps should be.

Truth be told, they’ve disappeared into the infamous “Black Hole” – sometimes never to be seen again.

Why They Disappeared
As a seller, it’s always important to analyze what may be causing this behavior before taking action. In my experience, these are the typical reasons why prospects disappear into “The Black Hole.” Jill Konrath

• They’re totally swamped. Without a doubt, this is the most common. In virtually ever company today, people have way too much to do and not nearly enough time to get it all done. They fully intend to continue the conversation, but not right now.

• Priorities changed. This can happen overnight. Changing market conditions, bad 3rd quarter results, and new leadership are just a few of the possible root causes. But when this happens, it’s darn near impossible to regain your momentum in the short term.

• Lack of urgency. Sometimes sellers confuse a prospect’s interest level with a desire to take action today. As such, they share all the glorious details about their offering instead of building a business case for immediate change.

• Column fodder. Occasionally prospects just need comparative bids/pricing to justify their decision to go with another company.

• They know everything. When prospects feel they have all the information they need, there’s literally no reason to talk with you any further.

Different reasons call for different actions. Some you can prevent by doing things differently in your customer interactions. Always be open to this possibility since prevention is your best cure. Others you have no control over.

In any case, you need answers! Is it “yeah” or “nay”? Are they still interested or not? Should you keep pursing them or find new prospects?

We’ll explore what you can do  in Part II: Where Did All The Prospects Go

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com ]]> http://www.telesalesmagic.com/prospecting/part-1-where-did-all-the-prospects-go/feed/ 0 http://www.telesalesmagic.com/prospecting/top-5-tips-for-newbie-sellers/ http://www.telesalesmagic.com/prospecting/top-5-tips-for-newbie-sellers/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:15:49 +0000 Chris Ducker http://www.telesalesmagic.com/?p=2291

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

I was recently asked, “If you were mentoring a new salesperson, what would be your top five sales tips and how did you learn those?”

Good question! It really got me thinking. There are so many things I’d like to tell a new seller. But what are the most important? What things could I recommend that would have the highest impact on success?

After serious deliberation, here are my thoughts …

1. Focus on making a difference.

Nobody cares about your product, service or solution. That’s the hardest thing for sellers to realize. All they care about is the difference you can make for their organization.

For example, today I sell sales training. If I’d call a VP of Sales and mention that, they’ll tell me their not interested. However, once I changed my focus to the tangible outcomes they’d get from using my sales training, the door opened wide. After all, they were extremely interested in shortening their sales cycle, reducing the ramp up time for new hire sales reps and driving revenue growth.

2. Slow down to speed up your sales.

This was one of the hardest things for me to learn. When I first started selling, I was so eager to be successful. I tried to wow my prospects with my great product knowledge. I closed often and early. But the more I tried to rush things, the more resistant to moving forward my prospects became. They’d throw out obstacles and objections that I couldn’t overcome. When I learned to slow down, parcel information out over multiple meetings, and simply advance the sales process one step at a time, suddenly my sales increased.

When you’re scared about not getting the business, your prospects can intuitively sense your fear. One of the major symptoms is rushing the sales process.

3. Pay the price of admission. Do precall research!

To get into big companies, you can’t make a 100 cold calls saying the same thing to everyone. Several years ago corporate decision makers stopped answering their phones and rolled all calls to voicemail. They delete most message within seconds because they sound like salespeople making their pitch.

I discovered that the only way to capture the attention of these corporate decision makers was to create a very personalized message based on in-depth research in their firm. Once I started doing this, I started setting up meetings.

4. Create an account entry campaign.

It takes 7-10 contacts to crack into a corporate accounts these days. Most sellers give up after 3-5 attempts. If you want to set up a meeting with a corporate decision maker, plan multiple touches from the onset. It takes a while to break through their busy-ness and register on their Richter Scale, but it can be done.

You can use multiple formats in your campaign too: voicemail, email, direct mail, invitations to teleseminars, and more.

5. Analyze your sales approach from your customer’s shoes.

It’s not important what you say. The only thing that matters is what your customer’s hear. For example, when I was trying to reach a decision maker a while back, I decided to leave the message on my own voicemail first to see how I sounded. When I listened to my message, I was appalled. I sounded pathetic! So I worked on scripting my message and kept calling myself over and over till I finally created something I would respond to if I were the prospect.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

The use of voicemail has become so pervasive these past few years that sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever talk to another human being again.

Frustrating as it may be, over time you begin to accept it as the new norm. You expect to get voicemail and in a perverse sort of way may even relish it. It enables you to make that check on your “to do” list, showing you tried to get in but once again had no luck.

And admit it … leaving a message is a whole lot easier than talking to a person who says they have no need, throws objections in your path or slams the phone down on you.

In fact, the prevalence of voicemail can lull you into a sense of complacency. So much so, that you’re entirely unprepared for that rare moment in time when your prospect absent-mindedly picks up the phone.

Mind you, they would never answer it if they thought a seller was on the other end of the line. They’re likely right in the middle of a meeting and expecting a call from someone else.

Suddenly, instead of leaving your well-prepared voicemail message, you’re on the spot to say something intelligent and compelling. If you’re like most people, those kind of words don’t flow naturally from your mouth – especially when you’re under pressure.

When I was writing my book, one of my clients was actually working through it in real time, giving me immediate feedback on the strategies, processes and tips in it.

She had a great laugh at my expense when she read about my own major blooper when the vice president of sales actually answered the phone. I totally lost my cool.

My value proposition evaporated into thin air. I stumbled over my words, talked a mile a minute and blurted out this rambling, non-focused spiel about what my company did. It was horrible – totally unbecoming of someone in my position. In fact, I was embarrassed to be me.

I got off the phone as soon as I could before I dug myself into an even deeper hole. My only saving grace was that he probably wouldn’t remember who I was.

Alyssa thought that was really, really funny – that is, until the day it happened to her. She’d prepared this great voicemail script for a prospect with whom she was trying to get an appointment.

She was all set to leave her message at the beep, but it never came. Instead, Mr. Big answered the phone. Immediately Alyssa felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her brain locked and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

On the other end of the line, Mr. Big was saying, “Hello, hello. Is somebody there?”

“Yes,” she finally said. “This is Alyssa. I’m with Anonymous Software Firm.”

“What do you want?” he said curtly.

“We specialize in (self-serving words to describe her offering). I’d like to talk with you about your sales automation system and how our software can help you improve it.”

He cut her short. “We already have that covered. I’m in the middle of a meeting and have to go.”

End of call. He hung up.

So what will you say after your prospect says, “Hello?”  Have you thought of it? Does it flow out of your mouth as easily as your voicemail? Or, are you getting ready to dig your own grave?

Here are several tips that will help you avoid sounding like a blooming idiot.

1. Keep it simple.  After you say your name, it helps if the next sentence you say is the same for both your voicemail and an actual conversation. That way your brain won’t freeze.

2. Focus on business. Corporate decision makers hate peppy, enthusiastic people who can’t wait to share things about their product or service.

3. Develop a provocative question. You want to engage the decision maker in conversation as quickly as you can.

4. Check to see if they’re busy right then and there. If they’re distracted, you’re wasting your breath.

5. Don’t focus on being nice. Instead, focus on being a business professional that has something valuable to say.

Most of all, plan ahead. You know how seldom someone actually picks up their phone. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Make sure you put your best foot forward.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath