Never view any two calls in the same way. Instead, have different styles depending on the type of customer you’re calling and the outcome you expect to achieve. Top performing salespeople will have a distinct calling strategy for each type of person they call. The best way to do this is to break your customer list down into segments based on their size, their potential, and, if you know, the contact’s personality and approach to decision making.
Using the Inquisitive Approach
This is an excellent approach to use when dealing with a small customer and especially when contacting the person who owns the business. The Inquisitive Approach is based on the strength of the question you’re asking. It needs to create interest and a sense of ego-satisfaction with the small business person / owner.
Using the Assumptive Approach
If you use the Inquisitive Approach with large customers, you will be seen as somebody who hasn’t taken the time to research and appreciate the size of the customer you’re calling.
Big customers want to be treated as big customers, and they only like to do business with others who they believe are equally big. Big customers find safety in talking to their peers (others who understand how big companies work).
Your opening needs to be statement-focused and deal with an area of pain the customer is experiencing. Don’t allow your statement to come across as if you’re asking a question about what the person does or, worse yet, what their customer does. A large customer expects you to have done your homework prior to the call. Demonstrate that you value their time and company.
Whether you are prospecting or calling existing customers, make sure you are thoroughly prepared with an approach that fits that particular customer.
Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” helps individuals and companies identify better prospects, close more sales, and profitably build more long-term customer relationships. He is a consultative selling expert, specializing in custom-tailored sales programs. You can read his blog at http://thesaleshunter.com/blog.
Today we welcome a new guest writer, Shaun Gisbourne, from Phone for Business, and his first contribution to the Telesales Magic archive. Shaun kick’s off what we hope will become regular contributions with a look at the important role of building strong rapport with your telesales prospect. Enjoy.
What is rapport? Well, it’s a word that comes from the French language whose meaning essentially is connection, relation, link, communication, affinity. Establishing rapport can be natural, or it can take time. Sometimes it seems that it may never happen at all.
Suppose we were to accept on faith that there are no bad prospects, only bad salespeople, then we set the bar for establishing rapport very high indeed. It’s about attaining a level of comfort in your dealings with others, a mutual degree of respect and understanding. Whilst we can say that interactions can vary depending upon who you’re calling, the time of day, the pressure they’re already feeling from their environment and events in their lives, let us also be clear that the same is true of you, the person doing the calling.
Check out this guest post by Karen Andrews of Shine Sales Solutions. Karen has the uncanny ability to get right in there on key issues for salespeople, which we love here at Telesales Magic!
You feel as though you have done everything right. You’ve connected with your prospect well, they have explained their business issues and you are working directly with the person who has the authority to make the decision. They have given you all the right buying signals but the only problem is you can’t get them to sign on the dotted line and now they aren’t returning your calls.
In order to wake up a stalled sale, you must first diagnose the reasons behind it. The problem may not be that the sale stalls, the problem is that we just don’t recognize it soon enough and waste valuable time and resources on dead-end opportunities.
Selling by phone is tough. Persuading a potential consumer to buy a product over the phone is not a simple task. Your customer doesn’t know you personally and they can’t see your face physically either, so there are really no guarantees for them to know whether what you are telling them is the accurate truth, or just sugar-coated fibs. You must be able to build rapport and acquire your client’s trust in just a short span of time. Which is where telemarketingand cold calling techniquescome into play.
To handle this effectively, preparation ahead of time is the key. If you are working as a telesales person, it is crucial for you to be prepared in order to successfully sell your product. Follow the tips below to know why it is important to be prepared in the telesales game of life…
This is a Guest Post from Julian Blee, of Fat Cat Ideas.
I would like to take a look at the urban myth concerning the word ‘no’. I wrote this article because it is a very common misconception that it is OK to put off dealing with a ‘no’ until the end of a pitch or presentation. This is crazy and hopefully at the end of this article you to will agree with me.
The word ‘no’ is there to be loved, enjoyed and embraced. I know that is going to sit uncomfortably with many people reading this newsletter because it is the bête noire of many sales people. No’s seem to send the fear of God running through the veins of many new and also experienced sales people.
