In my conversations with sales professionals, the number one challenge they often face is prospecting. If you prospect with the phone, you owe it to yourself and your company to develop the very best phone skills possible.
You have about 10 seconds at the beginning of a phone call to make a connection with the other person. That’s right – 10 seconds! Obviously, that is not a lot of time, so you need to become very adept at building a message that creates interest and need.
As you make your sales calls, try to tailor your words with the below in mind. I call it UPEF.
U = Urgency: There’s no reason for the other person to continue the call unless they believe what you are saying is something they truly need to hear right now.
P = Pain: The person won’t want to continue the call if they can’t begin to see that they have some pain in their lives (professional or personal) that needs to be relieved. You should strive to draw attention to that pain.
E = Expertise: If you’ve been able to convey a sense of urgency and pain, but you haven’t given them a sense of why you’re an expert, they may take your suggestion someplace else.
F = Feedback: Be certain that you are listening for feedback that will reveal if the other person is hearing what you are saying.
Before you even make a phone call, write out on paper bullet points applicable for each of the above areas. This will help you craft the right message. You will have prepared thoroughly for the particular client you are about to call, and this confidence will come through in your message.
You have to fine tune your opening message so that no valuable time is wasted and your potential client will have reason to stay on the line. Ten seconds isn’t a lot of time, but it may be all you have to lay foundations for a profitable long-term relationship.
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.
It may sound odd to mention “phone sales tips” and “body language” in the same sentence. Do the two go together? Yes! In fact, you can even say when you add the two together, you get a third phenomenon: Increased sales motivation. Your body language comes through loud and clear with every phone call you make.
I often tell salespeople to make sure they are standing up anytime they make an important phone call. In the instances when you do have to be sitting for a phone call, make sure you have good posture. It’s amazing how much stronger your voice will be when you’re standing up and/or maintaining good posture when you make a call. It is no surprise that when your voice is stronger, your confidence is stronger too.
Another reminder I offer is this: Make sure when you are on the phone, you are free of visual distractions. What are some common visual distractions? Email would possibly be the biggest one if you are at your computer. Other distractions include television, miscellaneous papers on your desk or anything else that can take away your focus. When you’re having a conversation with someone on the phone, it’s no different than speaking to them in person. They deserve your complete and undivided attention. If you have something else that may take away your focus, you are doing your customer a disservice. Simply move it out of site.
Finally, an item I love to do when talking to clients on the phone is to have something on my desk to remind me who I am talking to, including their name and their company. There is nothing more embarrassing than to suddenly forget who you’re talking to. No matter how good you think your memory is, this will happen to you at least a couple of times. That’s all it takes for you to realize how important it is to have the person’s name and company in writing in front of you.
Selling on the telephone is a key part of anyone’s job, whether it be using the phone to establish an initial contact or using it to stay in touch with a loyal customer. Use extraordinary phone skills each time and you will see a positive difference in your results.
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.
Many times when I’m working with inside salespeople, I hear the common complaint how they don’t feel they’re at their best until later in the day. The first few people to whom they talk on the telephone wind up being disastrous calls. What makes this painful is these same salespeople are usually the ones who are not making their numbers. These are the same salespeople who spend way too much of their time – and the time of their fellow salespeople – complaining about how screwed up things are.
Rather than wasting the first several calls on customers you know are going to answer, take the first 10 minutes of each day calling people you know won’tbe there. In other words, their voice mail will pick up. In fact, go one step farther and make the first call to yourself – yes, yourself. Here is why: By calling yourself first, you have the opportunity to engage your mouth, to get your brain working and to warm up. Consider it similar to the way an athlete warms up before a game.
Make the first call to yourself as if you were a prospect and leave a voice mail. But don’t just leave a quick voice mail to yourself. Go ahead and share with yourself one key benefit as to why you should buy from yourself. By leaving the message to yourself, you’ll get a chance to hear yourself later when you get the message. More importantly, you’ll start warming yourself up by sharing a benefit of what makes you different.
After you have left yourself a message, then call 2- 3 people who you know will not answer their phone. Leave your normal voice mail message.
Using voice mail as a way to warm up will help you be more focused and engaged when you do talk to somebody live. It will prevent you from stumbling through your first several live calls. Only after you’ve had several live conversations and you’re fully engaged should you then even think about sitting down. Yes, that’s another tip: Standing up when making a phone call will always increase the strength of your voice and help you be focused. It gets your energy going!
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.
This is a Guest Post by Mike Brooks, AKA Mr Inside Sales!
In sales, the ability to truly listen is what separates the Top 20% of producers from the bottom 80%. Now when I say “listen,” I mean much more than just hearing what a prospect is saying. Many sales reps hear their prospects, but because they are unprepared to handle various objections or questions, they are usually too busy thinking up what they are going to say next to truly hear what their prospects are saying. And that’s where the top 20% excel.
The most important thing you can do to begin making more sales is to start listening to your prospects. Once you do, you’ll know exactly what to say – and what not to say – to get the sale. Here are three things you can begin doing today to become a better listener:
This is a Guest Post from Julian Blee, of Fat Cat Ideas.
I love the old sales joke about two salesmen taking a cigarette break outside their office. One turns to the other and says, “What a morning I have had, I must have done over 12 sales presentations, I have had loads of positive calls, people are just loving me today.” The other salesman turns to him and says, “I’ve not sold anything either”.
The above joke refers to the myth of mistaking being busy for being productive. The same goes for the compliment, “You’re a Great Sales Person.” A lot of sales people will attribute positive connotations to certain things when in fact they are not.
I have actually heardtelesales people boast that they were called a greattelemarketing professionals by the prospect that they just pitched. Notice I said ‘prospect they just pitched’ and not ‘client they just closed.’ The reason that I say this is that the so called compliment, “you’re a good sales person” is usually followed by “I’ll think about it” and a lost deal. The ‘no sale’ is the natural conclusion to that type of comment.
Here’s Part 2 of a guest post by regular Telesales Magic contributor Paul Archer of Archer Training, based in the UK. Paul completes this two part look at how to effectively listen on your sales call by looking into beating distractions.
Eliminating Distractions
One of my first sales jobs was working as a financial adviser for a busy estate agent in a major city. My desk was right by a large picture window opening up to Guildford High Street. On a Saturday or a busy lunchtime, hundreds of people would walk by, some would stare in at me. Cars and trucks would drive by and there would always be some movement going on outside.And meanwhile I had to use the phone to speak with customers.
I also recall the very next day being told in the morning that the company I worked for was up for sale. Suddenly the external distraction of the window didn’t matter, as my head was full of internal distractions this time to prevent me from listening to my customer. Its so difficult selling on the phone when the world is full of distractions.
Here’s the first of a two-part guest post from regular Telesales Magic contributor Paul Archer of Archer Training. This time round Paul discusses how important it is to listen to your prospects and clients when selling them on the phone (or face to face, even).
Your Own Volume Control – Listening on the telephone in fact listening in general, has to be one of he hardest things to do continuously. Yes we can all listen for five minute bursts but to do it all day every day, just has to be hard graft.
So next time you feel your listening ability has taken an early bath imagine your very own personal volume control. Now your volume control has 3 levels – 1, 2 and 3.
Most of the time it’s on level 1 which is selfish listening and there’s nothing wrong with this. Only the other day I was on a business trip to a strange airport and I was operating on level 1 listening. I was looking out for signs and noises that would help me on my journey. I wasn’t interested in anyone else just myself and my next steps. But in selling or dealing with people on the phone, we mustn’t focus on just ourselves. We need to get into their shoes and that’s level 2 on your volume control.
This is a Guest Post from Julian Blee, of Fat Cat Ideas.
Way back in 1993 I was given my first opportunity to run a telesalesfloor. I was working for a firm of stockbrokers in London and I was super bullish and proud to be a broker. I marched across London Bridge each morning with the Financial Times under the arm of my chalk stripe suit. The wind would sometimes blow my jacket open to reveal the salmon pink silk lining and the bright red braces that held my trousers up. (I can’t even look at the pictures of me then without my face turning redder than the braces I wore.) I was 25 years old and full of myself.
In my new position I was intent on only taking on the loudest and most aggressive salespeople in the City. I had every intention of breaking all of the sales targets that I was given in record time. Admittedly, I did do very well there. However, I also made a complete hash of things for the first 3 to 6 months. I was lucky that my boss at the time believed in me and perpetually guided me and stopped me from crashing my sales floor into a proverbial tree every month.
