All this week has been ‘Mike Brooks’ week on Telesales Magic! Here’s the final of the five articles that Mr. Inside Sales put together for our readers. Its a quickie, but a goodie, on the art of overcoming the dreaded ‘Smokescreen’ objection. No doubt you’ll be seeing more of Mike in the future here at Telesales Magic! Enjoy…

Have you ever answered an objection from a prospect only to be given another one that was completely unrelated to the first one? And then after you battled your way through that one, you got another, then another?

If you’ve been in sales any length of time then I’m sure you have. And if you still don’t know how to handle and even avoid that, then I know you’re hating life – until now! That’s because I’m going to teach you a simple technique that will enable you to avoid that common trap 80% of your competition fall into.  And here’s what you do:

Read the full story

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 heard telesales people boast that they were called a great telemarketing 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.

Read the full story

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.

Read the full story

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.

Read the full story

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 telemarketing and cold calling techniques come 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…

Read the full story

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.

Read the full story