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 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 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 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 Paul Archer

Everyone knows that in selling or coaching, it’s extremely dangerous to make assumptions about your customer or the person you’re coaching. It’s one of those principles that.s drummed into sales people on day one of their induction sales training. But we’re all guilty of making assumptions from time to time – I know I am. Read on to see how dangerous these can be.

Over Christmas I was talking to my three children about a fearful incident when I was about their age. The story shocked them at the time and they still don’t believe it was true. But I assure you it was.

My first pet was a cute golden hamster that I named Hammy – original I know. Now we didn’t live in a big house so I shared a room with Hammy and my two brothers who I hated passionately. We were constantly caught bashing the life out of each other, as brothers do.

It came to a head one evening when Hammy, being a nocturnal creature, kept us all up with his squealing exercise wheel. It was incessant. It was excruciatingly painful. Nothing we could do would stop him or fix the squeak. And the fighting with my brothers got even worse.

He had to go. The next day Hammy found his way into the garden shed. What a relief, at last we could get some sleep. We had solved the problem but only until that fateful morning.

It was freezing and pitch black at 6am. On my way to my paper-round, I popped my head around the shed door to look up on Hammy. I stared into his cage with a torch, he was motionless. I was devastated – my only true friend was dead and it was my entire fault evicting him to the bitter, murky shed.

Ignoring my paper round, I picked him up and took him indoors. This 12 year old boy was distraught and overwhelmed by it all. So I laid him on the kitchen table and went upstairs to cry my little heart out. Gradually the house woke up and I heard a banshee like shriek from the kitchen. My Mum had found a stone cold hamster on the kitchen table. Not that I could see at the time what the problem was, after all it was dead but maybe that was the point.

“Take it out immediately” screamed mum, so I grabbed Hammy and ran outside to bury him. As I took my old friend outside I laid him down on the earth next to the shovel ready to dig his grave, but then I saw his foot twitch. I thought I was seeing things so I dried my eyes and looked again. There it went again. It had moved and it wasn’t a muscle spasm. He was alive.

I rushed indoors and plopped him on the storage heater. With careful nursing and stroking, slowly and bit by bit he came back to life and I was the happiest little boy on the planet.

Hammy went on to live a normal life. I found out years later that he had merely hibernated that cold night. I still think it was a miracle. And he was within 5 feet of a living grave. So you see that making assumptions can critically damage your health – well maybe your pet hamster. Not assuming can literally save lives.

Seriously though, the next time you find yourself about to make an assumption about the needs of a customer, because you’ve heard it all before dozens of times or you think everyone wants the price to be lower or you assume the recession will gobble you up….just remember that devoted 12 year old boy bringing back to life his pet hamster, Hammy.

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

For anyone who has had building work done, you know what the aftermath looks like. Ours is no different – outside of the new conference room, it looks like the Somme battlefield on steroids. Builder’s rubble in every nook and cranny, old bricks, cement, plasterboard, tangled metal. A sight for sore eyes it is.

But following a 2 hour blizzard, the mess had all disappeared. The field looks brand new as though construction had never happened. It looks beautiful with the white snow glistening in the sunshine.

And it struck me then that in life, we all have set-backs which beat us backwards and these issues can affect us all. Some dwell on them – some move on. We need a way to cover them up and move on otherwise our self motivation will take a battering. We could do with snow to cover them up for us.

Whether you’re in sales or sales coaching, we have to be self motivated to succeed in what we do. Yes, we can be motivated externally with targets, rewards, success and recognition but these don’t happen continuously so we have to have inner self motivation to pull off our goals.

We all have knock-backs, we all make mistakes. The trick is to learn from them. Extract what you learnt so you don’t repeat it, jot it down somewhere. I have a pocket diary where I jot down all my learnings and ideas when they crop up. If I make a mistake, I note down what I learnt from it and then try to wipe out the memory so I can move forward.

Now that’s the hard part.

So when we make a mistake, remove what you learnt, note it down, cover up the mistake with a snow blizzard, pick yourself up and move on. Don’t let previous mistakes bug you as this serves no value. That way your self motivation will carry on unhindered.

And if you do drift back to the mistake, imagine a beautiful white snow blizzard rolling in from the east which will cover up any blemishes on the landscape with minutes. But be quick as snow will melt to reveal the builder’s rubble once again.

Looking outside now, the snow’s gone reminds me to order a skip, and spend a weekend getting rid of the rubbish permanently. And with the warm weather on us, I bet Claire is just waiting to ask me too. Can’t wait!

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

I’m sure you’re making more prospecting calls at the moment, just like everyone else, so I’m guessing that you’re coming across barriers in getting to talk to your prospective customers.

If that barrier is a Personal Assistant who’s trained to stop you in your tracks, here’s a neat little tip that just might get you put through.

A UCLA survey showed that on the telephone a massive 84% of the message and meaning

is derived purely from your voice. This is a well known fact and was substantiated by Albert Mehrabian in the 1970’s.

I’m suggesting that you sound important so you can get through the gatekeeper.

Important people have deeper voices and say things in shorter sentences. Their tone of voice falls at the end of each sentence to accentuate their importance and they leave lots of pauses.

And most people when faced with someone who sounds ever so important will put you through without hesitation. Try it, it works and is also fun.

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 Karen Andrews

Did you know that the majority of sales leads and enquiries do not get followed up more than once (which could be why your business has a low conversion rate*)?

To improve your sales or that of your sales team, develop a system to regularly check where each one is at and when they were last contacted. If you hold sales meetings, doing it at the beginning or end of each month is perfect.

Here are some statistics that I’m sure you will find most interesting:

• 48% of sales people never follow-up with a prospect
• 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
• 12% of sales people only make 3 contacts and stop
• Only 10% of sales people make more than 3 contacts
• 2% of sales are made on the first contact
• 3% of sales are made on the second contact
• 5% of sales are made on the third contact
• 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
• 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

To ramp up some sales in the next couple of months, go through all the leads you have received over the last 3-6 months and either you or your sales people pick up the phone and call them. You will be surprised how many people haven’t done anything, simply because no one has bothered to follow up and they have simply been too busy to do anything about it.

* Your sales conversion rate is how many enquiries you receive vs. how many you convert into customers over a specified time frame. To calculate your sales conversion rate follow this simple formula

Total No. of Sales/ Total No. of Enquiries x 100 = Sales Conversion

e.g. 100 sales / 80 enquiries x 100 = 80%

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach, Strategist and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring.

The following is a Guest post by Mike Brooks, AKA Mr. Inside Sales.

Because you only have a few precious seconds to make a connection and establish interest, you’d better have a good opening prepared in advance.

Besides being very busy, your prospects probably get a lot of sales calls every week, and many of them from your direct competition. So why would they want to talk to you? What can you do to separate yourself from all the other calls they get?

The answer is that you have to establish a real connection with your prospect and stop sounding like all the other sales reps who call them.

Here is what your competition usually sounds like (I hope you’re not doing this!):

“Oh, hi Mr. __________, this is _______ _______ with the MLT Group.

__________, we are an industry supply manufacturer and we help companies streamline their production process. We work with many companies in your field and save them between 10 to 15% on the cost of their storage and delivery process. What I’d like to do is ask you some questions to see how our process may save you that kind of money as well. Where are you currently getting your…”

Do you see how this opening makes no connection with the prospect? Do you see how it just starts pitching at the prospect and doesn’t acknowledge that the prospect might be busy, or not interested? Do you see how there is no rapport built here and how it’s a one sided conversation?

How do you feel when someone barges in on your day and starts in with a pitch like this? You’re probably thinking what most prospects are thinking: “How do I get this sales rep off the phone?!”

Now let’s look at the right way to open your call. Your goal in the first few seconds is to make a connection and get them to interact. You have to acknowledge that they may be busy or that you respect their time and you need to establish some rapport and separate yourself from all the other sales reps calling them.

Try this:

“Hi, ________ this is _______ _______ with (your company), how’s your Tuesday going? Great. Listen, _______, I know you probably get a ton of calls so I’ll make this brief.

Let me ask you, if I could show you a better way of tracking and shipping (or) and save you money doing it, would it be worth spending five minutes with me next week to show you how?”

Or,

“What is the one thing you could change that would have a dramatic impact on your productivity and that would save your company money?”

Or,

“If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about how you currently do (their business), what would it be?”

Can you see how this quick questioning approach is more effective than what you may currently be using now? Eighty percent of your competition still barge in on their prospects and open their calls up with a long explanation about what they do and what they offer, and pitch their products and services without checking in with their prospects or establishing any kind of connection. No wonder most people brush them off the phone!

You can separate yourself from this group instantly, starting today, by using the opening technique above. Once again, adapt it to fit your product or service, and then practice it until it’s natural and easy for you to use. As you do, you’ll begin to notice yourself struggling less, making more connections with interested and qualified buyers, and you’ll have more confidence and feel better about yourself.  Just like the top 20% do!

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps nationwide teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance. If you’re looking to catapult your sales, or create a sales team that actually makes their monthly revenues, then learn how by visiting http://www.MrInsideSales.com

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