This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

Here’s a tale that many parents will relate to and gives some thought to help next phone sales meeting.

It was rush hour and I was travelling on a packed intercity train and in the opposite seat was a young couple with a toddler who was causing all sorts of commotion. The poor young couple were very embarrassed. The carriage was stony quiet except for the toddler and everyone was staring at the young couple.

Along came the conductor to check tickets and to the rescue she came. She soon realised how uncomfortable the couple were so offered to head back to the buffet car where they had some special toddler packs containing colouring pencils and picture books.

The couple were even more self-conscious being asked a question until the elderly chap next to me said “Oh can I have one as well please?” He laughed followed by everyone else and the icy tension quickly thawed.

He had rescued the situation with some quick thinking and humour.

This made me think about phone sales meetings and the need to have one or two questions up your sleeve as rescue questions. When the situation gets tricky – maybe your customer has said something that completely throws you or your laptop crashes right in the middle of the presentation – most of us can’t think quickly enough to come out with an appropriate response so have one preprepared.

It’s here that you can use your rescue question to get you out of the tricky mess.

Here are a few ideas:

“That’s a good point – can we park that and come back later”

“Tell me about your year so far”

“What major changes are you implementing this year?”

So memorise some rescue questions just in case – you never know when they’ll come in handy.

And the toddler? Sure enough the toddler pack did the trick but only for ten minutes. I felt very sorry for the couple but reached for a 21st century gadget to get me out of bother – my iPod and drowned out the noise.

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 telephone 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 telephone 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.

This is a Guest Post from Peter O’Donoghue of  Sales DNA.

If you are using the telephone to book meetings and you are not as successful as you would like to be, then ask yourself:  Is it the other person’s fault? Or yours?

Quite frankly, when I first start working with some of my clients, I wouldn’t give them a meeting either. The first 30 seconds of a call are vital. The colder the contact, the more important it is to demonstrate value early on and to capture the other person’s attention.

Weak lines such as “I would like to come in and get to know your business better” just won’t cut it. Personally, I also hate the old standard “I was wondering if we could get together for a chat.” If someone rings me up and demonstrates they understand my business, can help me solve a problem, help increase turnover or profitability and can articulate that succinctly then I will always agree to a meeting to find out more. If someone wants to come in for a chat, then they can take a run and jump. They might have time to spare for a chat but I don’t!

One of the key concepts I train people to use is the ability to add value to your meeting so the other person wants to meet you. Think of it like this: If you were to take the words you use to open a call and ask for a meeting, and posted them on eBay, how much would you be able to sell it for?

If you could design your meeting and then describe it in such a way that you would be happy to sell it, then your ability to make new business meetings will shoot through the roof.

The key element here is designing your meeting to add value because it’s not about the words you use. It’s about the item you are describing. What value do you add in a meeting?

If you were selling to a professional person that was charging out their time at £250 per hour and you wanted an hour of their time, how would you demonstrate that it would be well worth their trade off in time?

If you would like some ideas as to how I help train organizations develop so much value in a meeting, read the next blog post available here on this site. I will share some of the best secrets in doing this…

Peter O’Donoghue is the Director of Sales DNA who help Business To Business Sales Professionals increase sales profitability with Sales Training and Telesales Training.  Sales DNA work with clients in Europe and Worldwide through their Online Sales Training.  Visit his blog at  www.salesdnaltd.com/blog.

This is a Guest Post by Shaun Gisbourne of the PhoneMentor Program.

Having read about how getting one new client can cost more than 8 times what it costs to retain an existing one, it struck me that whatever clients feel about the experience they receive, it’s also very likely that prospects feel it too. Unbeknown to you, clients could even be talking to your prospects about you!

It can be argued that clients will tell other people about experiences with you (bad more than good), and that among the people they tell, some will be potential prospects. That, however, is far from being the full story. The attitude that you take towards existing clients will, to a greater or lesser extent, be reflected in the way you treat new prospects too.

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This is a Guest Post from Karen Andrews of Shine Sales.

Are you asking questions that make your customers & prospects THINK?

Questioning or probing as it is also known, is most of the most important skills you can learn when dealing with customers and one of the most powerful. The ability to ask questions that uncover important information about a customer’s needs, current supply and willingness to change is a strong characteristic of a ‘consultative’ sales approach.

Most importantly, when you ask great questions it can help you to win new business much quicker and with fewer objections. When we help prospects to think about the needs of their business and to really think about current or potential problems or challenges they may face, they start to see us differently and understand the value we can add to them or their business.

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