This is a Guest Post by Mark Hunter.

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.

This is a Guest post by Jill Konrath of Selling To Big Companies.

Here are Top 5 tips that a new sales person should learn:

1. Be different.

Sellers find it hard to realize that customers don’t care about the product or service. Customers care about the difference that the seller can make for their company.

I sell sales training. If I will approach a company and speak to the VP of Sales and tell them that, the company will not be interested with my offer. But if I change my approach and focus on the substantial results that they will get from the service that I offer, doors will open wide.

2. Take one step at  a time.

When I first started selling, I immediately wanted to become successful. I was eager to close early and impressed my prospects with my immense product knowledge. But the more I rushed things, my prospects became more resistant to moving forward. They would trash problems and complaints that I could not solve. But when I started to slow down, plan carefully and disseminate information over multiple discussions, my sales suddenly increased.

3. Research before making the call.

Personalized messages based on your research about their company will get the attention of corporate decision makers. Standard messages sent to everyone are deleted instantly. Take the time to do your homework and do some research. Companies will listen to voicemails that are made especially for them.

4. Plan different modes of entry.

If you want to set up a meeting with a corporate decision maker, plan different modes of entry. Use multiple formats in your campaign— try voicemail, email, direct mail, invitations to teleseminars, conferences and etc.  Establish at least 7-10 contacts to crack into corporate accounts.

5. In your cutsomer’s shoes.

It doesn’t matter what you say. What matters is what your customer’s hear. Before leaving a message on your prospect’s voicemail, try leaving it on yours. Listen to it and evaluate how you sounded. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Would you listen to that message? Would you take the time to call back and respond to that message? Rework your script until you finally created something worth hearing and worth responding to.

How about you? What tips can you suggest to new sellers?

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com.

This is a Guest Post by Mark Hunter.

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’t be 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 Jill Konrath of Selling To Big Companies.

Currently, the economy is worrying a lot of people. Many sellers are extremely pressured to bring in more business. Recently,  someone contacted me, concerned with being pressured to do “whatever it takes” to get the deal.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a method for disaster – and here’s why …

When I started my sales career at Xerox, it was clear that performing poorly was not okay. Every month, the regional offices would post stack rankings of all the representatives presenting their monthly numbers and their year-to-date results.

It was not only embarrassing to be at the bottom of those stack rankings , but it also meant that you’d likely need to look for another job. We all dream of being and staying at the top. The recognition, the money and position were huge – and vastly seductive.

I am divulging this because sellers at either end of those stack rankings (including me at the time), were likely to “cheat” a little in order to get ahead and upgrade their positions. Here’s how they do it:

• Doing business in other seller’s territories.
• Giving presents under the table to enhance the deal.
• Misrepresenting product/service potential, mostly through omission.
• Making rude and insulting remarks about their competition or even their colleagues.

Each of these unacceptable behaviors (and others that I haven’t mentioned) can have serious consequences.

It eats away at your personal integrity. Cheating once will make it easier for you to do it over and over again. Over time, you’ll have “sold your soul” in order to close the deal.

The minute your co-workers discover that you bend the rules to get ahead, this influences their ability to trust you. Professionally, you’ll become more isolated because they avoid  talking and sharing things with you.

Once your prospects sense or realize your self-serving behaviors, they may refuse to do business with you.  Unsatisfied customers will tell their friends and your reputation as an unethical seller or business will spread.  You’ll actually lose work in the long run.

If you’re tempted to be even the slightest bit unethical, don’t do it. Instead, do what’s right. You can live with yourself much better. And, it’s good for business.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com.

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

One of the long standing debates in telesales is the question:

“Should I leave a voicemail?”

It is a question I hear over and over again in my sales training. My answer is a definite yes as long as you implement the magic voicemail that I am about to share with you.

Before I give you this golden nugget that will change your telephone prospect forever, let me tell you why, I think you should leave this voicemail.

Reasons:

•   It is proven to get results. A recent training attendee left 4 voicemail messages and received 4 call backs, which resulted in 2 new appointments. That’s a 100% success rate. What’s your call back success rate?

•    People calling back are allocating you time. I hate to break this to you but no matter how good you are, how valuable your service is and how prepared you are, when you ring someone, you are an interruption. They do not sit by the phone waiting for you to call. You are always going to be interrupting something they are doing. The beauty of getting a returned call from a voicemail ID is that they have allocated you some precious time in their schedule. For 1 or 2 minutes, you have their undivided attention.

•    It arouses curiosity: The single biggest reason why voicemails fail is because you give the entire purpose for wanting to speak to the other person. You provide all of the information so they don’t need to call you back. Make sense? Think about your voicemails and how much information you give. Why would they call you back? What you have to do is peak the human driver of curiousity to get the other person calling you back.

OK, so here is a simple and drastically effective voicemail that will get you over 50% call backs:

“Hi John, it’s Joe Bloggs from ACME INC., I was in a meeting this morning and your name came up. I have a couple of quick questions that only you can answer. Can you give me a call back on 0000000000?”

That’s it! Guaranteed to get you over 50% call backs if you deliver it with confidence and a solid voice.

The reasons why it works:

1)   It appeals to the curiosity of the person. Why were they talking about me in a meeting? What were they saying? I really must know.

2)    The psychological emphasis on – “Only you can answer my questions. ” This is specifically raising the level of importance of the person and showing that it is them specifically you want to talk to.

So what do you say when they call you? Firstly – develop an answer that is professional and has real meaning.

Have a think about what you could say in your business. Once you have had some time to think about it, I will share some ideas that are proven to work in my next blog post.

Make sure you look out for my posts to complete the story!

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.

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

Many business owners and sales managers ask me if I have a proven system or a way to identify and hire top telesales reps. They have tried everything, they tell me.  They check references, review similar work experiences, talk to ex co-workers, hold multiple job interviews, and sometimes they even spring for some high priced fancy telesales aptitude matrix tests.

Even with all that, however, many sales managers still haven’t found a way to identify who will actually perform well and work hard, versus who will merely show up, take up space and drive up costs by sending out brochures, running up phone bills, squandering leads etc.  “How can you tell?”  They ask me.

Well I’ve got good news for you.  There is one telesales technique that I’ve used successfully for years that will immediately separate who is for real and who’s not.  It doesn’t require any special tests, it can be done on the first interview, and it will always tell you what kind of sales rep you have in front of you. Here’s what you do:

During the course of the interview simply describe the service or product you’re selling, and ask them if they think they would do well selling it.  Almost all that will say, “Oh, of course!”  (Those who don’t, dismiss immediately!)

After that, tell them you want to get an idea of how they would handle some of the common objections you get with this sale, and then give them a couple of objections (one at a time, of course) and let them respond to them. That’s it! Several things happen here — all of which accurately reveal what kind of sales telesales rep you’re dealing with.  They usually have fallen into three categories:

The “A” Players — Top reps, or telesales reps who are well-trained and confident, will handle each objection with a recognizable rebuttal, and the really good ones will even ask for the sale at the end.  You will instantly know who they are.  You hire these reps right away.

The “B” Players — This group of telesales reps will also answer the objections, but their responses will be less polished.  With this group the lack of any formal training will show through, and you will be faced with the decision of whom you think can or can’t be trained.  Part of this group will be uncomfortable with the objections and you will be able to tell that they probably never will be comfortable with them. Your choice of who to hire from this group should be pretty clear.

The “C” Players — A common response from this group will be something like this:  “Well, I really don’t know your product so I really wouldn’t be able to answer these objections.” What they’re really saying, of course, is that they have no idea how to respond to an objection, they have no confidence, and the reason they are here looking for a job will be glaringly clear to both of you.  You pass on this group altogether.

Try this powerful technique during your next interview.  You will be amazed by how well it works.  Simply give them an objection, then sit back, listen and observe.

You will know instantly if you’re dealing with a real closer or someone who is just going to fill a chair.  Happy hiring!

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: www.MrInsideSales.com

HELP SPREAD THE WORD! If you liked this post, please ‘Be Sweet & ReTweet” by clicking the button at the top of the page, as well as bookmarking it by using any of the options below. Thanks so much!!!

IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL READERS!!! Prompted by visitor demand, we recently launched our FREE eBook on How to use Email and Voicemail to Support your Telesales Efforts. If you haven’t already got your hands on your copy of this 22-page, professionally designed eBook, jam-packed full of great, exclusive content, then download it now by signing-up for it on the right hand side of our site…!

First of all, let me welcome each and every one of you to the first post of 2010 here at Telesales Magic! What an amazing year 2009 was for us all. I must say, in the 7 months since we launched the blog we have seen a treasure trove of telesales tips, telemarketing techniques and cold calling tactics come our way thanks to our fantastic contributors and awesome readers!

We had some awesome articles posted in 2009, but there were a handful that received more attention than the rest, and so, it is my pleasure to present to you The Top 5 Telesales Magic Posts of 2009, in order of popularity. And let me say I am quietly humbled by the fact that one of my posts was at the top of the heap!

BEST OF 2009 #1: The Ultimate Tip Ten Telesales Tips

BEST OF 2009 #2: Preparation – The Key to Successful Cold Calling and Telephone Selling

BEST OF 2009 #3: Telesales 101 – How to Build Gust Busting Rapport!

BEST OF 2009 #4: 15 Steps to Easier Cold Calling Success

BEST OF 2009 #5: Softening Your Telemarketing and Telesales Questioning Techniques

As the New Year kicks-off, a lot of sales pro’s will be looking to sharpen up their skills on the phone, so I sincerely ask you all to spread the word of Telesales Magic and what we’re all about… We’ve just added the ‘Retweet’ button at the top of each of our posts, so please USE IT! Along with the ‘Social Bookmarking’ buttons at the bottom of every post. And you’ll also see that we’ve started a new Facebook Page, too – please click on the link to the right to ‘join us’…!

So, what can you expect in 2010? Well, actually, quite a lot…!

Along with the above-mentioned FREE eBook on Email and Voicemail, we will also soon be completely the redesign of the site (you’re currently seeing it at around 70% – didn’t see the point in holding it back!); including several new features, like our Podcast Library, our Video Library, and an extended Resource Area of the site, too – plus, much more!

However, the BIG NEWS will be the launch of our first Companion eBook, entitled “Telesales Magic!” (catchy, huh!?!). In fact, we hope that the eBook becomes the staple diet for all our readers and we’re looking forward to seeing what you guys have got to say about it once its launched, following a WHOLE YEAR in the making! There will be a one-off SPECIAL OFFER for the launch to all subscribers of the blog. We’ll be sending details through via email to everyone once the time is right!

Thank you again for a great first year (well, 7 months!) for the blog, and we look forward to hearing more of your comments and feedback in the coming months!

Have a killer 2010, everyone!

HELP SPREAD THE WORD! If you liked this post, please ‘Be Sweet & ReTweet” by clicking the button at the top of the page, as well as bookmarking it by using any of the options below. Thanks so much!!!

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

Most telesales reps hate getting objections.  Their hearts sink into their stomachs, their palms start to sweat, and they start wondering how they’re going to pay the rent.  Sound familiar?

When telesales reps ask me how they should handle objections, they are often surprised by my answer.  I tell them they should never answer objections.  When they look at me like I’m crazy, I explain:

Read the full story

This is a Guest Post from Paul Archer, of Archer Training.

Move Backwards

When you first meet a customer in person, move backwards about a foot as soon as you make eye contact. This is a great little technique to show that you are nonthreatening and do not want to put them under any undue pressure.

It gets the meeting off to a relaxed and level beginning. Try it next time you meet a customer particularly in a retail environment where customers expect pushy salespeople…it works.

Ask for their Autograph Read the full story

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

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  Stan Billue, a top telemarketing sales trainer in the late 80’s, claimed that he had a sure fire telesales technique that could double your sales in 90 days if you just followed it. So I did.  And it worked! Read the full story