|
|
May 15th, 2012
 There is something to learn from every cold call that you make, whether it goes well or it was a complete bomb. If you add a simple step to your process where you reflect back when a call ends and learn something from what happened, you can greatly improve your ability and performance on future calls.
One reason this is so helpful is that the situations that you will find yourself in are likely to recur. If you can learn from them to identify what happened and what could have been done better, you are likely to do what is right when the same scenario occurs again.
Another reason that this is important to do is that it is really hard to prepare for every scenario. Your initial sales training may get you going to where you have a good idea what to do. But there is no way for training to prepare you for all of the curve balls that you will receive. This is why you must learn as you go and build a library of experiences and responses and reflecting back will help you to do this.
When you reflect back, there are a few things that you can focus on:
- What went well, what what not so well?
- Objections: What objections did the prospect have, what were your responses, and what were their reactions to your responses? Were they able to end the call? Was there something that you could have responded with that kept the call going?
- Questions: Did you get the information you needed? What questions could you have asked to gather more information from the prospect and keep the call going?
Find us on Google+
Tags: improving quota attainment, Prospecting, sales tips
Posted in Cold Calling, Sales, Sales Training | No Comments »
May 10th, 2012
 When we sell and reach prospects that do not show interest in talking with us or have a lack of interest in our products, we can begin to have doubt in what we sell and maybe doubt the company that we represent. This can have a negative impact on your results as it can not only change the tone of your voice to one that has less confidence, but it can also change how you respond to objections as you may have more of a “needy” frame of mind than confident.
The reality is that that the company that you represent is established and provides products and services to an existing customer base. These existing customers are receiving value in the form of being helped to decrease costs, increase revenue, save time, decrease risk, etc. Businesses need what you provide and those that need it but are quick to say they are not interested are missing out.
When you keep this in mind, and become fully aware of the value that your company, your products, and you yourself have to offer, then you can shift from a needy frame of mind to one of confidence. This can have a positive impact on how you carry yourself when talking with prospects and can improve your sales results.
If a prospect either does not need or is too stubborn to see how they can benefit from what you have to offer (after you go through a good attempt to communicate with them), the mindset should be that is fine because there are a lot of other prospects out there that need what we have and get it in and then quickly move on to find those prospects and scratch this one from the list.
Find us on Google+
Tags: Prospecting, sales tips, Sales training
Posted in Lead Generation, Sales Coaching | No Comments »
May 9th, 2012
 Sometimes being a sales person is like being a detective. We are trying to find the prospects that fit a particular description and we often have to navigate large, confusing organizations.
To help with this, when you are performing some sales prospecting and reach somebody and whether it is a good conversation or not, at the end of the call, go for the internal referral. An internal referral is when someone tells you somebody else that you should call in the organization or at the company.
Here is some sample language:
If you call the wrong person: “Oh ok. Do you happen to know who the person is that is responsible for that?”
If you reach the right person: “Great, thank you for you time. Do you know who else I should reach out to on your side in terms of somebody that might benefit from what we do?”
Sometimes people might be reluctant to give you a name as they don’t want to have any negative light shined on them for giving out someone’s name. If you sense this, you can try to defuse this fear by saying, “and, I want you to know that I won’t mention your name when I call them or anything.”
This is a step that can be added to the end of most conversations. Try to add it to your routine and see if your sales prospecting improves!
Find us on Google+
Tags: Prospecting, sales tips, Sales training
Posted in Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Sales Coaching | No Comments »
May 8th, 2012
 When calling a CFO or a c-level executive, you can sometimes ask the gatekeeper to transfer you to the executive assistant to the CFO instead of asking to speak with the CFO directly. If you ask for the CFO directly, they may either shut you down or dump you into a voicemail box. Not that it is not worth asking for them directly, but as another option (or second option) you can ask for their assistant who will have a tremendous amount of information and may be able to help get you in.
When you reach the assistant, treat them like a prospect and tell them why you are calling. You can tell them the company you are with, how you help businesses and why you think it might make sense to reach the executive. Depending on how the executive assistant responds, you could ask some qualifying questions to try to gather some information and share some of the common pain points that your prospects have to see if there is any pain that he or she knows about.
There are four great end results or goals to work toward with this sales tactic:
-
- If you get their buy-in, you can get their advice on how to best interact and communicate with the target executive
- Actually get them to help you to get on their calendar
- Get them to transfer you through
- Find out other contacts in the organization that you should call and introduce yourself to
Go out there and get some meetings with high value targets at the executive level!
Find us on Google+
Tags: imrproving salse performance, sales tips, Sales training
Posted in Sales, Sales Coaching | No Comments »
May 4th, 2012
 The products and services that we sell help our existing clients in certain areas. You job is to find prospects that need help in these areas and in order to find the people that need help, we must find the prospects that have pain.
In order to find pain, we want to figure out if the people we talk to are great, just ok, or could be better in the areas where we have services to offer. If they are great, that is fine and they are maybe not a fit. If they are just ok or could be better, we want to create a conversation where we can talk to them about how things are going and share how we have helped businesses with those same needs.
If they are great, or think they are great, they may still have pain but are just unaware of it. This is where throwing the common pain points at them can trigger something. If you go through both the qualifying questions and the common pain points in the script and they feel like they are great, simply move on.
Find those people that things are just ok or could be better. They are out there.
Find us on Google+
Tags: Cold Calling, improving quota attainment, Prospecting, sales tips, Sales training
Posted in Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Sales Coaching | No Comments »
April 28th, 2012
 Getting an appointment set is likely sometimes the main goal when making cold calls. While this can often seem like a challenging task to complete, there are some simple things that can be done to improve success with appointment making.
1. Focus on the Right Goal
Focus on the right goal while cold calling prospects. It can be natural to fall into the trap of trying to sell your products and services while on a cold call. Even though your ultimate goal is to sell our products, this actually might not be the best goal for us to work on during a cold call as a cold call should only last between two to five minutes.
With that being the case, we can benefit from focusing on a goal that fits well with that amount of time. Since we cannot completely and effectively sell our products during a cold call, a good goal to focus on is one of getting the prospect interested in and committed to a conversation. In other words, a good goal to stay focused on is getting the appointment set.
2. Build Rapport
To help with scheduling appointments, we can try to build rapport with prospects. This is important due to the fact that people buy from people they like. In addition, prospects are more likely to agree to taking an appointment with someone that they have a decent level of rapport with.
Although, a cold call does not present at tremendous amount of time to build rapport, but there is enough time to use a few tactics to start to establish rapport. By doing some things like respecting the prospects time, showing that we understand the prospect, listening, disqualifying, and qualifying, we can take some minor steps toward building rapport.
3. Qualify the Prospect
By qualifying prospects during cold calls, you will actually create much better conversations with prospects as you will be asking questions and making prospects more interested and engaged in what you are calling about. Not only will this lead to a better cold call by creating a better conversation, it will also decrease the prospect’s guard since you are showing interest in making sure they fit before trying to sell to them and all of this can help to with making appointments.
4. Build Interest
Before we try to get the appointment set, we need to build interest. It is similar to trying to reel in a fish. When a fish has a hook in its mouth, we need to get it to bite down before we can try to reel in. With scheduling appointments, we need to get the prospect to bite down when we try to get commitment to move forward.
Launch Pad Solutions provides sales coaching helping sales pros to get the appointment set.
Find us on Google+
Tags: Appointment Set, increasing sales, Prospecting, Sales, sales tips
Posted in Cold Calling, Lead Generation | No Comments »
March 21st, 2012
Outbound sales can be challenging for many reasons. Each person we call and each conversation we have is unique and you never know what direction things are going to go. With that being what it is, one thing we can do to grow and improve is to embrace a concept of reflection after each call we make.
After a cold call ends, we can reflect on how the call went in an attempt to identify what happened and what could have done better. This is helpful due to the fact that many different scenarios tend to recur again and again. If we can consciously reflect on what happened on the previous call and identify what we could have done better, then we can improve our ability to handle similar scenarios that occur on future calls.
One area to focus our refection is in the area of objections as they are likely to occur on every cold call. Here are three steps to take while reflecting on objections
1. Reflect on the Objection
Reflect back during outbound sales on the objections the prospect had during the call. If there is one that brought the call to end, you should try to identify what exactly it was. Once you identify the objections, were those objections that you anticipated or were prepared for? If not, it may be good to start thinking about them and work toward being prepared for them next time they come up.
2. Reflect on the Response
Reflect on how you responded to the objections you faced and how the prospect responded to your objection responses. Assess if the there might have been responses that could have been delivered that might have kept the call going. .
3. Strategize Moving Forward
Strategize how best to handle objections on future calls. If we already had a responses scripted, this step may involve adjusting or tweaking our plan. If there are new objections encountered, this step could involve building responses for the new objections moving forward.
By stopping to look back after each call during outbound sales, we will can greatly increase our ability to be prepared for all of the different directions that calls go moving forward.
Click here to comment on this article.
Launch Pad Solutions provides sales coaching helping sales pros to improve outbound sales.
Michael Halper
Author & Sales Trainer
Tags: Cold Calling, Lead Generation, Prospecting, Sales, Sales Coaching
Posted in Cold Calling, Lead Generation, Sales Training | No Comments »
March 13th, 2012
 Identifying how to make outbound calls can often be challenging when working in a sales role. Below are six steps to help with improving in this area regardless and can help anyone regardless of skill level and experience.
1. Focus on your core value
To improve outbound sales, it is critical to clearly identify the core value that you have to offer the prospects you will be calling. Not only is this important as it should be ingrained in your cold call script and objections responses, but also having a clear awareness around the value that you have to offer can also improve your mental state while cold calling.
2. Identify the ideal prospect
You need to clearly identify what your ideal prospect looks like. What segment of the market that do you fit best with, we cannot and should not try to sell to everybody. By identifying what this segment looks like in terms of geography, size, industry, and contact title can help to create a laser focus for the prospects that you should spend your valuable time on when figuring out how to make outbound calls.
3. Identify differentiation
There is competition that you face on every deal. Even if there is no direct competition, you still compete against the prospect’s option to do nothing. Figuring out how you differ from the competition is critical when trying to figure out how to make outbound calls.
4. Develop a call script
You could just wing when performing outbound sales or you can develop some sort of cold call script or plan. This could be as detailed as a script that we read word for word or it could be something that is more of an outline with key points. Having a document that has your thoughts organized can greatly improve your probability for successful calls.
5. Prepare for objections
You will face objections on every cold call when the prospect will try to end the call. The better prepared you are to deal with these, the more success that you will have when improving our knowledge around how to make outbound calls.
6. Reflect back to improve moving forward
You can reflect back after a call ends to evaluate what took place to improve moving forward. You can look back at questions that could have been asked, look back at objections that the prospect delivered, and identify what could have been done better. Going through this routine after each call can greatly improve your success on future calls.
Click here to comment on this article.
Launch Pad Solutions provides cold call training helping individuals to figure out how to make outbound calls.
Tags: Cold Calling, Cold Calling Coaching, cold calling tips, Prospecting, Sales Coaching
Posted in Cold Calling, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Sales Coaching | No Comments »
March 6th, 2012
During outbound sales, our tonality in terms of how we say what we say can have a significant impact since the prospect cannot see us. With that being what it is, here are four ways to improve our tonality and voice while selling over the phone.
1. Smile when you dial
Whether we are aware of this or not, our internal feelings can easily be displayed to others through our tonality when we speak. And if we are not enjoying making the cold calls that we are making or are nervous, it can likely be heard on the other end of the phone and this could establish a poor start to a cold call.
On the other side of this, if we are excited about what we are doing and thoroughly enjoy it, the person that we are talking to over the phone can pick up on this and can be more receptive to us when cold calling.
The problem here is, how often do we really get thrilled about or enjoy making cold calls? One very easy tactic to use here to make it sound like we are happy and enjoying what we are doing even if we are not is to actually grin or smile while talking on the phone and making calls. This simple body language change will actually make change and improve your tonality and can improve your conversations with prospects and gatekeepers.
2. Display confidence
One very effective way to improve your impression during outbound sales is to sound confident in your voice. It is very understandable to not be confident when cold calling as the prospect often has more power since they can ultimately chose whether to talk with us or not.
But if we stop to realize that we have value to offer in the products we sell, in the company we represent, and in ourselves as a true sales professional, we can begin to have more confidence internally and that can come through externally in our tonality.
3. Communicate with curiosity
If we communicate with a tonality that has a bit of curiosity during outbound sales, we can often decrease the guard of prospects and gatekeepers. This can involve having a frame or tone that expresses that we don’t know exactly whom we need to talk to and we could use help being pointed in the right direction.
4. Sound like You Don’t Need the Deal
To really improve the way you sound while performing outbound sales is to sound like you don’t need the deal. The two extremes for the impression that we could make are a sales person that hasn’t sold anything for a while and the other extreme is a sales person that has a line of prospects that are ready to purchase. There is a tremendous difference between these two impressions that a prospect could have and the tonality that we use could influence which one we make.
The best way to sound like we don’t need the deal during outbound sales is to present ourselves in the same way that we would if we have already hit and exceeded our sales targets. If we carry ourselves like we are above plan and in a very comfortable position in terms of sales and pipeline, this will come through in our tonality and create a more positive impression with the prospect. We will always know how badly we want and need the deal, but if we at least act like we don’t necessarily need the deal, not only might we present ourselves as very confident to the prospect, but if we do that long enough we may actually begin to trick ourselves to start to create real confidence that does not need to be faked.
Click here to comment on this article.
Launch Pad Solutions provides cold call training to help with outbound sales.
Tags: Cold Calling, cold calling tips, imrproving salse performance, Lead Generation, outbound sales, Prospecting, sales tips, Sales training
Posted in Cold Calling, Inside Sales, Sales Coaching | No Comments »
February 19th, 2012
When trying to improve outbound sales, the main ways that we have to communicate with are what we say and how we sound when we say it. With that being what it is, we can try to improve each of those areas to make sure that we communicating at our best.
When it comes to what we say, our training and planning like building a good script and sales role-playing will help us to improve how we execute there. Once we are good there, we can do work to improve how we sound by improving our voice and tonality.
This is a very critical area to place some attention as when we cold call, the person on the other end of the phone cannot see us and as result has less information to base their reaction on.
The way we say the words we use in terms of tone and infliction is what produces our tonality and this has a large impact on how people receive us. An easy way to look at this is that as we talk to someone, we are sub-communicating vibes the entire time.
Negative Vibes
The vibes we send out to people we interact with can either be negative or positive. Below is a summary of common negative vibes that we can commonly send out when we during outbound sales.
Weak
Nervous
Cold
Abrasive
Irritated
Needy
Inexperienced
Aggressive
Unintelligent
Unfriendly
Self-absorbed
Dishonest
Positive Vibes
For each negative vibe, there is a positive vibe that could be communicated in its place.
Strong
Confident
Warm
Soft
Calm
Abundance
Experienced
Passive
Intelligent
Friendly
Serving
Honest
It can help to see those vibes listed out to see how for each negative vibe we might be sending during outbound sales, we could stop and focus on changing our voice to try to send a positive vibe instead to try to trigger an improvement in interactions.
Negative Impressions
Here is a summary of the feelings that can be created on the prospect’s side when we accidentally sub-communicate certain negative vibes through our tonality. The main thing to take from this exercise is to look at how sub-communicating any of these vibes to a gatekeeper or prospect can decrease their motivation to help you, to work with you, and to buy your products and services.
Weak
They are not good at what they do
They do not have experience
They might not be credible
They will be uncomfortable to work with
Nervous
They are not experienced
They do not know what they are doing
They might not be credible
They will be uncomfortable to work with
Cold
They are not very nice
I do not want to help this sales person
They will be uncomfortable to work with
Abrasive
They are not easy to talk to
They are unpleasant to work with
I do not want to work with this person
I do not want to help this person
Irritated
They must not be very good at their job
They must not have a good product to sell
I do not want to work with this person
I do not want to help this person
Needy
They must not be selling very much
They must not have a good product to sell
They are going to bug me a lot
Inexperienced
They might not know what they are talking about
They might not be credible
They might be uncomfortable to work with
Aggressive
They are difficult to talk to
I do not want to work with this person
They are going to bug me a lot
I do not want to help this person
Unintelligent
They might not be good at their job
They might not be credible
They might be uncomfortable to work with
Unfriendly
They are difficult to talk to
They are unpleasant to work with
I do not want to work with this person
I do not want to help this person
Self-absorbed
I do not know if I can trust this person
This person does not care about me
I do not want to help this person
Dishonest
I do not know if I can trust this person
They might not be credible
I do not want to work with this person
I do not want to help this person
Click here to comment on this article.
Launch Pad Solutions provides cold call training to help with outbound sales.
Tags: Cold Calling, cold calling tips, Customer Relationship Management, Prospecting, sales tips, Sales training
Posted in Cold Calling, Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Training | No Comments »
|
