I don’t know what you sell, but when you are cold calling, you are an interruption. Your prospects are not waiting for your calls. In fact most of them would rather you didn’t call.
As a sales professional I am always exploring ways to become better at the skills of selling; you know:
– Cold-calling
– Discovery
– Presentations
– Overcoming Objections
– Closing
– Follow up
So know you have a prospect on the line, you’ve interrupted their day and you are going to go full tilt into your pitch? Does that remind you of the telemarketers that used to call you at home before you placed your number on the “Do not call” list?
Let me suggest an approach that I have found successful for myself.
When the prospect answers the phone and you confirm you’ve reached your target, state your 1 -2 sentence “benefit statement”; you know the one that answers the question what’s in it for me from the prospects point of view. For one of the products I sell it goes something like this; “We’ve taken the science of direct-mail marketing and the psychology of collections and combined them to create letters and statements designed to get a response. In some cases an increase of almost 50%. Do you have a minute?”
At this point I acknowledge that I have interrupted their day and I ask if we can take a few minutes right now to see if they want to learn more OR can we schedule 5 -10 minutes later. In essence, I am making a phone appointment. Do they always keep it? No. But the ones that do are more likely to move forward through the sales process. Perhaps even more importantly when I call them the next time, there is a sense of respect. I have respected their time so they are more open to the next conversation.
We don’t have to be hard-core to be successful in selling. Talk to your clients and listen to how they talk about the sales people calling and “bugging them”. When we take the step to respect our market, our market will respect us.
Take good care
