Sales Therapy 101: Breaking Your Fear of Cold Calling
July 31, 2010
Almost every day, visitors to my Unlock The Game? website click on my live instant-messenger chat button, which invites them to “Ask Ari a selling question.”
And do you know what their most common question is?
Yes, you guessed it: “Is there any way I can break through or overcome my fear of cold calling?”
Most of us have at least some resistance to cold calling, and some people I talk with have such a paralyzing visceral and emotional fear of cold calling that they can’t even consider doing it.
In some ways, the fear of cold calling is practically an epidemic — but not the kind of epidemic that gets publicized on TV or in newspapers.
It’s a silent and personal one, a psychological struggle that happens in our own hearts and minds.
The fear of cold calling is a painful, daily struggle for many entrepreneurs and salespeople who have been trained in traditional selling techniques.
Traditional sales trainers answer questions about cold calling this way:
“All you have to do is make more phone calls.”
“All you have to do is think more positive thoughts.”
Closing That Big Sale With Conference Calling
December 1, 2009
So you’re in business. Whether it is micro, small, medium, or enterprise; you know the one key element you need to succeed in your business ? sales.
Now, you have studied and learned many practices on succeeding in your arena, but there may be something still overlooked. You most undoubtedly have strained to learn every technique possible to gain the competitive advantage for ultimate return on your investment. What you may be missing out on is what you use to communicate during your sales process, more specifically; what communication products you currently use to implement your suave techniques of sale persuasion.
Recently a client in Florida phoned me requesting a way to consult with a large potential client and his peers overseas in Africa via telephone. He was a well traveled business man and was used to flying over to leads himself, but he thought he might try something new, something with less overhead; after all, it was still just a potential client. Well that request was a no brainer for me when I talked to him. I automatically suggested conference calling.
Control Your Sales Calls From The Start
April 4, 2009
Sales calls that you control are what all salespeople want. I am a big believer that questioning is the most important skill for sales professionals. In order to stay in control of your sales calls, whether by phone or in person, you need to be the one asking questions most of the time.
To be the one asking questions most of the time, you have to get to questioning right from the start of your sales calls. This issue’s tip is about how to make this transition quickly with finesse, whether you are calling by phone or are in person.
To accomplish this, you will need to eliminate beginning your sales calls with long-winded “presentations” about your company. This may seem counter-intuitive. You may have reasoned that your prospect doesn’t know who you are, and needs your introductory “presentation” as background for a sales discussion.
Although this is the mode many of us are used to, the reality is different. If you politely give your customer a valid business reason for you to ask questions from the start, you will find that virtually all of your customers will let you do this. You will then be able to spend most of your valuable time investigating what your customer wants and needs.
3 Simple Rules For Your Next Sales Call
August 7, 2008
The other day I received a call from a telemarketer selling a website “starter kit” for small businesses. If you are reading this right now, then you undoubtedly know that I have a website. Normally, I would quickly get the telemarketer off the line so I could get back to showing people how to make more money. But this call got my attention because I thought that this might be a potential service that I could recommend to my clients. So I decided to listen to this sales pitch to evaluate the offering and the approach that the telemarketer used.
Well the rep started by going straight into a sales pitch. She was using the age-old technique of trying to complete her benefits-loaded-sales-pitch before I knew what hit me. This technique is very similar to television, radio, or print advertising where if you show your ad to enough people with a pulse, then you will eventually find a few people who actually need the service.
Sales Success Step 1: STRONG SALES CULTURE
April 20, 2008
Big business who sell well embrace a sales culture. It is evident from the leadership that winning and keeping customers is important. Sales is not a “function” or a department with “CARE - Customers Are Really Everything” signs. Leaders in these businesses make it their business to keep in touch with customers, to personally engage on the big deals, and to assist the sales people with practical insights or support.
As a result big business often have the edge over smaller to medium sized businesses by having invested in multi-level relationships with a client over a long time. The value of this can be as simple as a phone call to suggest an account is at risk, or to smooth over a service failure, and even a nudge that a pencil should be sharpened on pricing.
Best practice sales organisations recognise that the role of the organisation is to support the sale. As a result there is a high level of alignment with marketing, and a genuine lack of “us” and “them” between sales and other functions.
Get Instant Rapport On Sales Cold Calls
December 11, 2007
Immediately establish rapport on cold-calls by matching your prospect’s voice qualities - tone, pace, and emotion. Matching the emotion, or mood, of your prospect is key. If you begin your call sounding excited when she is not, you will be immediately branded as a salesperson, and the prospect’s guard will be way up.
By matching her emotion, you immediately get her thinking “this person is like me”. And we all want to talk to people like us. Begin your call with a simple question to verify the prospect’s name even though you know who you are calling. This is your first chance to establish rapport.
Let’s say that the next name on your prospect list is Dave Jackson:
DJ - “Hello. This is Dave Jackson”
You - “Hello, is this Dave Jackson?”
DJ - “Yes it is.”
Repeat his name while matching his voice qualities - tone, pace, and emotion. You ask the name verification question, even though he stated his name, to break his thought pattern.
Then make a judgment about just how busy he is. If the prospect feels receptive go ahead and deliver your attention grabbing intro.
