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Simon Says Clear
Are you struggling with your cold calls?
Chances are you are making one or more cold calling sins. Pay close attention next time you are prospecting to see if you catch yourself making these sales-killing mistakes. All are easy to fix and will almost immediately improve your results.
1. Using a Script
This might be considered blasphemy to sales trainers around the world, but if you are reading off a script… your prospect can tell. Many of the old techniques of cold calling revolve on developing winning scripts. The problem with that is it comes off sounding fake. How many times have you been transferred to a call center abroad and talked to someone reading word-for-word to you? Did it sound authentic or enthusiastic (two of the most vital selling attitudes)? Chances are you didn’t have much patience with that operator. Guess what… that’s what it sounds like to your prospect.
How do you solve this problem without winging it, either? You create an outline for yourself. Work on your introduction, your probing questions, and your objective/closing statements. Keep the actual words dynamic so they always sound fresh. This way you’ll be able to maintain your enthusiasm and won’t sound like a telemarketer selling you long distance phone service.
2. Premature Presentation
There is a problem many salespeople seem to run into on a constant basis… we call it premature presentation.
This is the tendency to immediately pitch your wonderful product or service, and blab on about all its wonderful benefits. You quickly put the prospect in “Salesman Alert” status and quickly encounter the oh-so dreaded “not interested” response before you even finished your sentence. You fix this by learning the most important sales skill every discovered-listening.
Find out what your prospect wants. Find her true needs. Find out if you can fix his most stubborn problem. Then offer your product as a solution.
3. Wasting the Prospects Time
Many sales people forget that they interrupted the prospect when they made their cold call. You might have made an introduction and asked a few probing questions and now you’re yapping away. A lot of us tend to speak too much and too fast when we get nervous… and cold calling can certainly put us in that situation.
Keep a timer nearby. Learn to get in and get out. Don’t start asking the prospect about his hobbies, her family, the weather…
You always want to be the one who ends the call. It sets the frame and allows you to stay in control of the sale. What you never want to do is force the prospect to end the call because she’s been patiently waiting for you to finish so she can go back to what she was doing before you interrupted her.
4. Trying to Close Without an Appointment
Never try to close a sale on a cold call, especially on a big ticket item. There is no possible way you can honestly have presented your product within the few minutes on the phone. The only reason you cold call is to create a lead. That’s it. Leave the closing for when you speak again or during a set appointment. If you rush the sale, the automatic response will always want to decline. Set a firm time to talk again and leave the selling for then.
5. Not Following Up
They say fortune is in the follow up.
That statement must have come from a sales professional. Many times you won’t be able to get through to the prospect, or maybe they were on there way out when you called. Don’t give up that easy. Make a note of it, and follow up. You never want to break contact unless you get a firm “not interested” from the prospect. Anything less calls for more follow up.
Keep a detailed journal or contact management software and be sure to write yourself detailed notes. You never know why or when a prospect will become a customer so stay close by and they’ll reward you with their business when the time is right.
6. Selling the Voicemail
There can be an entire book written about proper voicemail strategies. You can successfully approach this in many ways, but instantly ruin it with one common, yet disastrous habit… pitching the machine.
You can be vague; you can ask for a call back, you can even tell them you have some important matter to discuss. But if you sound like you are selling during that message, one thing is for certain… returning your call will not be a priority for her.
7. Cold Calling…
Finally, to contradict everything. The 7th and greatest cold calling sin is in fact cold calling.
“But we just went over all these wonderful solutions to the major problems and now you’re telling me not to cold call?”
Yes. I am. Listen, cold calling is not efficient anymore. People don’t like being interrupted. They don’t have the patience of someone trying to pitch them something they have no intention of buying. And most importantly, cold calling stresses out you, the sales professional. Life is too short to be dealing with rejection all day long. One of the reasons I learned the GUTS method of selling was mainly to avoid cold calling.
The phone will always be your most important weapon when selling. But use it talk to people who raised their hand and said “Yes, I might be interested in what you’re offering. Tell me more.” Sales actually becomes fun when you deal with prospects who want to talk to you and have a high chance of doing business with you.
Spend your time talking to warm leads and cold calling will never stress you out again.
Yours in bigger commissions!
About the author: Ron Simon is a sales professional that learned the GUTS Sales Method after failing with all other sales training. He discovered that learning how to sell is the ‘Million Dollar Skill’ and created a resource for others wishing to learn a stress-free sales method that combines questions with subtle persuasion. Click here for free sales tips and techniques and to learn the GUTS Sales Method. You have full permission to reprint this article provided this box is kept unchanged.
Pharoahe Monch – Simon Says (remix) (squeaky clean)
