Talk about an uphill battle, the phone scripts that some of you use just beg to be hung up on. Here’s a typical script I hear from my clients that the company recommends they use when calling a referral. “Hi Bob this is Susan. I’m calling you today because John Smith a client of mine recommended I contact you for an appointment. Would Tuesday or Thursday work best for you?” A script anything like this example is just setting yourself up for a NO.
This call is a big mistake from the onset with little hope for sales success. You should never be calling referrals they should be calling you because the person who referred them talked to them about you and asked them to give you a call. Now I understand that’s a completely new mind set for most of you, so let’s focus on what you could do to at least set yourself up for sales success with this type of call. To do that you need to understand the components of a good call.
You only have a few seconds to demonstrate value to the person you are calling. Face it, they didn’t ask you to call them. You have rudely interrupted them. They don’t know you and they have no reason to want to talk to you, so it’s your job to give them a reason to want to give you another 10 seconds of their time. To do this you need to talk about the ultimate result or the big value the person, whose arm you twisted to get them to give up this person’s name, received from working with you.
Your ultimate value will get you an additional few seconds so now you have the opportunity to engagement this person you have so rudely interrupted. Hopefully when you got their name from the person referring them you also obtained a little background information about the person and their relationship with your referral source. Use this information to ask open ended questions to engage the other person and get them talking.
You don’t want to waste your time on useless appointments, and they certainly don’t want to waste their time meeting you when they have no interest in you or what you have to offer, so do both of you a huge favor and use this call to pre-screen the referral. After you get the person to open up and start talking a little bit start asking pertinent open ended questions that indicate if this person is an ideal client. In fact, you can even tell the person that you don’t want to waste their time so if they could answer just a couple quick questions you would both know if there would be any value in getting to know more about each other.
You don’t have to set yourself up for failure and make things so hard. Use a little common sense and change your calling approach. Recognize that when you make that call you are really earning your right to another few seconds of the other persons time. In order to make that happen you have to communicate an ultimate result that the referral would find enticing and then you have to engage them. Utilizing the components of a good call will help you to increase your sales and make things a whole lot easier.
Would you like to learn more about your sales skills? Try this Sales Skills Analysis and find out where your opportunities for improvement are.
When you absolutely must have measurable results to consistently and predictably get where you want to go for Superior Success...visit CoachingMegaAgents to start on your journey for superior success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cheryl_Clausen
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Sales Training Program - Do You Have What It Takes to Become a Top Producer?
It takes a sales training program that provides a fail-safe sales process to become a top producer. A fail-safe sales process gets you consistently doing the right things in the right way. When you follow a fail-safe sales process you will effortlessly help your prospect to choose what you have to offer.
One of the biggest mistakes that most sales professionals make and that many sales training programs don’t spend enough time on is getting your prospect to tell you what they really want. That can’t happen until you gain enough favorable attention with your prospect that they feel comfortable talking with you. Your key sales goal at this point in the conversation is to get them to tell you everything they want in relation to your offer.
When you don’t know enough you will invariably jump on the wrong band wagon and try to take off with a solution that your prospect has no interest in hearing. When you do that you may notice that they become inattentive and disengaged, or at least I hope you are noticing. You have to keep probing until you know everything they want and everything that is keeping them from having that now before you can move past this part of the sales process.
Through your sales training program you should realize that you need to dig until you get to the bigger benefit. The bigger benefit comes out of your conversation when you begin to explore how the problem they are having is impacting them beyond the obvious. As they begin to share with you they should be uncovering an even greater impact that this problem is having on their lives than they realized before they started talking to you.
From your past sales training programs hopefully you realize that your offer only has value to your prospect when they tell you it has value. If you aren’t getting your prospects to tell the value your offer has for them then it’s sort of like trying to push a string. And we both know it’s a whole lot easier to pull a string than it is to push a string, so let them do the work.
You are the sales professional and it’s your job to keep your fail-safe sales process on track. Your prospect doesn’t know what’s supposed to happen when, but you sure should. And I don’t mean following through a canned sales presentation. Using a canned sales presentation is the absolute worst thing you can do, so if you are using one now stop immediately and start following a fail-safe sales process that will make you a top producer.
Would you like to learn more about your sales skills? Try this Sales Skills Analysis and find out where your opportunities for improvement are.
When you absolutely must have measurable results to consistently and predictably get where you want to go for Superior Success...visit CoachingMegaAgents to start on your journey for superior success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cheryl_Clausen
One of the biggest mistakes that most sales professionals make and that many sales training programs don’t spend enough time on is getting your prospect to tell you what they really want. That can’t happen until you gain enough favorable attention with your prospect that they feel comfortable talking with you. Your key sales goal at this point in the conversation is to get them to tell you everything they want in relation to your offer.
When you don’t know enough you will invariably jump on the wrong band wagon and try to take off with a solution that your prospect has no interest in hearing. When you do that you may notice that they become inattentive and disengaged, or at least I hope you are noticing. You have to keep probing until you know everything they want and everything that is keeping them from having that now before you can move past this part of the sales process.
Through your sales training program you should realize that you need to dig until you get to the bigger benefit. The bigger benefit comes out of your conversation when you begin to explore how the problem they are having is impacting them beyond the obvious. As they begin to share with you they should be uncovering an even greater impact that this problem is having on their lives than they realized before they started talking to you.
From your past sales training programs hopefully you realize that your offer only has value to your prospect when they tell you it has value. If you aren’t getting your prospects to tell the value your offer has for them then it’s sort of like trying to push a string. And we both know it’s a whole lot easier to pull a string than it is to push a string, so let them do the work.
You are the sales professional and it’s your job to keep your fail-safe sales process on track. Your prospect doesn’t know what’s supposed to happen when, but you sure should. And I don’t mean following through a canned sales presentation. Using a canned sales presentation is the absolute worst thing you can do, so if you are using one now stop immediately and start following a fail-safe sales process that will make you a top producer.
Would you like to learn more about your sales skills? Try this Sales Skills Analysis and find out where your opportunities for improvement are.
When you absolutely must have measurable results to consistently and predictably get where you want to go for Superior Success...visit CoachingMegaAgents to start on your journey for superior success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cheryl_Clausen
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