Cold Call Information

Seven Steps to Cold Calling Follow-up

2006-12-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Seven Steps to Cold Calling Follow-up
by Ari Galper, Founder of Unlock The Game®

Let’s say you’ve had a great conversation with a prospect. They’ve shared their problems and seem genuinely interested in what you are offering. You’re excited about following up with them – but your calls aren’t returned. What’s happening?

Well, the only way to find out the truth of the situation is to ask them. However, before you do, let’s stop and consider some important points. You must approach this in a way that invites trust and diffuses the barriers to comfortable communication.

Here are seven important steps to follow:

1. Don't assume the sale.

Prospects are used to the traditional buyer-seller relationship. They assume you’ll pressure them. Therefore, they may decide not to tell you things that make them vulnerable to pressure. Until you’re sure you know the complete truth, you can never assume the sale is yours.

2. Keep making it easy for potential clients to tell you their truth.

Toward the end of your conversation, ask, “Do you have any more questions?” If the answer is no, follow up with the 100% final truth gathering question: “Now, are you 100% sure that there’s nothing else that I can do on my end to make you feel more comfortable with this situation?”
You’ll be amazed how often people will reply, “Well, actually, there’s one more issue...” It’s at this point that you really start to hear their truth.

3. Call back to get the truth, not close the sale.

Most potential clients who suddenly disappear expect you to chase them down. They expect you to call and say, “Hi, I was just wondering where things are at?”
Instead, eliminate all sales pressure by telling them you’re okay with their decision not to move forward, based on their not having called you back. In other words, take a step backward. Most of the time, this will open the door to a new level of trust-filled communication.

4. Reassure them that you can handle a “no.”

Of course, we’d rather hear a yes. However, the only way to free yourself and your clients from subtle sales pressure is to let them know that it’s not about the sale – it’s about the best choice for them. If that means no sale, it’s okay with you.

5. Ask for feedback.

Whenever prospects disappear, call them back (e-mail only as a last resort because dialogue is always better). Simply ask, “Would you please share your feedback with me as to how I can improve for next time? I’m committed to understanding where I went wrong.”

This is not being feeble or weak. It’s being humble. This invites the truth.

6. Don't try to “close” a sale.

If your intuition tells you that the sales process isn’t going in the direction it should be going (which is always toward greater trust and truth), then trust those feelings.

Make it safe for prospects to tell you where they stand. It’s simple. All you have to say is, “Where do you think we should go from here?” But be prepared because you might not want to hear the truth of how they’re feeling. You can cope with this by keeping your larger goal in mind, which is always to establish that the two of you have a “fit.”

7. Give yourself the last word.

Eliminate the anxiety of waiting for the final call that will tell you whether the sale is going to happen. Instead, schedule a time for getting back to each other during your conversation. This eliminates chasing. Simply suggest, “Can we plan to get back to each other on a day and at a time that works for you? Not to close the sale, but simply to bring closure, regardless of what you decide. I’m okay either way, and that’ll save us from having to chase each other.”

You'll find that these suggestions make selling much less painful because you stay focused on the truth instead of the sale. The truth is, the more we release the idea of needing to make the sale, the more sales we will likely see.

Ari Galper, founder of Unlock The Game, makes cold calling painless and simple. Learn his free cold calling secrets even the sales gurus don't know. To receive your 10 free audio mini-lessons visit http://www.UnlockTheGame.com

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Spectacular Structure for a Cold Calling Script

2006-12-27T17:51:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Spectacular Structure for a Cold Calling Script
By Leslie Buterin

There are so many wimpy cold calling scripts out there that if your try them all they’ll make your head spin.

You’ll find some scripts tell you to introduce yourself and bond before you get to the point ... as though you’ll build a lasting relationship within a few seconds on the phone.

Other scripts direct you to tell prospect all about the company… as though your company’s history that will justify the fact that your call that has interrupted the prospect’s day.

Some scripts even start out with the unconvincing words “This is not a sales call…” Yeah, right. Who do they think they’re kidding!

By the same token you and I both know that the power of any sales presentation is in the words.

Face-to-face you have all sorts of visual cues that let you know whether or not you and your prospect are strolling down the primrose path … together.

In the blink of an eye you pick up cues such as a prospect’s crossed arms, broken eye contact, and other body language that let you know when your words have taken the two of you off the profitable path. With these cues you quickly figure out how to get back on track and can easily adjust your sales presentation accordingly.

On the phone, however, your cues come from background sounds, tone of voice, pacing, and the words themselves.

To stay on course self-control is key.

Say too much and you’ll hear, “If he’s interested he’ll call you” and wonder, “What happened?” Say too little and the gatekeeper will ask questions, to keep you talking, find out what she thinks she needs to know, and then gets off of the phone.

Since sales professionals have a gift for gab and thrive on social interaction, we are most comfortable talking with people face-to-face. We prefer to be around people and usually dread cold calling on the telephone. When we do our cold call prospecting, it is easy for us to talk too fast; too spew out way too many words for the prospect to grasp on the phone; and to relinquish self-control altogether. We experience failure … not our favorite lesson … and quickly build an aversion to making cold calls.

Successful sales professionals turn aversion to attraction by using scripts that are in essence a sophisticated sales presentation. Scripts that are stripped down to the essential words; not too many, and not too few words that “make the sale” in their 90-seconds of time on the phone with an executive or executive assistant.

Yes! A script can be that good and yield results of 6-8 appointments out of every 10 calls.

How do you come up with a script that’s so good? First, you must craft a script so that it contains each of the components of an effective face-to-face sales presentation. Then you must streamline the script for successful transition to the telephone.

A spectacular structure for a cold calling script is this:

1. Use the prospect’s name, in the form of a question as you opening line.

2. Identify yourself

3. State the purpose of your call

4. Build a benefit statement that tells your prospect precisely what he/she will get out of meeting with you—in terms of bottom line numbers.

5. Maintain self-control by knowing what you want out of the call and asking the questions you need to ask to get there.

Here’s and example of such a script:

“Mary?”

“This is Leslie. I’m calling from ColdCallingExecutives.com to see whether or not I can double John’s revenues in 90 days or less.”

“When’s the best time for him to meet, this week or next?”

“I appreciate you. Thank you.”

Even the best cold callers are struck by how much effort it takes to relax during cold calls to executives; how few words actually need to spoken during a structured sales call, and the power of a carefully crafted sales call.

You’ve heard the phrase “KISS … Keep It Simple, Stupid!” You can modify that a bit to help you with your own spectacular script for successful cold call prospecting. KISS… Keep It Simple and Structured. Then, enjoy your success as your new simply, spectacular cold calling strategy pays off!

Forward this article to friends—they’ll thank you for it!

For your FREE mini-course “Jealously Guarded Secrets to Cold Calling Company Presidents” visit http://www.ColdCallingExecutives.com! Or call Your Sales Coach for Extreme Profitability, author/speaker Leslie Buterin (like butterin’ bread) at (816) 554-3674 9-3 CST (that’s Kansas City/Chicago Time).

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leslie_Buterin

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to Make Cold Calling Opportunities Out of Voice Mails

2006-12-27T17:51:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to Make Cold Calling Opportunities Out of Voice Mails
By Ari Galper

Turn voice mails into a cold calling journey of discovery!

Most people who still use the traditional cold calling mindset look at voicemail as a dead end. They say to themselves, “Oh well, I may as well leave a message and hope he calls me back.”

This almost never happens, and we know it. But we’re often so relieved not to have to talk with someone, that we leave a message anyway. We avoid dealing with another person’s potential negative response to us and we avoid being challenged by the receptionist as well.

By the time the day is over, we might feel good because we’ve played the “numbers game” and made a lot of calls. But our productivity has been minimal. And over time that can make us feel frustrated by our experiences in cold calling.

With the new approach to cold calling, voicemail is an opportunity for discovery. It leads us beyond voicemail. Voice mail becomes a starting point for you begin the process of locating the person you’re trying to contact.

Our objective is not to pursue people to make a sale in this new way of cold calling. It is to uncover the truth of their situation and to be okay with the outcome, whether it’s a “yes” or a “no.”

So we can begin to feel more comfortable hitting “0” when we get someone’s voicemail. Because we then have an opportunity to go back to the receptionist and begin a dialogue based on asking for help.

Here’s how the dialogue might go:

“Hi, maybe you can help me out for a second? I’m trying to get hold of Mike and I got his voicemail. Would you happen to know if he’s at lunch, or on vacation, or in a meeting by any chance?”

Here, you aren’t just asking to find Mike. And you’re also providing possible solutions to finding Mike. This helps the receptionist feel as if he or she is part of the problem-solving process.

The receptionist is likely to offer one of two responses. The first is, “Yes, he’s in a meeting (or at lunch or on vacation) and I’m not sure when he’ll be back at his desk.”

This answer has just given you a lot more information than you would have if you had just left a voicemail. Now you know your contact’s whereabouts in real time and you can call back at a more appropriate time.

The second response is, “No, I don’t know where he is.” In this case, you would reply, “That’s not a problem…” This low-key statement diffuses any possible pressure that the receptionist might be feeling about not being able to answer your question.

You can then continue with, “Would you happen to know anyone whose desk or office is near him or who works in his area who might know where he is?” Again, you’re offering another option for solving the problem. In many cases, the receptionist will then transfer you to a colleague of your contact who can help you determine his or her whereabouts.

The receptionist may also reply, “No, I don’t know anyone in his area.” You then say, “That’s not a problem…” and offer, “Would you happen to have a paging system or his cell phone number by any chance?”

If the receptionist replies, “Sorry, we don’t have those,” then at that point you can say, “Thank you very much. I really appreciate your help. And then hang up, and call back another time.

Does the idea of paging potential clients or calling them on their cell phone make your stomach clench up? Are you thinking that you can’t cold call people that way because they might reject you?

That fear is only to be expected if your agenda is to sell something to the person. In other words, if you’re still using the traditional sales mindset. But once you master the new cold calling perspective, you’ll feel comfortable calling anyone, any time, using any mode.

As long as you’re 100 percent focused on your potential client’s world, you’ll find that people will be receptive to you. You can easily navigate throughout an organization with the type of dialogue described above, because you’re asking for help in a relaxed manner and you never put anyone on the spot.

Suppose that your efforts to locate your contact in this way fail. At that point you can leave a voicemail, but it should always be your very last option. Here’s an example of an appropriate cold calling voicemail:

“Hi John, maybe you can help me out for a second? I’m not sure if you’re the right person or not, but I’m trying to reach the person responsible for reporting problems about unpaid invoices. My name is John Edwards, my number is…”

Try this way of approaching the situation of voice mails, and you’ll be surprised and pleased at how often it becomes a highway instead of a dead end.

Ari Galper, founder of Unlock The Cold Calling Game, makes cold calling painless and simple. Learn his cold calling secrets even the sales gurus don't know. To receive your 10 free audio mini-lessons visit http://www.Unlock-The-Cold-Calling-Game.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ari_Galper

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to End the Cold Calling Game of Chasing a Sale

2006-12-27T17:50:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to End the Cold Calling Game of Chasing a Sale
By Ari Galper

4 steps to warm up cold calling conversations

Our thoughts are always at the basis of our behaviors. If our thoughts are fixed on the goal of making a sale, then we’re not really being forthright. We’re not focused on the conversation or the truth of a situation. We’re chasing people -- or at least chasing the sale.

Here are 4 important steps to help end the “chasing game” in our cold calling efforts.

1. Avoid reading from a script

Life is not a script, nor are normal conversations. When we read from a script, we’re not being natural. We’re playing a role. And that means we’re chasing a sale rather than enjoying an opportunity to meet someone new and find out if we can help them. Allowing a conversation to naturally flow helps you enter into a dialogue based on trust, which lets your potential client’s real issues emerge. Formal scripts, on the other hand, don’t give you the freedom to take conversations in the direction they may naturally want to go. And this feels stilted and awkward.

If you begin to view your cold calls as conversations or dialogues, you’ll find it easy to let go of the idea of scripts. And you’ll sense the shift of the energy in your conversation when the emphasis of the call is about the person you’re talking with and not about your making a sale.

So generate a spontaneous conversation, based on the problems you can help the other person solve. This will diffuse your feelings of being awkward and artificial, and allow you to enjoy the journey.

2. Address a Core Problem

People connect with you when they feel you understand their issues before you focus on yourself and your solutions. Come up with two or three specific problems that your product or service solves. And talk about it with the potential client first, before offering your sales pitch. When you offer your presentation or solution without first involving the other person by talking about a core problem they might be having, you are focused on the sale rather than the conversation. And your whole energy tends to drive the interaction into a sales mode. Remember, whenever someone feels “chased,” they usually run.

So stop for a moment. Convey that you’re a problem solver. Invite a mutual exchange of information that explores whether there’s a possibility that the two of you might work together. Help them understand that your thoughts and goals are not focused on selling them anything at all.

Most people will welcome your interest in their problem as long as you’re not operating out of the hidden agenda of making a sale. So overcome the temptation to discuss what you have to offer and move into focusing on your caller’s world. Invite discussion, express interest, and stop chasing the sale.

3. Uncover the Truth of the Situation

Make your objective to uncover the truth of the potential client’s situation and to be okay with the outcome, whether it’s a yes or a no. We can do this by checking in at various times in the conversation to make sure it makes sense to continue the dialogue. If we just move ahead without doing this, we’re in “chase mode.” And in this case, we may be chasing something very unrealistic for this particular potential client. So we ask important questions such as, “Is this a top priority for you to solve right now?” We may find that the potential client is very interested in working with us, but the budget or staffing may simply be too thin at this time. We stop at various checkpoints in our conversation to make sure we’re moving ahead together. If our thoughts are fixed only on our own goal of eventually securing the sale, we can miss very important signals that the other person may actually have no intention of following through.

4. Where do We Go From Here?

Here’s something very surprising. Allow the conversation to end without chasing other person into an sales appointment or commitment, and the other person will often be the one who initiates further contact. So when you feel as if the conversation is coming to a natural conclusion, you can simply say, “Well, where do you think we should go from here?” This question reassures potential clients that you’re not using the conversation to fulfill your own hidden agenda. It invites the other person to take charge of where things are going, and all you need do is follow along.

When you stop chasing the sale, you’ll be truly surprised at how often the sale gently awaits you within a friendly conversation focusing on the needs of others.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ari_Galper

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling: Spectacular Structure for a Script

2006-12-27T17:50:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling: Spectacular Structure for a Script
By Leslie Buterin

There are so many wimpy cold calling scripts out there that if your try them all, they’ll make your head spin.

You’ll find some scripts tell you to introduce yourself and bond before you get to the point, as though you’ll build a lasting relationship within a few seconds on the phone.

Other scripts direct you to tell prospect all about the company, as though your company’s history will justify the fact that your call that has interrupted the prospect’s day.

Some scripts even start out with the unconvincing words “This is not a sales call…” Yeah, right. Who do they think they’re kidding!

By the same token, you and I both know that the power of any sales presentation is in the words.

Face-to-face you have all sorts of visual cues that let you know whether or not you and your prospect are strolling down the primrose path, together.

In the blink of an eye you pick up cues such as a prospect’s crossed arms, broken eye contact, and other body language that lets you know when your words have taken the two of you off the profitable path. With these cues, you quickly figure out how to get back on track and can easily adjust your sales presentation accordingly.

On the phone, however, your cues come from background sounds, tone of voice, pacing, and the words themselves.

To stay on course self-control is key.

Since sales professionals have a gift for gab and thrive on social interaction, we are most comfortable talking with people face-to-face. We prefer to be around people and usually dread cold calling on the telephone. When we do our cold call prospecting, it is easy for us to talk too fast; too spew out way too many words for the prospect to grasp on the phone, and to relinquish self-control altogether. We experience failure, not our favorite lesson, and quickly build an aversion to making cold calls.

Successful sales professionals turn aversion to attraction by using scripts that are, in essence, a sophisticated sales presentation. Scripts that are stripped down to the essential words, not too many and not too few words that “make the sale” in their 90-seconds of time on the phone with an executive or executive assistant.

Yes! A script can be that good and yield results of 6-8 appointments out of every 10 calls.

A spectacular structure for a cold calling script is this:

1. Use the prospect’s name, in the form of a question, as your opening line. 2. Identify yourself 3. State the purpose of your call 4. Build a benefit statement that tells your prospect precisely what he/she will get out of meeting with you—in terms of bottom line numbers. 5. Maintain self-control by knowing what you want out of the call and asking the questions you need to ask to get there.

Here’s an example of such a script:

“Mary?” “This is Leslie.” “I’m calling from ColdCallingExecutives.com to see whether or not I can double John’s revenues in 90 days or less.” “When’s the best time for him to meet, this week or next?” “I appreciate you. Thank you.”

Even the best cold callers are struck by how much effort it takes to relax during cold calls to executives, how few words actually need to be spoken during a structured sales call, and the power of a carefully crafted sales call.

You’ve heard the phrase “KISS … Keep It Simple, Stupid!” You can modify that a bit to help you with your own spectacular script for successful cold call prospecting. KISS… Keep It Simple and Structured. Then, enjoy your success as your new, simply spectacular cold calling strategy pays off!

Forward this article to friends—they’ll thank you for it!

Author/Publisher Leslie Buterin (like butterin’ bread), is a published author, speaker and founder of Top Dog Consulting. She coaches sales executives and recruiters world-wide in techniques for changing the point of entry to the executive level. For your FREE mini-course “Jealously Guarded Secrets to Cold Calling Company Presidents” visit http://www.ColdCallingExecutives.com!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leslie_Buterin

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to Cold Call Without a Pitch

2006-12-27T17:49:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to Cold Call Without a Pitch
By Ari Galper

In the old way of making cold calls, we offer a sales pitch to a perfect stranger, cross our fingers, and hope for the best... isn’t that right?

This really doesn’t work very well in building a business relationship (or any other relationship, for that matter). This is done best by stepping into the world of the other person and finding a problem we can solve for him or her.

That’s how we begin a conversation with another person – talking about them rather than talking about ourselves. It’s just a very common dynamic that occurs in any human interaction. When you’re dating somebody, for instance, if you just talk about yourself, they’re not going to like you very much, right?

It’s the same in cold calling. Don’t talk about your solution for a while. Talk instead about their problems for a bit. It’s a movement of dialogue. This dialogue is around talking about their world and not about your product. That’s the shift. All you have to do is identify three or four major problems that your product solves, and use those problems as phrases to begin the dialogue of your cold call.

You see, this new cold calling approach has to be tied to a specific, real problem that the person experiences in their world. This is needed in order for them to feel comfortable having a conversation with you. When you’re relevant to them and their world, they trust you. They sense that you’re there to help them solve a problem – not sell a product.

So remove yourself for a moment from what you have to sell, and think about what problem your solution solves for somebody. For example, if you’re in the coaching industry, think about what problem you’re solving for your clients. You might say, “I’m just calling to see if your company’s open to the idea of using coaches to improve management performance.”

When you use the word “open,” people respond positively. Who would say “no” to being open? You’re not challenging them. You’re not forcing a solution. You’re not even saying what you’re offering to sell. You’re simply asking a question around whether they have a particular problem.

This also invites a question back to you. Potential clients will often ask at this point who you are and what you do. They might say that they already have a service, but they may need some more help. So it opens up even more conversation.

Here’s an example of how salespeople focus their cold calling around something that appears to be a need, but they haven’t tied it to a specific problem.

Let’s look at financial services. In this case, people who sell financial services start cold calls with a focus on the future of the person’s situation. They might say, “I’m just calling to see if you’d be open to some new ideas to help you increase your income.” The better approach here would be to problem solve. For example, “I’m just calling to see if you’d be open to identifying any gaps in your portfolio that might be holding you back in some way.” It’s about problem solving and closing gaps, as opposed to promoting a beautiful future. “Hire me and I’ll make you a lot of money!” Everyone does that. That’s the problem. It gets old and very stale

You see, there’s no push here. There’s no sales pitch. There’s no presentation. The conversation is focused on really seeing if the person has a problem, and if they want to solve it. After the first few phrases, you have a natural conversation back and forth. They may say, “What’s your service?” “How much does it cost?” And that’s the time to begin to really tell about your service -- but not before that.

If you don’t talk about your solution for a while and instead talk about their problems, you’ll find yourself having better and deeper dialogue, with more trust.

So be careful not to immediately go into a presentation and spend the conversation talking about your service. In this new way of cold calling, you’re asking in a very conversational tone whether the other person has a problem that you can solve.

You won’t believe how this simple technique can make such a difference in the way potential clients receive your cold calls. Tension and resistance are vastly reduced, and results are greatly improved.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ari_Galper

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to Cold Call with Integrity

2006-12-27T17:48:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How to Cold Call with Integrity
By Ari Galper

You probably never tell potential clients your real goal in calling them, but you don’t need to. They’re already aware, because we’re all sensitive when the phone rings and it turns out to be someone we don’t know.

In the old traditional training, we learned the latest techniques for making a sale. We talk to “prospects” rather than with people. And we “guide” conversations along rather than letting them unfold naturally.

The way we do this sometimes might even be called a bit manipulative. After all, we’re relating to another person while holding an ulterior motive of making a sale.

Where does honesty and integrity fit into this scenario? Well, most of us honestly believe in our product or service. But beyond that, we carry a somewhat artificial persona when we’re cold calling. We talk with people for the primary purpose of making a sale, and we’re not really interested in them or their world.

Doesn’t this make you feel uneasy at times? It does to me.

So let’s discuss some ways we’ve been trained in the traditional sales mindset that feel artificial and dehumanizing, and ways we can overcome them.

1. We intrude upon another person uninvited, with the goal of making a sale. It’s against our nature as human beings to create uncomfortable situations. We have a natural instinct for courtesy and connection It’s usually hard for us as regular people to call uninvited, because on some level it feels discourteous. We can change that by changing our goal. What if our goal is not to make the sale, but to find out if we can help someone? This shift makes us more relaxed. And it keeps us in harmony with personal integrity.

2. We project ourselves as personable and friendly, while also holding an ulterior motive for securing a sale. There’s an inner conflict with integrity when we find ourselves using our connections with others for self-gain. So we can bring ourselves back into honesty and truthfulness by shedding ulterior motives entirely.

We do this by focusing on whether we can provide something that will benefit another person. We find out if they have a problem we may be able to solve. And if it turns out we can’t help with our product or service, we graciously accept the outcome. By being honest and not playing a role, we find ourselves really liking what we do. And when our “ulterior motives” are simply non-existent, people are more open to trusting us.

3. When we meet someone new, we immediately talk about ourselves and what we have to offer. It’s actually not normal for us to start an interaction by launching into a self-focused monologue. As regular people, this just goes against our grain. Common courtesy dictates that initial conversations be dialogues, not monologues.

In normal conversations we would feel self-absorbed if we primarily talked about ourselves and what we have to offer. Yet in the traditional cold calling situation, it’s an accepted “norm.” We’ve been trained to read a script, follow a strategy, or give a sales pitch.

This really isn’t the way we’d like to relate to people, but it’s the way we’ve been taught. We can break out of this artificial game of sorts by just being ourselves. Integrity and truthfulness means being authentic. We begin cold calling conversations with a natural focus on the other person. We find out their needs, and respond with genuine interest.

4. We “rev up” in an artificial way, hoping to carry the potential client along with us into a sales process. When we “pump ourselves up” with enthusiasm, it feels somewhat fake. It’s not our normal way of being, and it throws us out of integrity. And we also appear artificial to potential clients. They become wary of possibly being maneuvered into a sales situation.

If we can navigate a cold calling conversation without such games, people will sense we’re trustworthy. They react warmly and unhesitatingly to a conversation that feels natural to them, and especially if it revolves around their issues rather than our agenda.

So how do we approach cold calling in the most truthful way? We stop being “salespeople” and become human. We engage in an honest dialogue rather than a monologue. We look for ways to help others, and we’re comfortable knowing that our product or service may not be an honest “fit” for them right now. And we stop playing roles, especially the “high enthusiasm” game.

This is what I mean by bringing integrity back into selling. It’s unbelievable just how rewarding both personally and professionally this can be.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ari_Galper

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Off-Target Marketing - The Anti-Cold-Call For B2B Salespeople

2006-12-27T17:48:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Off-Target Marketing - The Anti-Cold-Call For B2B Salespeople
By Tino Buntic

Wanna sell a car to a man? Try getting through to him via his wife!

This is the general theme of Rick Spence's idea for off-target marketing. If you're a salesperson, don't aim for the target; aim beside the target.

Rick Spence is a writer for Profit Magazine and in his latest article he describes an idea for B2B selling wherein you don't cold call your prospect. Rather, you use Seth Godin's mantra of permission marketing and take it to a different level.

Corporate executive decision makers don't want to be bothered by cold callers. So, Rick's strategy is to get prospects to agree to meet with you by first being referred to them by, for example, the prospect's secretary. Cold calling an executive is difficult because you need to go through the various gatekeepers and their guards are constantly up. But cold calling the secretary should be quite easier. Nobody expects that. In fact, I think a secretary wouldn’t mind such a call; it could make him feel important.

Once getting through to the secretary, or whoever it is that you speak to, the trick is to get your marketing material in friend of the prospect via a referral from her. That way, you get the referral, and the prospect gets your marketing material in his hands before you ask for a meeting – all without a single cold call to the prospect.

You seek referrals from other points of contact within the company of the prospect that you target. That's why Rick Spence calls it "off-target marketing." I like to call it "the anti-cold-call." It's a selling technique and it' different. I like it!

Tino Buntic would like to thank Rick Spence for writing about great business ideas, including off-target marketing. Tino also invites you to visit Trade Pals. Create a TradePals profile to receive free sales leads without cold calling or prospecting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

vCold Calling 101: How To Get More Sales Reps To Cold Call You

2006-12-27T17:47:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling 101: How To Get More Sales Reps To Cold Call You
By Tino Buntic

Busy business executives like yourself don’t have time to pick up the phone book or yellow pages to find products and services that you need for your business. You want sales reps to call YOU! Being on the receiving end of cold calls makes your valuable time more productive. After all, picking up the phone book to find what you are looking for takes a few minutes; receiving a cold call only takes a few seconds. You are industrious; that is why you will do anything to become more productive.

Alas, there are tips, techniques, and strategies that you can implement to get more sales reps to cold call you. You must know what the mind set of the cold caller is and understand his motivation to be able to use that to your advantage.

Here are 5 strategies that you can implement immediately to watch your inbound cold calls soar through the roof:

1. Many times, cold callers are stopped dead in their tracks at the gates. The gatekeeper (receptionist or secretary) is usually programmed to filter out unsolicited phone calls so that they never get through to you, the decision maker. Tell your secretary to interrupt any meeting, lunch, or appointment that you are in the middle of to put those calls through to you. Your meetings are not as important as receiving a call from a salesperson that wants to sell you something like a new software program, a copier, a CRM system, a cutting edge way to advertise your business, etc.

2. Understand that cold calling consultants suggest that sales professionals are advised to make cold calls at off hours when there are no secretaries available to filter their calls. This would be before 9am or after 5 pm. This is the time when there are no nine to fivers and the only people working are the owners, principals, CEOs, executives, and decision makers. Sales reps love this time of day because their success rate of getting through to the right person increases dramatically. If you understand that there are significantly more calls during these hours, you must get to the office early and leave late to be able to field these calls.

3. Cold Calling is a numbers game. Sales consultants, like Stephan Schiffman, love to talk about the numbers. In Mr. Schiffman’s experience, it takes fifteen no’s until you get one yes. In other words, you need to make fifteen cold calls, on average, before you will make one appointment. That is, you will hear the word “no” fourteen time before you hear the word “yes.” This is crucial to understand. Although, you would love to make an appointment with every sales rep that cold calls you, YOU MUST NOT! This will skew their numbers. You must only make an appointment with every 15th cold caller that wants to sell you something. Don’t be discouraged that you must reject fourteen out of fifteen cold callers; they love rejection.

4. Understand that you are not the expert of your business. Sales reps know better what you and your business needs. When a sales rep visits you, they will try to sell you their goods and services. NEVER agree to buy immediately. First, throw out some objections. Sales reps are trained to counter your objections. Next ask questions. When you ask questions, this indicates to the sales rep that you are interested and it is their job to show you how their product or service is what you and your company need. After you propose five objections and questions the sales rep will proceed and undertake to “close” you. The sales rep comes equipped with an arsenal of closing techniques to finish the deal.

What you didn’t realize is that during your sales meeting with the rep, he had been sizing you up the entire time to choose the best sales closing technique to use on you to increase the odds of closing the sale. He will, then, dig into his arsenal of closes and choose the one that’s best for you. Sales reps are experts in psychology and they will choose the close that best fits your profile. When you hear the close, BUY. Buy immediately. When you hear the sales close, it means that the sales rep has decided that it is the right time for you to buy. The sales rep is a lot smarter than you are, so you must do whatever he suggests. After all, he knows your business and industry better than you.

If you follow these suggestions, you will be able to receive many more cold calls than you do now. Maybe even 20 per day (if you’re lucky). Receiving cold calls is an art, not a science. Good luck!

Tino Buntic hates cold calling. Through TradePals, he provides sales leads without cold calling to business professionals.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling: Just DON'T Do It

2006-12-27T17:46:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling: Just DON'T Do It
By Tino Buntic

Cold Calling is dead. That’s right, it is dead. It is interruption marketing to the highest degree. Consumers are tuning out interruption marketing and the advertising message is not getting through.

So why do you continue to cold call? It is probably because your sales manager tells you that you should. And why does he tell you to cold call? It is probably because the sales consultant that your company spent thousands of dollars on advised that the staff should increase their cold calls to increase their sales. Of course, your company needs to see a return on this investment so they advise the sales manager to advise the sales staff to follow the recommendations and increase the amount of cold calls.

“More cold calls equals more appointments made equals more sales presentations equals more closed sales.” This is the general thinking. So sales leads lists are purchased from companies such as InfoUsa and the troops hunker down in the “boiler room” and call business executives and decision makers hoping to set appointments. The generally accepted rule is 15 cold calls should translate into 3 appointments made which should result in 1 completed sale. This rule usually ends up being 150 (or more) cold calls equals 3 appointments made equals 1 completed sale. The reason? Have you ever tried calling a business executive? Then you know that it takes about 10 tries before you actually get through on the phone. So the intial 15 calls turns into 150 calls. Executives, by nature, are busy… appointments, meetings, travel, planning… they don’t have time for unsolicited phone calls. And, if you do manage to find them with some free time, it takes a lot of skill to get through the secretary (the gatekeeper); they are trained to filter out unimportant phone calls. And guess what? Your call is NOT IMPORTANT!

Let’s go back to the sales consultant that your company hired. How did your company decide that they needed to hire a sales consultant? Did the sales consultant cold call your company to advise that your company’s sales are not as high as they could be and that, therefore, they should hire a sales consultant to provide some recommendations? No he didn’t. The scenario was something along the following lines: The CEO of your company noticed that sales are decreasing and did a search on the internet for a sales consultant to potentially hire to help the company increase sales. The CEO called the consultant, they met, the consultant made his sales presentation, and he was hired. The sales consultant, already with a contract, just regurgitated old school sales principals, basically more cold calls. Perhaps he even drafted a few cold calling scripts. This is almost foolproof. If sales increase the consultant will say it was because of his cold calling training. If sales don’t increase he’ll say it is because the company wasn’t following his recommendations… they did not make enough cold calls.

The bottom line is this “sales expert” did not need to make a cold call to earn his income. The company CEO found him on the internet. He has a website and he lets his website do the selling for him. If the “sales expert” doesn’t need to make cold calls, then neither do you. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on sales consultants and sales lead lists, sell the way that these pros sell. Instead, spend that money on internet marketing. People that need your services are searching the internet to find somebody to provide it to them. If they are not finding you then your competitors are getting the business. If you don’t have a website, you can create a professional profile on other sites, such as trade-pals.com for free. Just remember, if you disturb somebody with a sales message it is interruption marketing. If someone finds you through searches it is permission marketing. People just don’t respond to interruption marketing anymore. If they find you, they have already made the conscious decision to use your services; half of your sales work will already have been done!

Tino Buntic is a former cold caller but is presently retired from cold calling. He now gets his sales leads through other means. His website, trade-pals.com, provides sales leads without cold calling to sales professionals across North America

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling And Voicemail Messages: The Proper Etiquette

2006-12-27T17:45:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling And Voicemail Messages: The Proper Etiquette
By Tino Buntic

There is a proper way and a wrong way to leave voicemail messages when cold calling. I'm not an advocate of cold calling; the odds of generating any amount of significant sales leads or new business are stacked against you when cold calling. But, it does work for a minority of people and some still do it. If you are a cold caller you must know the proper etiquette when leaving voicemail messages.

When you call on a prospect and receive his voicemail, your message must begin with your name and phone number, followed by your message or sales pitch, and ending with your name and phone number once more.

Before I explain why, let me tell you about a typical work week for me. In a typical week, I receive dozens of cold calls. People pitch me all kinds of products and services. Unlike most people, I actually don't mind receiving these calls. I enjoy hearing the various sales techniques that salespeople use. I’ve heard them all. I don't normally respond to them, but I at least hear them out. I don't always get to answer my phone, so logically many of these calls go to my voicemail.

Some of these voicemails amaze me. You wouldn’t believe how many times I get a voicemail that is a couple of minutes long and, often, the caller doesn't leave his return phone number until the very end. What happens if, as he is leaving his phone number, I get distracted, or I get a beep from my calling waiting, or background noise from his end garbles up the phone number? What would happen is that I would miss the phone number. That means that if I were interested in returning his call I would have to listen to the entire message again to get his number. Do you think I have time to do that? Do you think that any executive or decision maker has time for it for that matter? NO!

When leaving voicemail messages while cold calling you must start each message with your name and number, followed by your message, and ending with your name and number again. It's proper etiquette. It will increase your ratio of call backs. If someone misses your number and has to listen to your message again he won’t have to listen to the entire voicemail.

Tino Buntic created TradePals to provide B2B & B2C sales leads without cold calling to salespeople across the United States and Canada.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Sales Prospecting To Get More Sales Appointments Without Cold Calling

2006-12-27T17:45:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Sales Prospecting To Get More Sales Appointments Without Cold Calling
By Tino Buntic

To a large degree, sales is a numbers game – the more prospects you present to, the more sales you will close. Cold calling is also a numbers game. However, cold calling has the lowest success rate (if we define a success as booking a sales appointment) of any other prospecting method which you can use. Executives and decision makers don't want to be interrupted in their busy day by a cold caller with a sales pitch. Cold callers get tuned out.

With that said, I have compiled a list of ways to get more sales appointments without cold calling:

Network with your existing client base to get referrals. If you call an existing client, it is not a cold call; it is a warm call because you already have a business relationship. Don't be afraid to call an existing client, especially one that is pleased with your services, to ask for referrals. It is easier to book a sales appointment with a prospect that has been referred rather than to do so with a prospect that was not met through a business referral.
Use websites that provide free sales leads and free advertising. This way prospects will find you. Booking a sales appointment should be easy and our sales closing ratio should be higher when the prospect makes the initial contact as this means that he already knows that he has a need for your services. Trade-pals.com provides free B2B and B2C sales leads without cold calling. Craigslist.org provides free advertising via online classified ads. These are just two of the sites that you should try.
Visit trade shows that your prospect base would go to. This way you can not only meet prospects in person in a social atmosphere but you can also collect their marketing material if they have it available at their booths. That way when you book a sales appointment, you will have material to research their firm ahead of time.
Instead of giving people one business card, give them five. That way they can freely distribute your business card if they refer a colleague to you. If they didn’t have cards available, they may otherwise not remember to refer prospects to you.

Of course, there are dozens of other prospecting techniques that you can utilize to book sales appointments. Top salespeople always push themselves to book more appointments, close more sales, and sell more.Tino Buntic created his

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Considerations and the Warm Up!

2006-12-27T17:44:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Considerations and the Warm Up!
By Lance Winslow

If you are serious about selling then you need to be serious about time allocation and production and therefore you need to cold call and get to as many decision makers and prospects as possible in order to develop leads and close more sales.

Selling on the phone is not easy and you also know that many of the people you contact will be busy and they may be interested but perhaps not now. You need a quick pitch or invitation to open the door to have a visitation, but do not waste your time with a sales call or giving them a free lunch if they are not interested.

How can you find out if they are interested in 20 seconds or less? Well that takes practice and after about 20-30 calls you will get the hang of it rather than having them hang-up on you! Even veteran cold calling salesmen do a warm up session in order to get ready for their cold calling. You need a warm up call or two is what you need, as it takes the edge off and puts you into the proper state of mind.

It is recommended that you find a friend who you often network with and call them first as a warm up call and allow them the same privilege when they need to warm up before they start cold calling each week. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Franchising Company and promotes the Franchising Industry and Franchise Business Model at www.Franchising.org

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Is Like Trying To Find A Needle In A Haystack

2006-12-27T17:42:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Is Like Trying To Find A Needle In A Haystack
By Tino Buntic

Have you ever tried to find a needle in a haystack? No, of course you haven't. This is just an expression for something that has a very low probability of happening. Even if there was a needle in a haystack, even if you wanted to find it, you would not find it. It is another way of saying "why bother?"

Do you cold call? If you are in B2B sales, you probably do, or at least you have at some point in your career. Cold calling is calling random people or random businesses in the hopes that you will be able to sell your product or service to one of them. I’m of the same opinion as trying to find a needle in a haystack… why bother?

Why bother? Not because cold calling has a good success rate. It doesn't. Why bother? Because in most cases, it is a sales manager pushing you to make cold calls. Cold calling may have worked in the past (20 years ago) but people still push it as a means of generating sales leads and new business even though it no longer works.

I don't think cold calling works anymore. If you think about it, all you are really doing is calling random people in the hopes of finding that needle in the haystack.

Think about it this way: If you owned a convenience store, would you send out an employee to stand in the front of your store with a case of coca-cola to try to sell individual cans to passerby? Of course not. You will never be able to make enough sales pushing your product onto random people. If a person wanted a can of Coke, he would just walk into your store and buy one. So why cold call random people?

Cold calling… why bother?

Tino Buntic created TradePals to provide free sales leads without cold calling to business professionals, entrepreneurs, and salespeople across North America. Visit the site and create a free profile to get started: http://www.trade-pals.com

Tino enjoys reading Frank J. Rumbauskas Jr's blog, Never Cold Call.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Don't like Cold Calling - Then Work to Eliminate it from Your Sales Routine

2006-12-27T17:42:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Don't like Cold Calling - Then Work to Eliminate it from Your Sales Routine
By Tony Dimech

More and more sales people tell me that they don't like cold calling, I must have heard a thousand different reasons for this, the most common being:

I don't get through to many people these days when I am cold calling
I don't think Cold Calling is a professional way to introduce my business to potential clients
I have done enough of that in my time in sales
That is someone else's job - not mine!

My advice to people who don't want to spend time cold calling usually starts with a question, "why do you feel the need to cold call?" The answer is really quite simple - sales people are forced into cold calling when they don't have enough potential new business in their pipeline! Experienced, disciplined salespeople set out to reduce 'Cold Calling' by building a successful compilation of alternative approaches. These could include:

Account development initiatives for existing customers
Networking
Business group involvement
Joining relevant business associations
Referrals from satisfied customers
Participation in work oriented social events
Public speaking
Writing relevant business articles
Community involvement

Here are a few sales training suggestions, which if incorporated into your sales routines could significantly reduce the amount of cold calls you have to make.

When you are making sales calls to neighbouring businesses or offices, try to get your customer to introduce you rather than going in alone.
If you're driving and identify a company that you feel would make a good prospect customer, capture their details, do some research and find a way to make contact.
When you are calling a particular category of business where you have enjoyed success in the past, take a testimonial with you. If other companies in that sector are sourcing from you, it should be easier to gain interest from new companies.
Ask your customers if they know of other organisations that would benefit from using your products or services.

Please remember nothing works all of the time so it is unlikely that you will ever be able to totally eradicate the need to 'Cold Call'. So when you do have to make some don't forget to:<

Set a number of calls you are going to make in that session
Get in the right frame of mind before making a call
Be sure of your primary and secondary objectives
Try out new sales ideas
Think of each call as a training exercise
Critique your calls
Remember - the better the call the less you have to make!

Tony Dimech has spent all of his professional life in sales; he worked for 20 years various in positions for two international manufacturing companies. In 1998 he started Appleton Associates Ltd www.Appleton-Associates.co.uk one of the UK's leading sales training companies. Tony travels extensively throughout the world working with sales professionals to develop new ideas.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Dimech

www.ColdCallFacts.com

FTC Do Not Call Registry And Cold Calling - The Facts

2006-12-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

FTC Do Not Call Registry And Cold Calling - The Facts
By Tino Buntic

If you are a telemarketer and cold call consumers to solicit their business, there is information that you must know about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the "Do Not Call Registry," lest you get in trouble with the law for cold calling somebody that is registered on the list. For the past two and a half years it has been illegal to call someone that is listed on the registry. Here are some of the most important details of the Do Not Call Registry:

Existing Business Relationships: A telemarketer may call on a consumer with which it has an existing business relationship for eighteen months after their last business transaction, even if that consumer is listed on the registry. However, if the consumer asks not to be called anymore the telemarketer must cease his calls.

Political Organizations, Charities, And Telephone Surveyors: The registry does not cover calls made from political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors. So, for example, Someone that is cold calling to sell his personal services for profit cannot call someone listed on the registry, but someone calling to solicit money for a charity may call people listed on the registry. Again, just as in existing business relationships, people have the right to ask not to be called and even political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors must adhere to such requests.

Accessing The Registry: If you are a telemarketer you must access the registry and update your "do not call" list at least once every thirty one days. You can access the registry at the website, www.telemarketing.donotcall.gov.

Penalties: It is against the law to call any phone number that is listed on the "do not call registry." So, it is your responsibility to check the registry and be sure to adhere to the proper telemarketing guidelines. Violators can be charged $11,000 for EACH bad phone call.

Tino Buntic's website, TradePals provides free sales leads without cold calling to business professionals across North America.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How To Stop Chasing Prospects Forever!

2006-12-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How To Stop Chasing Prospects Forever!
By Frank Rumbauskas

Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by salespeople is the problem of chasing prospects. In this article I’ll explain exactly why that happens, and how you can avoid it entirely and make prospects chase you instead.

I once heard Donald Trump say, "In selling, you must never appear desperate. As soon as you look desperate, it's over."

A friend and I were talking about the dynamics of a cold call the other day. When we make that call, we usually hope and expect that the prospect will be receptive to hearing what we have to say. However, salespeople face increasing resistance to cold calling, as well as increasing flakiness on the part of prospects who do meet with them. Instead of thinking, "Ok, this may be interesting," here's what most prospects actually think when they receive a cold call: "Great. You don't know me and I don't know you. You have no idea what my goals are. You don't even know if we need what you're selling, and in spite of all that, you've decided to waste my time anyway with this call."

What is increasingly becoming the norm is to be rejected by the good, solid prospects everyone wants, and to get appointments with flakey time-wasters who will never buy. Flakiness, in particular, is a growing problem thanks to the fact that prospects are increasingly bombarded with endless advertising as well as endless salespeople. When you consider the fact that few prospects actually have the courage to say "no" and instead choose to blow us off and make excuses, it becomes even more frustrating.

One of the main themes I try to teach salespeople is two-fold: 1) You must be supremely confident. 2) You must get into the habit of qualifying prospects OUT instead of merely qualifying them. It is the appropriate response to ever-increasing flakiness and evasiveness on the part of prospects. It's our way of communicating to them, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" in a non-verbal way. The idea of taking the lead and qualifying prospects out is scary at first, and as a result most salespeople aren't willing to do it, but it will save you lots of otherwise wasted time with prospects who aren't really serious, and will free that time up to be spent with prospects who are going to buy.

It's important to start all sales relationships from a position of power, and you do this in two ways: 1) Through your outward presentation. This is easily accomplished by acting very professional and dressing better than your prospects, rather than taking the wrong advice of "dressing like your prospects." It's easy to say "no" to someone with whom you're comfortable, but much more difficult to say "no" to someone who intimidates you. 2) Through your actions. A great example is someone who is squirrely about agreeing to an appointment with you. In many cases, these are the people who finally agree to meet with you but eventually blow you off without buying. When I found myself in this situation, I discovered a great way to overcome it. It goes back to the idea of confidence bordering on mild arrogance, and puts you in the position of power. When you're getting the runaround, something like "Well, we'll let you know when we have time to pencil you in," say something like, "Great, let me know. I'm very busy so I need to know either way - NOW." This will get rid of time-wasters, and with serious prospects, will clearly communicate that you're a serious businessperson, should be taken seriously, and will not tolerate having your time wasted and otherwise being disrespected. It will also set you apart from the competition and greatly increase your chances of getting the sale.

As time goes on and I work with more salespeople, I'm realizing that this idea of being powerful really overrides everything else, and once you can pull it off, it overshadows everything. You can do a poor job of presenting and selling and yet this can carry you all by itself. For anyone who is doubtful about this idea of presenting yourself as overconfident and even a little bit arrogant, I'll go back to Donald Trump since he's famous for his giant ego. I saw him on Larry King, and as they were taking live calls, one of the callers openly confronted him about his massive ego and Larry King jumped on and questioned him about it as well. Donald Trump simply replied, "Have you EVER met a successful person who didn't have a big ego?" After some hemming and hawing from King, Trump repeated the question to him, and King finally said, "No."

Moving on from the idea of avoiding an appearance of desperation and creating an appearance of power, there's another very good reason as to why prospects who are uncovered via cold calling are flakey. This one has nothing to do with us and everything to do with a particular prospect's mindset and level of sales vulnerability to begin with.

Most of us have noticed, at some time or another, that prospects who absolutely refuse to take cold calls and have giant "No Soliciting" signs plastered on their front doors tend to be the easiest to sell to once you manage to get in front of them. There are a few popular theories as to why this is so, the most common one being the idea that since so few salespeople get through to begin with, there is little competition and therefore a better chance of getting the sale. However, I know the real reason behind this.

The reason those people are so defensive against sales pitches and have all those "No Soliciting" signs is quite simple. They are AFRAID of salespeople. They know very well that they have a very difficult time saying "no," and as such they are highly vulnerable to sales presentations and know very well that if a salesperson gets to them, they'll probably buy whether they need to or not.

(I never figured this out until I spoke with an expert on social dynamics who has studied the subject of human social interaction in depth. He explained that the people who act the coldest and most unapproachable in social settings do so because they're overly vulnerable to being seduced and falling in love and therefore are afraid of what someone's advances may lead to.)

Now that we've explained why those people are the easiest to sell to, let's look at the opposite type of prospect: those who willingly take your call and willingly agree to set an appointment.

If those who are easily sold won't take your call and won't agree to meet with you, why would someone be so agreeable to taking your call and meeting with you? Exactly. It's because they have no fear of salespeople. They know right from the start that there's little chance of them being sold. Their openness and receptiveness to your call puts us off-guard. We think we have a great shot at a sale, but in reality we're meeting with someone who is 99% certain not to buy.

Since the people who willingly take cold calls usually don't buy, and the people who usually buy don't take cold calls, what's the solution? Since those who are easily sold almost always meet with salespeople only when they've called the salesperson first and not the other way around, you must get your message across to these people in creative and effective ways other than cold calling.

To those highly desirable prospects who are easily sold, all salespeople seem the same. The only way to win with them is to separate yourself from the rest of the crowd.

The first way to accomplish this is to be that powerful businessperson who needs nothing and deserves respect. I think most of us were taught and have gotten into the habit of treating prospects as superiors and as a result we tend to do whatever is convenient for prospects and otherwise kiss up to them. We are used to rearranging our schedules just to meet with that one prospect. Stop this, and start expecting your prospects to treat YOU with the respect and consideration you deserve as someone who is not only a business equal, but who has the knowledge and wisdom to help them and improve their businesses and their lives.

The second way to stand out is to stop cold calling. Nothing will stereotype you as a typical salesperson faster than a cold call. The way to win with prime prospects is to get your message across to them in ways that don't use cold calling. You'll get in front of the easy sales, and you won't have any competition once you get there.

Frank Rumbauskas is the author of Cold Calling Is a Waste of Time: Sales Success in the Information Age. He is the founder of FJR Advisors LLC, which publishes training materials on generating business without cold calling. For more information, please visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_Rumbauskas

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Outsourced B2B Cold Calling And Telemarketing - Is It Worth It?

2006-12-27T17:39:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Outsourced B2B Cold Calling And Telemarketing - Is It Worth It?
By Tino Buntic

There is a recent trend towards outsourcing your B2B cold calling and telemarketing to companies that specialize in cold calling prospects and setting appointments for you. This article aims to evaluate the pros and cons of outsourced cold calling.

The reasons to outsource your B2B cold calling are numerous; the following are the pros of outsourcing your telemarketing services:

Your sales reps hate cold calling; they hate the rejection. If they can receive sales leads without cold calling they would love that; it would free up more time for face-to-face meetings which would lead to more closed sales.
You would spend less money on purchasing lead lists from companies such as InfoUSA and D&B.
You wouldn't have to pay a big salary to your sales force to do menial tasks like dialing a telephone.
Outsourced telemarketing companies normally provide cold calling training to their call center staff. This could include training on how to get passed the receptionist or gatekeeper and through to the actual decision maker. This gives them a competitive advantage.
Cold calling outsourcing firms can also actually set appointments providing their clients with qualified sales leads.

These are all great reasons to outsource your cold calling to a specialist firm. But, does that actually make it worth it?

My answer to that question is NO. Actually, in most cases my answer is no. What you need to do is calculate your return on equity vis-à-vis your return on equity on other advertising campaigns. After all, a telemarketing campaign is just like an advertising campaign. It is marketing for new clients or prospects. If you can get more bang for your buck in an alternative advertising campaign, you should do that instead.

Researching prices on the internet, I found that one prominent B2B cold calling firm charges $1800 for 100 hours of cold calling. Let's say that in an hour they can make 10 cold calls. That would be 1000 cold calls in an hour. Let’s further say that for every 10 calls they set one appointment. That equals 100 sales leads. At $1800 that would cost you $18 per lead.

Now, $18 per lead may not be bad. Perhaps you make $1000 in commission per closed sale and you can close 1 out of every 3 sales leads. On the surface, this would be worth the costs of hiring a firm to do your cold calling for you.

But before you decide that outsourcing your cold calling is a good idea, you must evaluate other advertising methods that you may use. Perhaps you’d have a better ROI with newspaper ads or radio commercials? Perhaps online advertising would produce a higher ROI?

Take, for example, link ads on Google's AdWords program. You can purchase leads for just pennies per click. Let’s say the keywords that you target cost 50 cents per click. At this rate, you would receive 36 sales leads for $18. Cold calling costed you $18 for just 1 lead. Perhaps the cold calling leads are better quality. But with the share numer of more leads that could be possible via other marketing methods, it may not be worth it.

Tino Buntic created TradePals to provide free advertising and B2B sales leads without cold calling to business professionals, entrepreneurs, and salespeople across North America. Tino enjoys reading blogs and two of his favorite include Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch and Marketing Interactions by Ardath Albee.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling For Sales Leads - 5 Things to Increase Your Chances

2006-12-27T17:39:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling For Sales Leads - 5 Things to Increase Your Chances
By Rich Lawson

#1 Research the List

There’s no point ringing hairdressers trying to sell software. Target those companies that you stand a good chance of making the sale with. It’s the ‘there’s been a fire in the area’ and you sell smoke alarms. Watch out for new industry policies or law, look through news items and compile a good list – then research it and the person you’ll need to speak with.

#2 Set Aside the Time

Cold Calling can strike fear into sales people, for no good reason. Set aside 2 hours with a 15 minute break. Make sure that you will not be distracted or disturbed during this time. You’re going to be generating business and ultimately making money – so focus.

#3 Have a Specific Aim In Mind

You’re probably as guilty as me when it comes to this. Sales people are hungry for business by nature and it can be tempting to go for a sale quickly. Your prospects are likely to be wary so it’s a case of 1 peg at a time. Go for a series of qualifying questions and an appointment. Treat the appointment as your sales close. Your questions shouldn’t be exhaustive. You need to qualify that the person can do business with you and will make an appointment to explore those opportunities with you. You can’t be weak though. Depending upon what you sell, asking ‘if we satisfy your requirements is there any reason you can see (feel/hear – use your NLP) from what we’ve discussed so far that you wouldn’t feel comfortable placing your business with ABC Company?’

#4 Prepare Your Opening Statement Properly

There’s no excuse for not doing this right – you shouldn’t be picking up the phone if this isn’t right! Let’s say your company specialises in the integrity of computer data and you’re targeting a company who has just announced its expansion by moving to bigger offices. Once through to the correctly researched person your opening should be along the lines of ‘Hi John’ (always use a first name), ‘It’s James Kent from ABC Company and I’ve just read that you guys are expanding and moving into new larger offices. My company specializes in computer data and hardware transfer to ensure zero loss transfer. I wanted to speak with you and see if our services may be something that you would need. I know it’s recently been announced but have you considered this area of your move yet?

#5 Evaluate Your Work and Track Your Results

Learn your ratios – properly. Analyze why you get an appointment and why you don’t. Listen properly to the people you speak with. What are the common objections? How can you answer them? What makes you different not cheaper than the competition? You’ll find certain vertical markets have similar concerns – crack one and you’ve cracked them all! Knowing your ratio’s means you know how much you need to do to get the results that you need and you can work them back. If 1 sale gets you $150 and it takes 3 appointments for a sale and 10 calls for 3 appointments then each call is worth $15. How many calls you going to make now?

Get Your Free Mini-Course – ‘How to Generate a Stream of Targeted Sales Leads in 5 Days’ Now at http://www.SalesLeadSecret.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rich_Lawson

www.ColdCallFacts.com

15 Tips to Making More Telephone Appointments, More Often

2006-12-27T17:37:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

15 Tips to Making More Telephone Appointments, More Often
By Philip Ashforth

So we all hate having to make telephone appointments, it’s a pretty thankless task at the best of times, but if you learn your craft well, at least you will be out there getting appointments and making things happen. Just remember, if you sell a product worth say 5000 pounds, and it takes you 100 rejections to get that sale, then each of those rejections is worth £50.00. If you were paid £50.00 just for getting a NO each time, you’d be on that phone day and night wouldn’t you?

These tips are just a few of the many hundreds I could write from my 17 years experience of cold calling and appointment making. Nothing happens without a sale.

The tips.

1. Be absolutely clear why you are making the call, establish in advance what it is you want to happen, structure the questions around that outcome, remember – sell the appointment, not the product!

2. Basic politeness, not false, if you enjoy people, it shows, try to enjoy yourself, you are a specialist in one of life’s most noble professions. be courteous, no matter what’s going on at the other end, you are the professional, prove it.

3. Keep good records! So many telephone marketers lose the plot because they just can’t remember where they are up to with their list, I have done this myself, re-calling a client I only just spoke to with the same sales pitch! It’s worth saving yourself this embarrassment just for the sake of paying attention and making a few notes in a system, not just a pad you might lose.

4. If you call an automated system, press zero, it is usually a default for reception, if that doesn’t work and you are forced to listen to the whole menu of options, make a note of the option number for the next call so you will save time.

5. Tape the phone to your hand! Well that’s just metaphorically speaking. The point is, just start phoning and keep at it, just promise you will do a chunk of an hour to start, no matter what, it is so easy to do anything but make the calls you know matter.

6. Always address your prospects by their title, i.e. Mr Jones, using first names on a cold call can appear to be over-familiar, I have been caught out a couple of times and learned very early its title first, until rapport is built between you.

7. Listen, Listen, Listen! So many sales people miss this one, on the phone doing their script and not listening carefully to the response. Missing vital info and buying signals. Try repeating each word your prospect is saying in your head very shortly after they have said it. It is a good discipline to make sure you are using your ears and mouth in the right order.

8. Stay off the radar. Simply getting more chances to be put through to a prospect by not alerting the gatekeeper to who you are. If the prospect is not there, just quickly say you’ll call later thanks, and off you go. I wouldn’t usually leave a message until at least a good number of attempts to get through.

9. Be persistent. Try varying your call patterns, call later, call early, call on a Friday afternoon, don’t buy in to the myth that there are times of the day not worth calling, making appointments is like fishing. I have often abandoned a fishing location, only to see another angler come in exactly the same place and get a full net! Technique and belief are what matters.

10. Get it out quickly. Prospects hate a drawling delivery, say it quick and keep it sharp, not too quick, but just at a good pace, get to the point early, ask for what you want.

11. When speaking avoid filler words like er, erm, y’know, they are diluting your delivery and make you sound clumsy. Just be aware of what you are saying and ‘kill the fill’ You will get more appointments.

12. If not now when? Both if your prospect is not available, or if your prospect has said there is a chance of an appointment, just not yet. Why is now not a good time? When will be better? Can we pencil that in the diary?

13. Have your diary at the ready, with a good idea of how many appointments you are going to make. If your diary is not even open in your drawer, you are just programming yourself to believe you aren’t going to make any meetings. Have a positive expectation of the appointments, how many, and when you are going to schedule them.

14. As Henry Ford Said: “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right either way.” Think positive, take rejection and learn – It’s not personal, enjoy it, it’s made you stronger! Develop a formidable mental attitude, read motivational books.

15. When you close on an appointment, confirm the details carefully, get the date right, confirm by email, offer that if the prospect wishes to make any changes, they can feel free to. It will demonstrate you are a professional, and not make the prospect feel trapped and closed on.

Phil Ashforth is Managing Director of Apple Creative Design, a design agency offering graphic design for print and web based in Preston, UK. The agency also provides marketing consultancy to complement their range design services Look at his work on http://www.apple-design.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Philip_Ashforth

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Overcoming Call Reluctance

2006-12-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Overcoming Call Reluctance
By Michael J Beck

Everyone in marketing faces it at one time or another - reluctance to pick up the phone and make calls. Logically, it makes no sense to feel that way. We believe in our product or service. We have a script that’s either been given to us or one that we’ve carefully written out. We have a list of prospects that are at least somewhat targeted. We know that when someone says “No”, it’s not directed at us. And still… the phone weighs a ton.

OK. You decide that the pain of being broke is greater than the pain of “cold” calling, so you commit to making calls each and every day. Or at least commit to try. Or try at least some days each week. For a while anyway…

We’ve all been through all of this before, and guess what? IT DOESN’T WORK! We’re still reluctant to make the calls we know we need to. So what’s the deal? Are you just “bad” at calling? Is it that calling only works for some but not most of us?

The answer, of course, is that calling can work for any one of us. It’s a matter of finding the right “key”(s) to open that door of calling success. We need to address why the typical “cold” call isn’t effective. We’ll start with the obvious issue. Calling strangers causes most people some amount of anxiety. Why does it make us feel so anxious and apprehensive? I’ve found that there are four reasons that cause people to feel anxious about calling. If any one of them exists, anyone would feel anxious about making a call. Here they are:

1) We feel that we sound like a telemarketer. Somewhat unprofessional and/or insincere.

2) We aren’t sure how to effectively start the call.

3) We aren’t sure how to effectively steer the conversation.

4) We aren’t sure how to comfortably and professionally end the conversation.

Let’s look at each one of these issues separately and find out how to put them behind us.

1) We feel that we sound like a telemarketer

What makes a telemarketer sound like a telemarketer? Think about it for a moment. You know the drill – we’ve all received telemarketing calls both at home and at work. What is it about that call that marks it as a telemarketing call? There are several factors that make us cringe at these calls. First off, telemarketers are either overly friendly to start with or they sound completely disinterested. Both make the caller sound insincere. Secondly, telemarketers talk and rarely ask. The call is all about their product and service and not about the person who received the call. Thirdly, they usually plow through their script, not allowing us to get a word in edgewise. And fourth, it’s always evident that they’re reading a script to you rather than speaking to you as a person. Those four factors generally mark the call as a telemarketing call.

How do you keep people from viewing you as a telemarketer? Simple. Don’t do those things!

a) When you call, don’t be overly enthusiastic and don’t be disinterested or matter-of-fact in your tone. Speak in an appropriate, natural tone and manner.

b) As you get into your conversation, ask questions. Be consultative. Remember, this is about your prospect, not about you.

c) & d) Practice your script so it is as conversational as possible. I always write out my script so it reads as naturally as possible. It’s usually not perfect writing but it is always natural and easy to say.

2) We aren’t sure how to start the call

The thing that annoys most of us when a telemarketer calls is that they dive right into some sales pitch without even knowing whether we have the time or interest in hearing about what they have to say. The most effective way to be viewed as a professional is to act like one. As an example, here is the way I start my marketing calls:

“Bob? Good Morning. This is Michael Beck. How are you today? (pause) Bob, I’m an executive coach (pause – I want to make sure they understood what I just said) and have worked with insurance managers for a number of years. Do you have a few minutes to chat?”

As simple as the above exchange is, it serves a number of important purposes:

a) In short order, I’ve told him who I am and what I do.

b) I said his name two times. (People love to hear their own name. Read “How to Win Friends and Influence People”)

c) I began to establish credibility. (“I’ve worked with insurance managers for a number of years.”)

d) I asked permission to take some of his time.

3) We aren’t sure how to steer the conversation

We ended the start of our phone call with a question: “Do you have a few minutes to chat?” There can only be three answers to that question – “Yes”, “No”, or “What is this about?”

• If the answer is Yes, you’re off and running.

• If the answer is No, you could say you’ll call back or ask when a good time to call back would be, but why not use the opportunity to get more information? Since you’ve already told him who you are and what you do, why not ask: “Would you like me to call back?” The answer will either be Yes or No! Either way you should be happy. Either you’ll know not to waste your time trying to reach a disinterested prospect or you’ll have a somewhat pre-qualified prospect on your list!

• If the response is, “What is this about?”, have a short explanation of why you’ve called prepared, something like: “I wanted to share some of what I do, find out what your initiatives are, and see whether what I do could help you reach your goals faster and easier.”

Pretty straightforward isn’t it? …

If you approach the meat of your conversation in a way to see if you can help your prospect, rather than sell them something, it’s quite easy to have a stress-free, effective conversation.

No matter what the goal of your call is, at some point the discussion needs to draw to a close with a “trigger” question. “Can we set up an appointment to go over this in more detail?” or “Here’s what we should do next…”

4) We aren’t sure how to end the conversation

How you handle the end of your conversation will determine you well you protect your attitude. We ended the middle of our conversation with a question (see a pattern here?). There can only be three answers to your question – “Yes”, “I need more information”, or “No”

• If the answer is Yes, again you’re off and running.

• If the answer is a request for more information, have a simple process ready to provide prospects with additional information and/or credibility-building materials, get a commitment for a follow-up call, and set it up as an appointment in both your calendar and theirs. Don’t leave the follow-up as a vague process. Inotherwords get a phone appointment and avoid endless voicemails and phone tag.

• If the answer is No, my preference is to thank them for their time and candor, ask them if they’d like me to give them a call back in 6-12 months, and then hang up!

Let me close with a couple of perspectives that have served me and others well over the years.

One perspective is that if you find that any one prospect means a great deal to you, it’s a sure sign that you aren’t finding enough prospects. Put in more effort. Then everything else takes care of itself.

The other perspective that I have found helpful pertains to rejection, and is illustrated in this story:

Imagine you have a recipe for fantastic chocolate chip cookies and bake them to perfection. They’re absolutely delicious! You take a tray of these cookies around to people, asking them whether they would like one. The first person takes one and loves it. The next person you offer the cookies to declines - they are full, don’t like chocolate, or don’t want sweets. Here is the key question: “Does the fact that the second person didn’t want your cookies affect the quality of the cookies or the skill of the baker?” Clearly the answer is no. Their decision doesn’t have anything to do with the cookies or the baker. Their decision was about what’s going on in your their life, not yours.

When you create an effective phone process – knowing how to get into and out of conversations – and understand that a “No” truly is not about you at all, calling becomes more comfortable and it becomes easier to make many more calls. The result? Financial Success!

Michael Beck, "The Insurance Coach" is an Executive Coach and Recruiting Activist, and helps insurance professionals succeed faster and easier. He can be reached at 866-385-8751 or mbeck@theinsurancecoach.com Visit his website to learn more: http://www.TheInsuranceCoach.com You can subscribe to his newsletter here: http://www.theinsurancecoach.com/Subscribe.htm

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_J_Beck

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Reduce Cold Call Frustration By Reengineering Your Attitude!

2006-12-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Reduce Cold Call Frustration By Reengineering Your Attitude!
By D.M. Arenzon

We all know the benefits of cold calling and its ability to gain new clients and take additional market share. We also understand that with such success comes a price and this price is called “Cold Call Frustration.” The constant rejection, the number of calls, the amount of repeat calls to the same prospect and the voicemail messages that you leave can be very mentally draining. It can consume you and strip you of your motivation. As a result, your attitude becomes affected and you turn to a pathway of negativity. If you allow cold calling to consume you then you will not last at your job very long. In this case watch out for Donald Trump because he may say you’re "FIRED!"

So what can you do to conquer these frustrations? One sure-fire way to constantly stay focused and be motivated is to listen to motivational tapes on your breaks, in your sales meetings or even in your car! These personal development or self-help types of programs are empowering tools that you can use to increase your awareness of the world around you. The contents of these programs include many ideas and concepts that are considered by many as common sense, but in reality, they are not common usage.

Example personal development topics that you could listen to include a few of the following:

Positive Thinking
Goal Setting
Attitude
Stress Management

When you make a proactive effort to “feed your mind” of this type of self-help information you now become more aware (meaning the information that we have learned moves from our subconscious to conscious mind) of how to handle certain obstacles that we experience in life—and in this case it’s cold call frustration. Here a few more tips on how you may want to embrace this new idea:

Try keeping a box of motivational audio tapes and cds in your car so that you can easily listen to a variety of speakers.

Ebay is a cost-effective website that you can use to purchase these programs.

If you can get your sales team to buy into this idea you can play different tapes at each sales meeting without cutting into your department’s budget.

Incorporate what you have learned into your sales calls as a tool to reduce resistance. Your newfound enthusiasm and positive attitude have the power to alter your prospect’s state of mind. This means that you have the power to change their attitude and as a result you may end up changing their behavior--that means a new sale for you!

A few of my favorite motivational speakers include Anthony Robbins, Les Brown, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy.

As a final note, I have recently finished listening to Dale Carnegie’s audio book called "How To Stop Worrying And Start Living" he wrote that one’s attitude is the chief engineer of one’s life and you know what? He’s right! Motivational tapes are a great way to "reengineer your attitude" so that you quickly reduce your cold call frustration.

Mr. Cold Call is the author of "How To Have Fun Cold Calling” and "114 Common Sales Objections, 153 Clever And Savvy Responses." According to Mr. Cold Call, "Your cold call success is dependent on 11 winning personality traits (known as your Telephone Persona Of Success! )." Collectively, these traits allow you to uniquely market yourself over the telephone so that you can inspire your prospect’s curiosity and reduce their resistance. Are you interested in finding out more about Mr. Cold Call? Then sign-up for his weekly cold calling tips at http://www.mrcoldcall.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Overcoming Objections Over the Telephone

2006-12-27T17:29:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Overcoming Objections Over the Telephone
By Jay Conners

In sales, one of the things you will be doing a lot of, is making phone calls. You can’t escape it. It just comes with the territory.

Making phone calls is really not all that bad. The thought of having to do it, is actually much worse than having to physically sit down and do it, and once you get on a roll, it’s never as bad as it seemed.

The part of making cold calling sales calls that you will find to be most painful are the objections you will be faced with, such as, and most annoying, is the hang up, which doesn’t happen as often as people think. In this particular case, I have no answer on how to meet this challenge, my suggestion would be, not to stress over it, just move onto the next phone call.

Another objection you will be faced with is: I’m not sure. I have to think about it.

My suggested response to this objection would be:

I understand that you need to think about it, but perhaps there is something I did not explain clearly enough, is there anything you would like to go over one more time?

Or . . .

I know when it comes to making a commitment over the phone that it is easy to become lost in the confusion of everything that has to be done and understood, is there anything I can go over with you one more time.

If that doesn’t get them talking again, then let them go by politely asking for their permission to follow up with them in a few days, and, if you could possibly send them out some literature, along with your business card.

Another common objection is:

I have to ask my spouse.

A good response to this objection would be:

Is your spouse available at this time? I would be happy to speak with him/her.

Again, if this does not work, then let them go, and politely ask to send out literature, and follow up with a phone call.

And one other objection you may run into . . .

I have already taken care of that, or I am working with someone else.

If you are hit with this objection, it is most likely your prospects way of telling you they are not interested.

On the other hand, if they tell you they are working with someone else, it never hurts to take a chance, and ask your customer if they would like to see if you could get them a better price, or even a better product. It can’t hurt, and if they are interested than go for it! If not, than let it go right there, and move onto your next prospect.

And remember, challenges are nothing but obstacles on your path to greatness!

Jay Conners has more than fifteen years of sales and marketing experience in the banking and mortgage industry, and is the owner of J. Conners, Mortgage leads reviews - a mortgage resource center for mortgage brokers, loan officers, and lenders. He is also the owner of Www.callprospect.com a mortgage lead company, specializing in fresh leads.

Jay Conners can be contacted via e-mail at conn1229@yahoo.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jay_Conners

www.ColdCallFacts.com

B2B Cold Calling Sucks

2006-12-27T17:28:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

B2B Cold Calling Sucks
By Tino Buntic

Yesterday I received an unsolicited phone call from a woman. It turns out she was a B2B cold caller. Here's how it went:

Cold calling woman: Hello, can I speak to the person in charge of your janitorial cleaning services?

Me (the decision maker): We don't use janitorial cleaning services.

Cold calling woman: OK, then. Good-bye.

That was short and sweet; it was the shortest cold call I had ever received. I regularly receive unsolicited phone calls from B2B telemarketers trying to sell me their services. I actually am one of the few that enjoy receiving these phone calls. Although, I never purchase any of the goods or services being pitched, I enjoy hearing the sales pitches. I like to hear everybody's selling techniques. Normally, when I say "no" the cold callers don’t stop. They try to overcome my objections. But not this woman.

I’m pretty sure that this woman has been told that she needs to make X number of cold calls a day to book X number of appointments to make X number of presentations and close X amount of sales and earn X amount of commission. I think what happened yesterday was she called me then she finished the rest of her X amount of cold calls with no success. No appointments, no new sales. Today will probably be more of the same – unsuccessful cold calls.

Too many sales managers in B2B sales advocate cold calling as a way of generating sales leads and new business. But it doesn’t work anymore, at least not the way it used to. Executives and decision makers, like me, don’t respond to unsolicited sales pitches any more. They know what they need for their business and don’t need to be interrupted by a telemarketer to tell them.

What usually plays out when a new sales rep gets a B2B sales job is that they are told outdated statistics about how much they need to cold call to be able to sell and earn a certain level of commission. It sounds so easy and too many new sales reps get too excited. It’s not as easy as it sounds. So many new sales reps fail. And, they fail for one reason. Cold calling doesn’t work; B2B cold calling sucks!

I suspect "cold calling woman" that called me yesterday had a bad day. I declined her sales pitch. I’m sure she made another ten calls after that, with no success. I’m sure she’ll quit her job shortly. And, I’m sure it’s because her boss forces her to cold call.

Cold calling suck!

Visit Tino Buntic's website, TradePals to receive free B2B & B2C sales leads without cold calling or prospecting. TradePals provides free sales leads to business professionals in major cities across North America, including Nashville, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Vancouver, Seattle, Fresno, Hartford, Greenville, Orlando, Kansas City, Reno, San Antonio, Albany, and Biloxi. It is great for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and freelancers such as attorneys, CPAs, engineers, financial planners, investigators, risk managers, insurance brokers, sales consultants, mortgage brokers, realtors, caterers, and office furniture sales reps.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

The Most Cost-Efficient Way To Reach Prospects

2006-12-27T17:27:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

The Most Cost-Efficient Way To Reach Prospects
By Allen Taylor

Telemarketing is still, dollar for dollar, one of the most cost-efficient means of advertising. Why dread it?

I know, I know. There's so much rejection. But if you made all your decisions in life based on the number of rejections you received you'd probably never leave the house. You can thank me later for that slap in the face.

Think about it. We are all rejected daily in some form or another. Especially if you own or manage a business. Do all your customers buy the same menu item, or the same book? That new store sign you purchased last month, did everyone who does business with you compliment you on it? Probably not.

While not an outright rejection, subtle forms of rejection can still take their toll on our egos - if we let them. Don't! Don't even let the blatant ones get you down. The only sure way to success is to hit rejection dead on.

Cold calling is difficult, but necessary. This is especially true for new start ups. How are you going to let people know you are in business? Whether you visit your potential customers by going door to door or calling them on the phone, you are bound to hear the word "No" often. Some of them will sound harsh. But that's OK. Not everyone is going to be interested. Start the day ready to accept it and look for those yeses. They're out there too.

One sure way to defeat your sales efforts before you get started is to dwell on the negative. Resist that temptation. Be enthusiastic. It rubs off. If you are enthusiastic about your business then others will be and you will hear fewer nos.

When you make your call, start off letting your prospects know who you are. Introduce yourself and your company before you do anything else. Then tell them why you are calling. You have less than ten seconds to get their attention. Make it count.

Be polite. Even if the prospect is rude. They may not be interested today but if you are polite and treat them with respect they will remember that. Be rude, even slightly, and they will remember that even more!

So what do you do if you do get a "No." Try to find out why the prospect isn't interested. This is real easy. Just ask.

"Mr. Johnson, why wouldn't you want to try our new cherry-flavored mouthwash guaranteed to cure gingivitis the first time you use it?" You'll be amazed how honestly people will answer your question. That's information you can use in future calls. It can also give you the information you need to close the sale on that call. Don't shy away from the question.

You also want to make as many calls as you can. Don't make a few calls and give up. If you aren't getting the decision maker on the phone, keep trying. There is a cycle to every process, even prospecting.

Also, you want to make yourself a script. Whether you are selling a product, setting appointments, or asking to send some literature to your prospect's in-box, figure out what you want to say and how you want to say it before you ever pick up the phone. It will be embarrassing to get tongue-tied and lose your train of thought right in the middle of the call because you forgot what you wanted to focus on. So make a script.

The script doesn't have to be complicated. Just a few lines about why you are calling, a few benefits to the customer then a closing statement. A good closing statement asks your prospect to take the action you want them to make. "Mr. Johnson, which seminar would you like to attend, A or B?"

And that's it. Have fun, relax and be yourself. Cold calling is not hard and it can produce great results.

Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist, freelance writer and copywriter. He specializes in world-class marketing for small businesses. For more information about how to make your business shine visit http://www.taylor-and-associates.com Be sure to check out Allen's ghostwriting services and sign up for the free e-mail newsletter.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allen_Taylor

www.ColdCallFacts.com

What Is The Secret Cold Calling Formula In Reaching Executives?

2006-12-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

What Is The Secret Cold Calling Formula In Reaching Executives?
By D.M. Arenzon

The answer is simple and it’s called PERSISTENCE! If your prospect does not call you back, guess what? You keep calling them! If they have not returned your telephone call after the second, third or even fourth attempt, guess what? You keep calling them! According to the National Sales Executive Association, 80% of sales occur between the fifth through twelfth contact and 20% of sales occur between the first through the fourth contact. What do these statistics tell us?

These statistics reveal that the most successful sales reps are those who choose not to give up on their prospects! They understand that those prospects who respond with the “not interested objection” are really asking for more product or service information. They understand the importance of consistent follow-up with their sales prospects. They understand that their prospects will respect their enduring persistence. They understand that their “enduring persistence” may act as a catalyst in their prospect’s buying decisions. What exactly do I mean here?

These prospects (i.e. C-Level Execs, Senior-Level Execs, Directors and Business Owners) that are being contacted are successful for one reason and that reason is due to their “enduring persistence.” Many times our buying decisions are based on more than just the price, features and benefits of a product or service. Our buying decisions can also be based on the person from whom we are buying the product or service. In this case, a prospect who is dealing with a sales rep who has demonstrated “enduring persistence” can quickly identify with this winning personality trait. They will perceive the sales rep as having something in common with them and as a result, they may factor this information into their purchasing decisions.

Now that I have demonstrated that being persistent helps to bridge the gap between you and your sales prospect, now what? You need to constantly remind your prospect of your “enduring persistence” because by doing so increases their awareness of you! This means that if you are leaving a message for them you need to let them know that you are not giving up and that you are not a quitter! Let your prospect know (either on a cold call or by voicemail) that you have been trying to reach them for six months, a year or even something crazy like two years!

Below I’ve included a few lines that you can incorporate into your cold calls and/or voicemail messages. These examples of persistence include the following:

"(FIRST NAME OF PROSPECT), Can you believe that I’ve been trying to reach you for (LENGTH OF TIME) now? Talk about persistence, right?" (pause)

"(FIRST NAME OF PROSPECT), I think I’ve left at least ten messages for you, do you respect my persistence here?" (pause)

"(FIRST NAME OF PROSPECT), You gotta respect my persistence here, I’ve called you so many times that I have no more room in my ACT database." (laugh a little and then pause)

"(FIRST NAME OF PROSPECT), I hope that you appreciate my persistence here, I’m not one to give up so easily." (pause)

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

I Make Cold Calls And I'm a "Thank You Note O-Holic"

2006-12-27T17:25:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

I Make Cold Calls And I'm a "Thank You Note O-Holic"
By D.M. Arenzon

It’s important that I get my feelings out and by doing so I’m hoping that I will inspire other cold callers to do the same. Are you ready to hear what I’m about to say? Ok, here it goes....I make cold calls and I'm addicted to writing handwritten thank you notes to my prospects. I write thank you notes all the time—sometimes three, four, five or more per day.

There are even days when I feel guilty when I didn’t write someone a thank you note and knew in my heart that I should but decided not to because I didn’t want to take the time to write one. Then, after a few minutes, the guilt began to settle, I find a pen in my hand and then I begin writing my prospect a handwritten thank you note. I also have other rules that you should know about as well. For example, my rule of thumb is this, If I’m on the phone with a brand new prospect for more than five minutes I write them a handwritten thank you note.

This compulsive behavior sees no light at the end of the tunnel. Another example of this behavior is the fact that I’m writing thank you notes after each sales meeting with my prospect. You want another example? Ok, fine, I write thank you notes if a prospect or a customer gives me a referral. Not good enough? I write thank you notes after I close a sale with a prospect. My compulsive behaviors are rooted even deeper, how so? Because in certain situations I’m even writing thank you notes to my prospect’s gatekeeper. Again, is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

I’ve tried to stop but nothing seems to cloud my impulsive behavior. What thoughts are running through my mind as I do this? My thought process is that each day our prospects are bombarded with all types of stimulus from emails to the internet to television. We live in a fast-paced society where our prospects have short attention spans and use their lack of time as a defense mechanism. Their lack of time becomes an excuse as to why they are too busy to take or return our telephone calls.

A handwritten thank you note counteracts all these thoughts. It slows down time and makes them feel important. A handwritten thank you note screams out to our prospect that they are worth your time and effort because you took time out of your day to write your thoughts down on paper. While there is no way to freeze time, there is a way to warm it up and one of the best ways to do that is by writing a handwritten thank you note. Can you now understand why I’m a “Thank You Note O-holic?”

Behind The Scenes With Mr. Cold Call

Mr. Cold Call is the author of "How To Have Fun Cold Calling” and "115 Common Sales Objections, 156 Clever And Savvy Responses." According to Mr. Cold Call, "Your cold call success is dependent on 11 winning personality traits (known as your Telephone Persona Of Success!)." Collectively, these traits allow you to uniquely market yourself over the telephone so that you can inspire your prospect’s curiosity and reduce their resistance. Are you interested in finding out more about Mr. Cold Call? Then sign-up for his free weekly cold calling tips at http://www.mrcoldcall.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Your Telephone Personality

2006-12-27T17:24:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Your Telephone Personality
By Janae Wentworth

You may not have thought of it this way, but the telephone is just another sales counter. The customer at the other end of the phone is just like the customer at the counter, with one big exception: The customer cannot see you!

This means you have to work harder to project a pleasant and professional image. Of course, the customer can’t see you smile. But believe it or not, they can hear it in your voice. And use the customer’s name as much as possible. It is surprising how much rapport you can establish by an informal, business-oriented conversation.

Do not keep customers waiting!

No one likes to be kept waiting - - especially when it is not necessary. When you make a phone call, it is exasperating when the phone rings and rings, and no one answers the phone. When it happens to you, do you assume that the people who are supposed to answer must be legitimately busy elsewhere? Most of us do not. We immediately assume that the people who ought to answer are neglecting their jobs and neglecting us.

What do you do when you are talking on the first line, another call comes in on the second line, and there is no one else to answer it? You need to interrupt your first call with a polite apology to acknowledge the second call. The first caller will take it gracefully if it is done with courtesy and tact. Just make sure you wait until the first caller has finished his or her thought - this only takes a few seconds - before asking if you may put him on hold. The second caller will be much happier, too. Because you have taken a moment to answer the ringing telephone, he or she will know that you are aware of the call and that you will be back as quickly as you can.

A standard policy to consider setting is to answer all telephone calls by the second ring!

Never leave an interrupted caller holding for longer than 30 seconds. It may not sound like much time, but on the phone, 30 seconds can seem like hours, and a minute can seem like a lifetime.

When you answer the second call, say, “I have another call on hold right now, would you mind if I called you right back?” Then get the caller’s name and phone number.

When you return to the first call, be sure to thank the caller for holding and use his or her name if you know it: “Thank you for holding, Mr. Smith.” Never leave a caller on hold longer than a few seconds. The only exception is when the caller has stated he or she prefers to hold. In this case, be sure to check back every 30 seconds, even if it is just to thank them for their patience and ask if they want to continue to hold. Just because callers choose to hold does not mean they will continue to hold indefinitely. You also will find that callers who are involved in the decision to continue holding are more tolerant.

J. Wentworth

FREE Acid Reflux Resources/

Acne Treatment Resources

FREE info on Acupuncture

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Janae_Wentworth

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling The Movie Star Way!

2006-12-27T17:24:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling The Movie Star Way!
By D.M. Arenzon

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

In my office, I have a fabulous collection of framed autograph pictures of movie stars like Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson, Farah Fawcett, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Drew Barrymore and even talk show host Jerry Springer (I’m a former employee of the show). Those who enter my office for the first time, both business contacts and friends, say, "WOW! How did you get those pictures!" You should see their eyes and how they light up like a light bulb. I’ll tell you one thing; it’s a great ice-breaker! Keep reading.

Then I thought to myself, "What a great idea!" Are you asking yourself, what is he talking about?" Then it hit me, why not contact sales prospects who have been either pictured or quoted in an online or offline medium.

A few more detailed examples include the following:

· People On The Move Sections

· Industry Leaders profiled on a website or in a newspaper or magazine

· Names mentioned in advertisements

· Awards found in press releases

· Management listed on company websites

Why contact these people? This approach helps to reduce and remove your prospect’s level of resistance. It helps to make the dreaded task of cold calling actually FUN and something to look forward to each day! You will find that utilizing this approach helps to change your prospects attitude in a more favorable way. I mean people buy from people they like and people love to buy. Also, why wouldn’t these people take your call? I mean, who doesn’t like to being recognized? We all want our 15 minutes of fame right? This philosophy ties into Andy Warhol’s most famous words, "In the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes!" So, I’m proposing that anyone in sales seriously consider using this technique. So let me guess, you are really excited now right? What now? How do you get started? Keep reading.

Great sources to find these leads include your local newspaper, a local or national magazine or even your local business journal! Be creative in your search, use www.google.com or www.yahoo.com to locate specific opportunities to find additional leads. You will never have any problem finding these types of leads and you will never run out of places to look. That’s another reason why I love this approach, the opportunities are endless!

One of most strategic places to begin your search is to visit www.prnewswire.com. What exactly is this site and why use it? PR Newswire is a press release service that companies use to distribute their news to large media outlets. What’s great about this site is that you can search over 50 industries, search by state, search over 40 subjects and even search by keyword. Since, breaking news may affect your industry, especially in the areas of prospecting for new business, you find important leads such as:

· Personnel Announcements (if there is a promotion, maybe they are expanding the department

· New Contracts

· Acquisition, mergers and takeovers

· New products and services

· Real Estate Transactions

· Awards

· Joint Ventures

All of these areas mentioned above are opportunities for you to contact these companies to see if they may need your products and/or services. It’s an opportunity to be a creative thinker, it’s an opportunity to use a creative approach to win a sales prospect, it’s an opportunity to standout amongst a crowded room of sellers. Welcome to my world. The question that you may now be asking, "How do you open the call using my technique?" Keep reading.

Let’s say for example you do a search, and you come across a press release on a new product that will be introduced on a national scale in the next few months. The prospect that you may be calling may already be working with your competition, however, you don’t know that for sure right? In business, you are either proactive or reactive; my advice is it's better to be proactive. It’s easy to say someone else has called on them, but I can guarantee you that you no one has approached them in this way! Thus, when you use my approach your prospect will remember you so that when you do call back they won’t forget how creative you were in contacting them. This will give you a strategic advantage in case they are not happy with their current vendor.

When you contact this prospect try saying the following, "Yes, I’d like to speak to the movie star (use their name here)?" Your prospect will most likely laugh and say something like, "Movie star, ha-ha, that’s me!" My name is ………and I work for (list your company here) and we specialize in …………..and I saw your name mentioned in a press release issued the other day. Your prospect will say something like, "Yeah, we issued that the other day." You then say, "I actually didn’t think you would take my call?" They then respond, "Why is that?" You then say, "I thought you would be out signing autographs!" Your prospect will find this very funny and then you continue to go on (while they are laughing) with your sales pitch. Here you can state the reason for your call and that you have some creative ideas that you wanted to run past them that would help to compliment their existing marketing program (just one example).

This technique works great either on live call or just as effective on voicemail. In many instances, I have found that when you leave a voicemail message, they end up playing your message for their entire office. What a compliment! Keep in mind that your sales prospect gets tons of voicemails, why not be a little different right? Okay, so you want an example voicemail now? You can’t wait right? Let’s take the same example above and try saying the following on a voicemail, "Movie star (list their name), I didn’t expect you to take my call, you’re probably out signing autographs. This is ………calling from (list your company) and I saw your name mentioned in an article about your new product that will be introduced in the next few months. When you get back from your autograph sessions can you call me back at (list your phone number) I wanted to run a few ideas by you that your competition is not doing and that you could be doing to increase market share of this product. I’ll be expecting your call today, thank you!"

I have never received a negative response using this technique. Every sales prospect loves it and they always tell me how creative I am. What they are really saying is that I want to do business with you! One more thing, have I said how much I LOVE USING THIS TECHNIQUE! Have I made it clear how much MY PROSPECTS LOVE TAKING MY CALL! Why? BECAUSE IT'S SO DIFFERENT! Being different is a necessary element that will separate you from others who contact the same prospects. If you are looking for a way to STAND-OUT in a crowded marketplace then I strongly encourage you to this innovative approach to cold calling and sales prospecting!

___________________________________________________

Behind The Scenes With Mr. Cold Call

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How To Make That First Call of The Day a Success

2006-12-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How To Make That First Call of The Day a Success
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

The first call of the day is always the toughest.

For some reason, I get a little shy and introverted before speaking to the first prospect in the morning.

But I’d say eighty or ninety percent of the time that initial prospect I get on the line is courteous and surprisingly receptive to my offer.

How can that be? Aren’t people supposed to be grumpy first thing in the morning?

That’s what we might tell ourselves as we start our routines, but we should edit that expectation.

Instead, we should say, “This call is going to be great!”

What if it isn’t?

Then, we can just as quickly add, “Now the first call is out of the way, the frogs are leaving my throat, and all’s well with the world!”

In other words, there’s always a positive spin that we can put on STARTING, a reward or a pat on the back we can bestow, no matter how wobbly we appear to be to ourselves.

The other day, for instance, I followed up by phone with a prospect to whom I sent a proposal, but had received no feedback. When I got her on the line, frankly, I was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect.

My voice warbled a little, not at all filled with its customary confidence.

Still, and perhaps even because I sounded genuine and perhaps a little vulnerable, I revived the deal, and submitted a better proposal, one more closely geared to what the company expected to buy.

That follow-up was my first call of the day, and I felt great afterwards.

So, how should you prepare for the first call of the day?

Relax and tell yourself you won’t be perfect, and more important, you don’t have to be in order to come out ahead.

Being in the same early morning mood, your prospects and clients will empathize with you and probably go out of their way to help you out!

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 900 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered "The Gold Standard"--the foremost expert in sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling -- Turn the Nightmare of Cold Calling into a Sales Success

2006-12-27T17:22:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling -- Turn the Nightmare of Cold Calling into a Sales Success
By Alan Boyer

Do you know that some of the greatest salesmen do it on the phone?

Yet, I keep hearing how cold calling is a nightmare, how they hate it, and how even some sales gurus say "cold calling is dead." Here are some of the reasons I’ve heard from my own sales trainees, at least in the beginning:

2) All I got was voice mail jail and no one ever returns my calls.

And there are others, but most come back to the same thing: the obstacle you are facing isn’t out there in the cold cruel world. It resides right between your own two ears. Your own beliefs are the obstacle. It isn’t anywhere else.

For this article we’re going to deal with the “all” syndrome and rejection.

A client and I once developed a cold calling campaign plan. He was to make 200 cold calls in the next week. We developed the general idea of what he was going to say, who he was going to call, and how he was going to say it. Then we practiced it until he sounded natural.

“Horrible, all I got was phones slammed in my ear, P.O.’d people and No’s galore. It just didn’t work at all.”

How many calls did you make?

“30, and after all those No’s, I gave up.”

How many appointments did you get?”

“Only one.”

So, what was your success ratio? How many appointments for how many calls?

“Let’s see, I think that is….1 in 30, or 3%.”

And what was our original estimate. Wasn’t it 1 in 25? So, how can you say that it was a failure? You weren’t far off.

“…….but….but…all of those No’s, 29 out of 30. That was mostly failure!”

Let’s see, at 1-2 minutes per call for No’s, and maybe 5+ for the yes, how many minutes did you spend to get just one appointment? Isn’t that around 60 minutes to get an appointment? Not bad if you ask me. What would have happened if you had made all 200 calls?

“Maybe 6-7 appointments….Wait a minute, didn’t we target 8 appointments for the 200 calls?!?!”

How many calls were necessary to achieve your goal of 8 appointments a week? (This is probably THE MOST important question since it tells you clearly what you have to do to get the needed RESULTS).

Another thing would have happened if he had made the 200 calls: He’d have gotten better and better, gotten over his fear, and probably would have seen his call success improving toward the 1 in 25 calls, or even better.

I tell most of my clients that they need to make about 500 calls to get good at it. The trouble is that most never reach 500 calls, or if you do it takes them 2 years to do it, and by that time either the boss has eliminated you, or if you are a business owner your overhead costs have eliminated you.

It all started with the “all” syndrome. In other words our belief that

ALL we got was no’s,
ALL we got were Voice Mails, and that NO ONE ever returned a call.

It’s the glass half full or half empty issue. That is a belief that in this case isn’t valid.

Use the Plan – Do – Improve/Optimize scenario.

Plan what you are going to do,
Do it (make sure to measure the results so you know what works and what doesn’t), make changes (new plans), and
Go back through that loop over and over.

Let’s apply that to the scenario above.

Develop what you are going to say, how you are going to say it and to who. Find the reasons why someone would even want to talk to you and develop it.
Measure your success, measure how many successes you had out of how many calls. In most cases, it really isn’t as bad as everyone makes out.
Now that you have the key measurements—fix them. That means, change what you say, how you say it, or who you say it to, and watch the numbers. Do they go up, or down? Capture what works, and learn from what doesn’t. You’ll see those numbers constantly moving up.
Learn the best way from the experts…get every book you can, go to training classes, hire a sales coach.

You are always in control. Don't be at the mercy of anything, someone else, the environment, the market place.

Sales Training -- Get results not just Training

Some typical results

Lead generation -- up 5-10 times

Sales close ratio -- up 4-5 times

What is needed?

Skills or removing the barrier between the ears? We focus on measurable results.

Alan Boyer, President/CEO of The Leader’s Perspective, LLC

Helping People and Companies Worldwide Reach Further Than They EVER Thought Possible...FASTER

Check out our website, and sign up for our weekly newsletter "Hints and Tips to Increase Your Business."

http://www.leaders-perspective.com
mailto:AlanBoyer@leaders-perspective

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_Boyer

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Learn Seven Practical Tips To Reduce Cold Call Resistance

2006-12-27T17:21:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Learn Seven Practical Tips To Reduce Cold Call Resistance
By D.M. Arenzon

You know it’s only human nature to resist new ideas, concepts or changes in our immediate environment. Why is this true for each of us? Resistance is a learned behavior that we have learned thru our life experiences. Our experiences have caused us to become conditioned to resist certain changes in our environment. We resist because it’s more comfortable the way things are then if you were to change something in your “safe environment.” Now let’s apply this ideology to your sales prospects, are you ready?

I’m thinking of two words here, can you guess them? Your prospects will use these two words as a way to resist you and what you are selling. These two words are called “Sales Objections” and they will be a constant variable in the sales process. The only power that you have and that you can control is how you react to these objections. Charles Swindoll, American author, once said that life is “10% what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it!”

What are some strategies that you can use in response to your prospect’s resistance? The most obvious answer would be the questions that you ask your prospect that help them self-discover why they need your product or service. This makes a lot of sense, however, prospects are not waiting for your call, they are busy and very often prospects can be impatient. How do you even the playing field so that you can reduce this resistance? Below are seven practical tips that you can use immediately to reduce cold call resistance and these tips include:

1. USE HUMOR TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

Humor has a permeating effect to instantly change a prospect’s attitude from negative to positive. Try using a clever comeback when a prospect presents you with a sales objection. Another use of humor can be incorporated into the messages that you leave on your prospect’s voicemail. Since most voicemails from salespeople all sound the same they are than more likely to be deleted. When you use humor, you are standing out in a very unique way and you can expect to receive an immediate callback.

2. USE ENTHUSIASM TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

When you are enthusiastic over the telephone you create this energy between you can your prospect that is contagious. This positive energy can alter attitudes and buying behaviors. If you are excited about what you sell, don’t you think your prospect will wonder what all the excitement is about? Of course they will!

3. INTRODUCE NEW WAYS OF THINKING AND/OR NEW IDEAS TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

Life really is about perception. We may hear something in conversation and one person perceives it one way and another person may perceive it in a completely different way. In sales these same principles apply, for example, if you are presented with a price objection perhaps you want to breakdown the price for them. In other situations you may want to start using more words in your sales presentations that inspire feeling or imagery. Again, life is about perception and people buy according to what makes sense to them.

4. USE CREATIVITY TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

Creativity has the ability to transform thought. It has a magnetizing effect and is a powerful tool that you can use to inspire one’s curiosity. Once you have their curiosity, you now have their attention and this means your chances have now increased dramatically for your ultimate outcome---closing the sale! How and when do you use creativity? Creativity can be used in the words you say when describing your product, how you say something, what you say on your prospect’s voicemail or even in the presentation of your business proposal.

5. USE PASSION AND PERSISTENCE TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

The most successful salespeople are the ones who target the most successful prospects. When contacting these prospects it’s important to know that these prospects did not get to where they are by being reactive; they got to where they are now because of their enduring persistence! They jumped over many corporate hurdles to climb the corporate ladder to get to the position where they are now. They know that their climb to success wasn’t easy and can relate to passionate and persistent salespeople. If you are persistent, your persistence will be respected and your outcomes will be even that much greater.

6. USE INSPIRATION AND MOTIVATION TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

Can you think of the last time that you were inspired to do something? What motivated you to action? One way to inspire and motivate your prospects to action is by listening to motivational audio tapes and/or cds. When you begin listening to them you will be inspired and you can use this newfound inspiration by incorporating key phrases and quotes into your sales presentation. Some of my favorite speakers and authors include: Les Brown, Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, Dr. Carol Fleming and Brian Tracy.

7. USE THE POWER OF DIFFERENCE TO REDUCE RESISTANCE

Once again, prospects have become conditioned to resist your telephone call. It’s so important that you do something different to break up your prospect’s conditioned state of mind. When you do something different or something non-traditional in nature, you are STANDING OUT in a crowded marketplace. “The Power Of Difference” can be applied to any stage of the sales process. The earlier you apply these principles, the more likely you will inspire your prospect’s curiosity and the more likely you will increase your odds of closing a sale.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling is a HIGH Percentage Game!

2006-12-27T17:20:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling is a HIGH Percentage Game!
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

If you go to Vegas, Atlantic City, or even Monte Carlo, it pays to find the high percentage games and to play them.

Typically, Blackjack is among them, which means it returns generally more money in winnings than say, the slot machines.

One of the main objections of ardent Anti-Cold Callers is that they believe cold calling is a low percentage play, that when you do it you’re phoning people with brick homes and trying to sell aluminum siding to them.

If you’re doing that, you’re more than stupid.

Do cold calling the right way and you will carefully select your list, having pre-qualified those that appear for vital characteristics, such as income, need, and a positive predisposition to say “Yes.”

Let me offer an example of a campaign I conducted, a very successful one.

I developed a seminar that ended up launching my consulting business. Instead of trying to get existing commercial seminar companies to sponsor my program I contacted universities, because as a Ph.D. and a college professor at the time I had CREDIBILITY with them.

Sure enough, one school sponsored my program successfully, and then I told others about that venture and they quickly got on board. Within 18 months, my programs were offered through my own, cold-call developed network of 35 universities that stretched from coast to coast.

I’ll cut to the chase. These programs attracted a major publisher to me, I wrote six books in five years, and four of them became best-sellers.

My cold calls earned MILLIONS of dollars for me.

Do I have your attention?

I must say, I made what I consider SMART CALLS, and I devised a SCRIPT that seemed absolutely uncontrived, and I phoned the RIGHT PEOPLE.

I did these things because I am a certified smart guy when it comes to COMMUNICATING.

Anti-Cold Callers are not me.

They’re a lot dumber than you are.

They’re lazy, clueless, uneducated oafs, but they want your money.

Don’t give it to them.

Appreciate that their propaganda is actually making it easier to sell by phone because they’re discouraging your competitors from reaching out and selling someone.

Let’s thank them for that, but otherwise consign them and their CAN’T-DO, negative ideas to the dust bin.

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 950 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered "The Gold Standard"--the foremost expert in sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

"Cold Calling Is Dead" Is A Lie!

2006-12-27T17:20:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

"Cold Calling Is Dead" Is A Lie!
By Virden Thornton

There is a website that trumpets this notion (myth) in ads all over the Internet. The primary argument is that cold calling is a time consuming prospecting technique that has seen its day and in our modern age, today’s technology gives sales professionals new and better approaches to finding prospects to sell. Sounds good if you’re selling a book on the subject.

The argument against cold calling states that, “The effectiveness of cold calling went by the wayside as our society moved out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age,...” It also suggests, that by using today’s technological advances, you can eliminate the dreaded cold calling systems and reduce the time your staff spends on an antiquated prospecting approach. Just a few short years ago I used to teach this drivel as well, telling participants in my workshops that cold calling was unprofessional and a waste of time. I’m aware that cold calling is not for every sales team or every product or service, but for certain industries, cold calling is the best approach to finding prospects willing and able to purchase from your staff and is an extremely effective prospecting tool for the same reason that the website states that “cold calling is dead.” Technology!

Today there are dozens of devices and techniques used by gatekeepers to screen out sales representatives. Even the smallest firms employ answering machines and voice mail. To make appointments with decision-makers today in many businesses or professional organizations, requires a creative approach that will bypass the screening systems and give your sales representatives an edge in setting up meetings. Cold calling can be that creative approach for many business-to-business selling groups, if you know how to employ this proven prospecting tool effectively.

First and foremost, cold calling should be used to find out who the true decision-maker is in a company and to also obtain a gatekeeper’s name. Yes, your sales staff can do this over the telephone, but the chance of being screened out, is at an all time high. By being inside the company, your sales professional can qualify the organization. Qualifying a company on the telephone is impossible today. The minute your staff starts asking qualifying questions, the roadblocks immediately go up. By setting an appointment and then making a wasted trip to a company, that, for a variety of reasons, cannot use what you have to sell, your staff may spend more time than if they had cold called to assess a business in the first place. If your staff members do nothing more on a cold call than find the name of the decision-maker, qualify the prospect, and obtain a gatekeeper’s name, they have succeeded in their cold calling activity.

When cold calling, if the decision-maker is in, your representative should ask for two, no more than three minutes of the decision-maker’s time to set up an appointment for a short presentation. From my experience in setting up telemarketing centers across the country, I’ve found that setting one blind appointment on the telephone, takes a little over an hour for a seasoned telemarketer of representative. Setting one qualified appointment cold calling (depending on the industry) can take, on average, from one to three hours. However, my research also shows that appointments set in person, rather than on the telephone, have a much higher probability of being successful, due to the rapport factor that an initial meeting can generate.

If you’ve been reading from the beginning of this manual, you already know my feelings about selling your products or services while cold calling (Myth 24). If the decision-maker is not available, the second objective for your staff member is to obtain the name of the gatekeeper to use when calling back for an appointment. Dropping a gatekeeper’s name is a vital tool in overcoming electronic screening devices and getting to the decision-maker. When cold calling, your representative may also be able to obtain information about competitive vendors and determine if the opportunity exists to replace them.

One of the major complaints about cold calling is that it is time consuming. This is true if the technique is the only prospecting tool that your sales team uses to attract prospects. However, in combination with a drive by assessment plan, softening letters, emails, faxes and flyers, telesales calls, tip clubs, association activities and trade shows, cold calling can be a key element in attracting new business, by breaking down the barriers that today’s screening technology creates for your sales team members.

The average sales representative makes less than five sales presentations weekly. With a prospecting system like the one outlined above, custom-tailored to your organization, you can include cold calling as a key element in the process and double or even triple the number of presentations each of your sales team members conduct weekly. Custom-tailoring a prospecting system for your organization with cold calling and telesales scripts and a series of unique prospecting activities is easy, if you use The $elling Edge®, Inc.’s advisory services or our telephone coaching programs for sales managers. You can check both services out at: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/personalCoaching.htm.

VIRDEN THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. an Ohio consulting firm specializing in sales and sales management training, personal coaching, advisory services and publishing. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Service Linen Supply, Bank One, Jefferson Wells International, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of the “best selling” Building & Closing the Sale, Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publications a division of Thompson Learning. He has also authored a client acclaimed Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching, telemarketing, and personal productivity manuals. To obtain a substantial discount on two of Virden's latest books, 101 Sales Myths or Organizing For Sales Success, go to: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Virden_Thornton

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Mean Prospects

2006-12-27T17:19:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Mean Prospects
By D.M. Arenzon

"You don't have to keep calling me!"

"Stop calling me!"

"It's 10 o'clock Monday morning, what nerve!"

"I'm going to be hanging up on you!"

"What part of no did you not understand?"

"Who’s your manager?"

Do any of these responses above sound familiar? I bet they do! In fact, it would not surprise me if you are smiling right now because you also have experienced one, two or all of these responses. If you have then you understand that such mean responses come with the territory. I commend you for this because you are indeed a true cold caller! We can laugh now, but when you are in the moment and on the receiving end of these responses it can be very intense. It's really hard not to take these responses personally. And yes, it's hard to stay positive when you hear so much negativity. And yes, such negativity from your sales prospects can turn a great day into a not so great day.

So how does Mr. Cold Call deal with mean prospects? First of all, there is no single answer. However, there are ways to deal with it or at least reduce cold call frustration on your end and cold call resistance on their end. Here are four suggestions to keep in mind:

1. PROSPECTS WILL TAKE OUT THEIR PROBLEMS ON YOU!

The workplace along with outside pressures such as family and finances cause us a tremendous amount of stress. The sales prospects that you are contacting are not immune to these pressures and you must keep this in mind when you are making cold calls. When you encounter a prospect that is a bit “out of control” for the most part just back off. I would then try contacting them a few weeks later and make mention to the fact that you may have caught them at a bad time. In my experience, I have found this to be a good strategy since most people do not expect you to call back and do admire your persistence.

2. HUMOR HAS A PERMEATING EFFECT TO CHANGE A PROSPECT’S ATTITUDE FROM NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE.

Humor also has the power to create and build rapport with your prospects as well! Take a personal risk and add humor when you are on the telephone with your prospect. If your prospect is acting resistant or if they’re stressed out humor can act as a perfect escape for your prospect. One minute they’re having a bad day your light humor can give them a reason to have a FANTASTIC DAY! One line that seems to lighten the mood is when a prospect is about to hang up on you. I then reply, “(FIRST NAME OF PROSPECT), Are you going to hang up on me?” I have found this to lighten the tension of the call.

3. REMEMBER THAT LIFE IS 10% WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU AND 90% OF HOW YOU REACT TO IT.

Read this quote from Charles Swindoll, American author, he writes about the importance of your attitude and how you use it to react to life as a whole.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes."

4. WHEN YOU HEAR MEAN RESPONSES EXCHANGE YOUR STORIES WITH FELLOW CO-WORKERS.

When you experience mean responses from your prospects it’s healthy to get these internal frustrations out of your system. You will find that when you exchange stories with fellow co-workers it can be very self-satisfying and can even be cathartic. If you know that you are not alone in dealing with mean prospects then it makes cold calling less frustrating and easier to manage.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Reduce Resistance and Inspire Curiosity By Becoming A "Cold Calling Journalist"

2006-12-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Reduce Resistance and Inspire Curiosity By Becoming A "Cold Calling Journalist"
By D.M. Arenzon

We’ve all heard the same brush-offs from our prospects at one time or another. And you know what? It really gets old after awhile and often it can get a bit frustrating, these include responses such as:

"Call me back in six months and we can talk."

"I’m too busy to speak with you right now, but you can try me back this time next year."

Your prospect’s assistant says, "(Name of your prospect) said that you could call back in three months and he’ll take your call then."

If you ask a few more qualifying questions and are unable to get any further with your prospect then you need to listen to this creative sales idea, are you ready? If nothing else works for you then smile on the phone and say, "(Name of your prospect), may I quote you in my ACT Database that I can call you back in (Length of time) ?" A majority of the time they will say yes and agree to your request. What do you do now?

When you do call them back in three months, six months or even one year later you mention to them the day and time that you had spoken. Further, mention to your prospect that you have a direct quote in your ACT database from them saying that you could call them back and that they would take your telephone call. If you cannot reach them directly, you can apply this idea when leaving them a voicemail message. Finally, if you happen to speak with your prospect’s assistant make sure that you mention that you have a direct quote from their boss saying that they would take your telephone call. This should give them a good reason to transfer your call directly to your prospect (or at least their voicemail).

Behind The Scenes With Mr. Cold Call

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Is Contagious!

2006-12-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Is Contagious!
By D.M. Arenzon

When you catch the common cold you are considered to be contagious. This means that those individuals that you come into close contact may catch your cold. What are the probabilities that you will give your cold to someone else? Since I don’t have specific percentages for you, I would conclude that the closer the proximity that you have with someone then the stronger the probability that you will give your cold to this person. This makes sense, huh? So what does cold calling have to do with the common cold? And how is cold calling contagious?

Since cold calling is not the common cold we can therefore conclude it is not contagious. However, I am proposing that cold calling is contagious and has the ability to affect your sales prospects, but how is this possible? There are certain personality traits that we can bring to the telephone conversation that can have a powerful affect on both your prospect’s attitude and behavior. Some of these personality traits include your...

* Positive Attitude

* Enthusiasm

* Charisma

* Optimism

* Creativity

* Confidence

* Sense of humor

* Inspiration

* Perseverance

* Friendliness

How do these personality traits affect your prospect’s attitude and ultimately their behavior? These traits are powerful tools that you can use to instantly inspire not only your prospect’s curiosity, but a tool that you can use to reduce their resistance as well. Below are a few example questions that you can answer which will help to illustrate my point here:

* Can you think of the last time in which you felt a bit down and someone approached you with a nice big smile? What happened next?

* Can you remember the last time when you were a bit hesitant about doing something and a friend of yours made a joke to help ease your tensions? How did this make you feel?

* Can you remember the last time that you were a bit unsure about buying something and the person you were speaking with came across so confident that you decided to take a chance and buy it?

* Have you ever met someone and you felt this type of “energy” illuminating from them that was so positive and so warm that it made you want to immediately speak with them?

* Have you ever come across an inspiring story and it motivated you to do something that you thought that you would never do?

Are you seeing the big picture here? Do you understand what these examples mean? These examples illustrate that if your prospect is not expecting your call traits such as your positive attitude and your enthusiasm will inspire their curiosity. These examples illustrate that if your prospect is busy your perseverance will inspire their curiosity. These examples illustrate that if your prospect is having a bad day your sense of humor might turn their day around. All of these traits have the ability to alter not only your prospect’s attitude, but their behavior as well.

In other words, these personality traits are catalysts that can alter your prospect’s thinking and motivate them to take action. William James, the great American psychologist and philosopher stated, "The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind." If you agree with this quote, then we also have the power to affect the attitudes and behaviors of our prospects. Based on this information, is cold calling contagious?

Behind The Scenes With Mr. Cold Call

Mr. Cold Call is the author of "How To Have Fun Cold Calling” and "115 Common Sales Objections, 156 Clever And Savvy Responses." According to Mr. Cold Call, "Your cold call success is dependent on 11 winning personality traits (known as your Telephone Persona Of Success!)." Collectively, these traits allow you to uniquely market yourself over the telephone so that you can inspire your prospect’s curiosity and reduce their resistance. Are you interested in finding out more about Mr. Cold Call? Then sign-up for his weekly cold calling tips at http://www.mrcoldcall.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D.M._Arenzon

www.ColdCallFacts.com

I Hate Cold Calling, But, Will It Really Help My Small Business?

2006-12-27T17:15:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

I Hate Cold Calling, But, Will It Really Help My Small Business?
By Brandt Stohr

I hate cold-calling. In fact, there are a lot of horrible pains I would suffer before cold-calling someone. And I think that many small business owners feel the way I do.

It’s true that there are a number of means of small business marketing – direct mail, personal letters, advertising, networking, public relations, internet marketing – and alas, cold calling is one of them. When it comes to small business marketing – any business activity, really – at some point you just have to buckle down and do what you gotta’ do if you want to succeed. But is cold-calling one of those small business marketing activities that small business owners simply have to suffer through in order to succeed in business?

Some experts say, loudly and with vigor: “Yes!” Others say, “Absolutely not.”

The truth about the value of cold-calling as part of your small business marketing strategy is that it’s somewhere in between, and it depends on your particular business. If, for example, you retail small-dollar items through a catalog and on the Internet, cold-calling your potential customers probably isn’t cost-effective: if each customer might spend $10 with you, spending 20 minutes or more on the phone with that prospect doesn’t make sense. If, on the other hand, you’re a manufacturer of small-dollar items that you sell to retailers who may spend $1,000 or more buying your products in bulk, then picking up the phone and making a call may well be worth your while.

If you decide to make cold-calling a part of your small business marketing strategy, there are a few things you can do to maximize the chances that your cold call will turn into a new client:

Cold-calling small business marketing tip #1: Take initiative. When you ask the potential client at the other end of the line “When would be a good time to meet?” you open the door for them to say “Never!” Instead, ask “How would next Tuesday at 11:00 work for you to meet?”

Cold-calling small business marketing tip #2: Approach the call with the idea that your goal is to help your prospective customer. Resist the urge to make the call about you – what you do, what you want. Instead, make the call about the prospect at the other end of the line. Ask the prospect about his needs and wants. Then suggest that you can help – and if he meets you next Tuesday at 11:00 you’ll tell him how.

Cold-calling small business marketing tip #3: Get to the point. The prospect at the other end of the line is going to feel, right off the bat, that you’re wasting her time. So, by all means, be brief. Be clear and concise. Avoid saying “um.”

Cold-calling small business marketing tip #4: Ask questions. This tip reflects back to small business marketing tip #2, making the call about the prospect, not about you. Asking questions also helps steer you to the right information and will help you tailor your sales pitch – for you to deliver at the appointment.

Cold-calling small business marketing tip #5: Save the sales pitch. Effective cold-calling isn’t about selling your product or service. It’s about getting an appointment so that you can sell your product or service in person.

As with any small business marketing strategy, the best way to figure out if it works is to try it. Make enough cold calls so that you can accurately measure their effectiveness. Then compare that measurement to your other small business marketing tools.

Brandt Stohr, The Small Business Marketing Genius has brought startup one man operations to billion dollar corporations by using creative marketing techniques rather then investors and capital. Brandt Stohr has been helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to get their small businesses exploding with sales without the use of expensive traditional marketing techniques. For more information and a free report on the ten deadly mistakes most small businesses are still making visit Brandt Stohr's site at http://www.smallbusinessmktng.com or http://www.brandtstohr.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brandt_Stohr

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Why Cold Calling Detractors Don't Belong In Sales Work

2006-12-27T17:14:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Why Cold Calling Detractors Don't Belong In Sales Work
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

I’ve had it up to here with self-appointed sales experts who pop-off with nothing but disrespect for cold-calling.

They don’t know what they’re talking about and they appeal to the worst possible motivation in other salespeople: The desire to get something for nothing.

Cold calling takes work, and genuine salespeople don’t mind that one bit. As Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach said, true winners love to not only be on the field of play, but to leave it, exhausted, knowing they did their best.

Show me someone who boasts that he “Prefers to work SMART, and not HARD,” and I’ll show you: (1) Either a certified genius who has found or built a perpetual motion machine; or (2) A liar, who not only deceives himself, but others, too.

I tell them this: IT IS SMARTER TO WORK HARDER.

There’s something else about the anti-cold callers that is disconcerting. They’re RISK-AVERSE. They want a sure thing, and they know that prospecting for new business is anything but certain, especially if you’re too lazy to commit to it.

Every salesperson risks rejection and investing time that won’t immediately pay off in a sale. But who can totally cherry-pick his prospects as to guarantee he’ll always win and never lose?

I’ll tell you who can do this. Passive CLERKS can; the ones who do nothing but answer inbound calls and fulfill orders from a catalogue. They don’t act; they react. And for the most part, they get a nice, steady, pauper’s paycheck to do that 51 weeks a year with one week off, for good behavior.

If you don’t want to work hard and if you fear taking risks and you need a sure thing to feel warm and fuzzy, leave the sales game right now.

And don’t bash cold callers who are really working, and producing results, for a living.

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 950 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered "The Gold Standard" in sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Top Speaker Says: Control Your Destiny By Learning To Cold Call

2006-12-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Top Speaker Says: Control Your Destiny By Learning To Cold Call
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

I had no money when I started my consulting business.

But I had a phone, and that’s all it took to transform myself from an Indiana professor with a church-mouse salary, into an independent, flourishing, nationwide practitioner within a matter of mere months.

I contacted colleges and trade associations out of the blue, asking them to sponsor a new seminar I had created, and within 18 months my program had been successfully sponsored by 35 of them, which became my distribution network.

I didn’t know ANY of the people I called, initially. Not one came from a referral. And there wasn’t a sponsor that came to me during that time—I went to them.

Still, I was able to increase my earnings by TEN TIMES within a calendar year, buy my own home in pricey California, and start driving luxury cars and taking European and Hawaiian vacations, at will.

During my first few years of professional speaking, a major publisher noticed my programs and asked me if I wanted to write books. I did; six in five years, and four went on to become business best-sellers. Later, I would publish my second six.

And these books, in turn, brought me millions of dollars of added business.

This harvest of success came directly from the seeds I sowed with my cold calls.

If not for those frosty calls, made during one of the coldest Midwestern winters on record, I wouldn’t be writing this article, and I might still be stuck in that quiet hamlet of 7,500 souls, where I was until I mustered the courage to dial my way out.

IN LIGHT OF THIS NARRATIVE, WHICH LOSER IS GOING TO TELL ME COLD CALLING DOESN’T WORK?

When you learn to cold call, you control your destiny.

You decide your activity level, and directly affect your results. You set your salary.

You don’t have to wait for inbound calls to be generated from expensive advertising, and because you are proactively reaching out to prospects, you’re enjoying several advantages:

(1) You fly under the radar of your competitors. I was at 35 universities and had six titles on the shelves of Barnes and Noble before my competitors even knew there was a category in stores for “sales” and “telemarketing.” In other words, you’re fast to the market, and that advantage can be amazing in its impacts.

(2) You can customize your offers to each prospect, quickly market testing them until you sort out the best one, and then focus on it. Try changing print ads or direct mailers with this frequency, and even if you did you wouldn’t get the instant, rich feedback a cold call gives you.

(3) There’s no downtime. You can keep calling until you strike gold, knowing that at any time you’re awake, someone, somewhere in the world can be reached by your call and say yes.

(4) Cold calling is cheap and getting cheaper still. How many hundreds or thousands of unused minutes do you have left on your calling plans?

(5) Your competitors are afraid of the phone, busy taking to heart the wimpy appeals of so-called gurus who claim cold-calling doesn’t work. Don’t even think your prospects are being bombarded by multiple phone offers. It just doesn’t happen, anymore, so you’ll stand out among all of the cowards who are trying to find a “lazy person’s” path to riches.

I could go on.

Once you learn to cold call you join the ranks of those who have tasted battle and savored hard earned victories. Everyone else may have an opinion, but unless they’ve ventured where you’ve been, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How To Be A Cold Calling Superstar!

2006-12-27T17:06:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

How To Be A Cold Calling Superstar!
By Gavin Ingham

Our emotions and feelings are changing all of the time based on our interpretation of events. Does this mean that even a sales superstar feels bad if they lose a big deal? Of course they do. They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. It’s natural for your feelings to fluctuate as you go about your business.

Take a moment and imagine a bad day selling on the phone. It’s been awful. You’ve been cold calling for over 3 hours and you’ve had rejection after rejection after rejection. You’ve had enough and you’re bored and disconsolate. How would you be sitting? Most people would be leaning forward, hunched up. Your head might be down, your breathing shallow. You’d be speaking quietly and your hand may well be partly covering your mouth. You’d probably be looking down too and your facial expression would be boredom. But I didn’t have tell you any of that. You already know what physiology goes with a bad day on the phone or in any selling scenario.

The quickest way to change the way that you feel in any given moment is by changing your physiology. Physiology is your changing expression through your physical body – how you breathe, stand, sit, walk, move, smile etc – and it’s hard wired to the way you feel. Your physiology and your feelings are so interconnected that you can use one to change the other and vice versa.

Imagine now the next call. You start off the same but as you do the client starts to take an interest. He’s quite perky and positive. You sit up a bit and your head comes up. He starts to ask you questions and show a real interest. You sit right up, smile and start to fill your lungs. You smile again. Finally, he asks you to tell him more about your flagship product. You stand up, push your shoulders back and confidently start to tell him about the product. Did you consciously decide to make these physiological changes? No! Your mind and body just knew that these were necessary to deliver the right message. But what about the 20 calls before? Did those clients get the right message? Probably not?

Whilst we all know that changing our physiology changes the way that we feel we rarely take conscious control of it. In order to change our physiology it’s essential that we are aware of all of the key elements that make up our physiology. As already mentioned they are – breathing, posture, movement and facial expressions.

Breathing

Breathing is an unconscious action. At least, I hope that it is! I wouldn’t want you to get really busy and forget to breathe. Now that really would be a mistake! Obviously, breathing must be an unconscious task and that is a major positive for the human race however there is a negative side to this. Because breathing is unconscious we don’t generally choose to focus on our breathing.

When we are stressed or angry or we face confrontation we tend to breathe faster and more shallowly. As you start to breathe faster this sends a message to your feelings and they intensify, so you start to breathe faster still and so on in a loop. Certainly this reaction might be perfect if you need to fight a wild animal but if you want to deal professionally with a client then maybe it’s not so suitable. Learning when to stop, take a break and breathe more deeply can really help you to break your pattern both during difficult sales situations such as cold calling, negotiating and presenting.

Conversely, when you are bored and tired your breathing gets slower and deeper. This sends a message to your feelings and you start to breathe even deeper and so on in a loop. This does nothing to help you to feel or sound energised. Certainly, if you’re not energised and dynamic when you’re selling your product you can’t expect the client to be. Learning to recognise when either your physiology or your emotions change and to change your breathing patterns will considerably increase your energy levels when selling.

Movement

If someone walked into the office slowly and with little movement how do you think they feel? Conversely, if someone strode into the office purposefully and with a bouncing gait how do you think they feel? Not hard to guess is it! We all know that movement changes the way we feel. If you’ve been sitting reading for a while tell me where your energy is at the moment on a scale of 1 to 10. Try getting up and moving around the room a bit. Stand up a sit down, do some moderate exercise (health permitting!) for a few seconds. Have your energy levels gone up? Do you feel more energised? Of course you do.

When I run coaching sessions I can usually tell who the positive members of the team are from the way that they walk across the car park on their way to work. I don’t use this information as it could be misleading but it is usually spot on. People who do regular exercise know the value of movement for changing the way that they feel and for creating energy. As a sales person you need to use movement to control your emotions and to maximise your sales success.

Facial Expressions

I have recently become a very proud uncle. I haven’t had the experience of being around babies before and it is very interesting for someone who is so intrigued by human potential and development. Liberty is nearly 4 months old and one of the areas of her development that has really interested me is watching her use her facial expressions. She seems to have been born with some of them but not others. Certainly, she could pull a screaming face straight away but smiling took a few weeks. I wonder if she knew how to smile already and just couldn’t physically do it or whether she copied it. In any case, her facial expressions are now firmly hardwired to the way that she is feeling. How do I know? Because she never smiles and screams at the same time and she never coohs and pulls her pained face! Even at her age she doesn’t make mistakes in this – not any! In fact, if you can get her to smile or laugh when she’s screaming she will stop screaming instantly and start cooing again!

Surely it's not that easy? Indeed it is! Think of the habitually miserable people in your organisation... do they smile all of the time? Nope. And if you now think of someone who you’d describe as positive and happy I’d like to guess that they smile quite a lot of the time. Would you go around with a friend who didn’t smile at you ever? I doubt it. Taking time to be aware of your daily facial expressions is well worth the effort. Interestingly, many of the salespeople I work with are unaware that they don’t smile that often and when they do this (silly) exercise they find themselves winning more new clients. Now isn’t that strange.

Posture

Posture is the way that you sit and stand. Our posture says a lot about us. I first became aware of this through an old work colleague who was particularly negative and depressed. He always saw the bad side of everything. His shoulders were forward, his back not straight and his chin down all of the time. When he did telesales he would be hunched up like a weather beaten sack of spuds! When he visited clients he used to shuffle in like an old man. On the other end of the scale thing about how a sales superstar would sit and stand in similar situations.

Working with salespeople and telesales teams I often know immediately where they are through their physiology. Once I have built rapport with them one of the first things I do is change their physiology through exercises and games. Not only is this the quickest way to change the way that they feel but it supports the deeper changes that often need to be made.

Exercise: Physiology Benchmark

Think of the best telesales call that you’ve ever made. Remember it in as much detail as you can. Who were you speaking to? Why did you do such a good job? What was so great about it? Now imagine yourself making a call twice as good. Go on! I dare you! You can do it!

As you imagine this amazing call I want you to take the time to think about your physiology. In your logbook take the time to describe it in detail or draw a picture (go on – have fun!). It’s incredibly important that you benchmark this physiology so that you know what you are striving for.

Top 5 Tips for Maintaining a Positive Telesales Physiology

1. Put a mirror on your desk so that you can monitor your habitual facial expressions. I know, I know – people are going to laugh at you! If you knew this would double your sales would you do it? Of course you would. So how much does it have to help before you do it and why do you care what average performers think anyway? Go get one!

2. Keep your head up. When you raise your head and eyes above the horizontal line you will feel much more empowered. Try it. When I work with telesales teams and individuals I often put a banner or a slogan on the wall about two feet above eye level. Make it motivational and make sure that it means something to you and your team. If you’re a sales manager and you see a call start to go awry get the sales person to look up.

3. Stand up periodically when you are doing telesales, particularly at the start of calls. If you don’t like talking on the phone and standing up try standing up between calls occasionally. Standing up changes your whole physiology. It also changes your ability to utilise your whole voice and it’s whole range.

At the end of a live telesales training I was once running a coaching session where the delegates were ringing live contacts to set up appointments. One of the delegates was on a particularly strong call and was standing up. He was just coming to the point where he was going to close for the meeting and he would have got it. As he realised that this was coming up he pulled up his chair and sat down. As he did so, his whole physiology, tone and confidence fell. It was obvious to even a non-trained observer. He half-heartedly tried to close the client and the client objected. His head lowered and I could see the opportunity slipping away.

The client was getting into objection mode and was really questioning the validity of having a meeting. I snapped my fingers above and to the front of the sales person’s face to break his pattern and get his attention. As he looked up, I gestured at him to stand up and as he did so I moved his chair away so he had to continue his call standing. His physiology changed again, he rapidly took control of the call and he set the appointment.

Results may not be quite so dramatic and obvious for you but they will be there!

4. Wear a headset. I heard your cry of horror so I’ll repeat it, wear a headset. Don’t make excuses, try it. If you’re thinking anything about it being uncomfortable, unnatural or weird I will repeat myself again. Wear a headset. I have always recommended the wearing of headsets and it always seems to have been in the top 5 most debated pieces of advice I give! I think this is because we are all conditioned to pick up the phone and it seems unnatural to not do so. Until wearing a headset feels natural you haven’t yet experienced the benefits of using a headset. I guarantee that if you try it for long enough it will feel natural and it will improve your calls.

If you think about it for a moment it’s obvious why wearing a headset will improve both your feelings and physiology and the quality of the call. It’s because it frees you up to move and act naturally. You get totally into the call without this little plastic barrier wedged up against your ear.

Another spin off benefit of wearing a headset is that in my experience your call rate will go up by as much as 20%!

5. Make cold calling sessions a maximum of 45 minutes long! You weren’t expecting that were you! I believe cold calling and telesales is something that you should perform at 100% and to do this you need to work in concentrated bursts. Now don’t get me wrong, I agree that telesales is a numbers game however you can also explode your performance by making more impactful calls. 100 useless calls is no better than 50 useless ones! Neither are satisfactory. Far better that you make a good number of powerful calls.

As an individual or a team leader what you need to do is have a 2 minute session to set mini-objectives for your telesales session. Then you focus 100% on the sessions for 45 minutes. You don’t send out literature, take incoming calls, talk to your neighbour or get disturbed. You ring clients. At the end of the session you have a quick 2 minute session to measure your performance, take a short break and then decide what to do next.

I sometimes work with clients who “say” that there is no way they could endorse this as their salespeople cold call all day. When we run these high intensity sessions I prove time and time again that most sales people do more in 45 minutes than they normally do in a whole day! In any case, there is nothing stopping the trained professional who has run several empowered sessions and who can stay focused for the whole 45 minutes to run several sessions in a day. The key is to focus on staying at high intensity for the whole of the 45 minutes. I would always prefer that my teams ran two of these at this level in a day than they spent the whole day cruising at 50%.

Note: In my experience very few people make anything like 45 minutes worth of high intensity, cold calls each and every day.

For the last 10 years, Gavin Ingham has been helping sales people to explode their sales performance by turning self-doubt, fear and lack of motivation into self-belief, confidence and action. With his inspirational approach to sales performance and motivation Gavin combines commercial experience, personal excellence and communications technologies in delivering personal and business sales success.

For a free 9-part objection handling course, more articles, free downloads and to join Gavin's newsletter visit http://www.gaviningham.net now.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gavin_Ingham

www.ColdCallFacts.com

7 Cold Calling Secrets Even The Sales Gurus Don't Know

2006-12-27T16:54:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

7 Cold Calling Secrets Even The Sales Gurus Don't Know
By Ari Galper

More and more e-mails are arriving in my in-box from people who hate cold calling. Here's what they're saying:

• “Cold calling terrifies me.”

• “The phone feels like a 10,000-pound weight.”

• “Every time I have to make a cold call, I freeze up.”

• “I feel like a fraud when I’m cold calling.”

• “I can’t take the rejection when I do cold calling. It just kills me.”

• “I’ve gone from top producer to ‘hermit’ because of my mental brick wall when it comes to cold calling.”

Cold calling the old way is a painful struggle.

But you can make it a productive and positive experience by changing your mindset and cold calling the new way.

To show you what I mean, here are 7 tested cold calling ideas that even the sales gurus don’t know.

1. Change Your Mental Objective Before You Make the Call

If you’re like most people who make cold calls, you’re hoping to make a sale -- or at least an appointment -- before you even pick up the phone.

The problem is, the people you call somehow always pick up on your mindset immediately.

They sense that you’re focused on your goals and interests, rather than on finding out what they might need or want.

This short-circuits the whole process of communication and trust-building.

Here’s the benefit of changing your mental objective before you make the call: it takes away the frenzy of working yourself up mentally to pick up the phone.

All the feelings of rejection and fear come from us getting wrapped up in our expectations and hoping for an outcome when it’s premature to even be thinking about an outcome.

So try this. Practice shifting your mental focus to thinking, “When I make this call, I’m going to build a conversation so that a level of trust can emerge allowing us to exchange information back and forth so we can both determine if there’s a fit or not.”

2. Understand the Mindset of the Person You’re Calling

Let’s say you’re at your office and you’re working away.

Your phone rings and someone says, “Hello, my name’s Mark. I’m with Financial Solutions International. We offer a broad array of financial solutions. Do you have a few minutes?”

What would go through your mind?

Probably something like this: “Uh-oh, another salesperson. I’m about to be sold something. How fast can I get this person off the phone?”

In other words, it’s basically over at “Hello,” and you end up rejected.

The moment you use the old cold calling approach -- the traditional pitch about who you are and what you have to offer, which all the sales gurus have been teaching for years -- you trigger the negative “salesperson” stereotype in the mind of the person you’ve called, and that means immediate rejection.

I call it “The Wall.”

The problem is with how you’re selling, not what you’re selling.

This is an area that’s been ignored in the world of selling.

We’ve all been trained to try to push prospects into a "yes" response on the first call. But that creates sales pressure.

But, if you learn to really understand and put yourself in the mindset of the person you call, you’ll find it easier to avoid triggering The Wall.

It’s that fear of rejection that makes cold calling so frightening.

Instead, start thinking about language that will engage people and not language that will trigger rejection.

3. Identify a Core Problem That You Can Solve

We’ve all learned that when we begin a conversation with a prospect, we should talk about ourselves, our product, and our solution. Then we sort of hope that the person connects with what we’ve just told them. Right?

But when you offer your pitch or your solution without first involving your prospect by talking about a core problem that they might be having, you’re talking about yourself, not them.

And that’s a problem.

Prospects connect when they feel that you understand their issues before you start to talk about your solutions.

When people feel understood, they don’t put up The Wall. They remain open to talking with you.

Here’s an example based on my own experience. I offer Unlock The Game™ as a new approach in selling. When I call a vice president of sales, I would never start out with, “Hi, my name is Ari, I'm with Unlock The Game, and I offer the newest technique in selling, and I wonder if you have a few minutes to talk now.”

Instead, I wouldn’t even pick up the phone without first identifying one or more problems that I know VPs often have with their sales teams. Problems that Unlock The Game™ can solve.

For example, one common problem is when sales teams and salespeople spend time chasing prospects who have no intention of buying.

So I would start by asking, “Are you grappling with issues around your sales team chasing prospects who lead them on without any intention of buying?”

So, come up with two or three specific core problems that your product or service solves. (Avoid generic problem phrases like “cut costs” or “increase revenue.” They’re too vague.)

4. Start With a Dialogue, Not a Presentation

Let’s return to the goal of a cold call, which is to create a two-way dialogue engaging prospects in a conversation.

We’re not trying to set the person up for a yes or no. That’s the old way of cold calling.

This new cold calling approach is designed to engage people in a natural conversation. The kind you might have with a friend. This lets you both of you decide whether it’s worth your time to pursue the conversation further.

The key here is never to assume beforehand that your prospect should buy what you have to offer, even if they’re a 100 percent fit with the profile of the “perfect customer.”

If you go into the call with that assumption, prospects will pick up on it and The Wall will go up, no matter how sincere you are.

Avoid assuming anything about making a sale before you make a call.

For one thing, you have no idea whether prospects can buy what you have because you know nothing about their priorities, their decisionmaking process, their budget, etc.

If you assume that you’re going to sell them something on that first call, you’re setting yourself up for failure. That’s the core problem with traditional old-style cold calling.

Stay focused on opening a dialogue and determining if it makes sense to continue the conversation.

5. Start With Your Core Problem Question

Once you know what problems you solve, you also know exactly what to say when you make a call. It’s simple. You begin with, “Hi, my name is Ari. Maybe you can help me out for a moment.”

How would you respond if someone said that to you?

Probably, “Sure, how can I help you?” or “Sure, what do you need?” That’s how most people would respond to a relaxed opening phrase like that. It’s a natural reaction.

The thing is, when you ask for help, you’re also telling the truth because you don’t have any idea whether you can help them or not.

That’s why this new approach is based on honesty and truthfulness. That’s why you’re in a very good place to begin with.

When they reply, “Sure, how can I help you?,” you don’t respond by launching into a pitch about what you have to offer. Instead, you go right into talking about the core problem to find out whether it’s a problem for the prospect.

So you say, “I’m just giving you a call to see if you folks are grappling (and the key word here is ‘grappling’) with any issues around your sales team chasing prospects who turn out to never have any intention of buying?”

No pitch, no introduction, nothing about me. I just step directly into their world.

The purpose of my question is to open the conversation and develop enough trust so they’ll feel comfortable having a conversation.

The old way of cold calling advises asking lots of questions to learn about the prospect’s business and to “connect.” The problem is that people see right through that. They know that you have an ulterior motive, and then you’re right back up against The Wall.

These ideas may be hard for you to apply to your own situation at first because trying to leverage calls based on what we know about our solution is so engrained in our thinking.

If you stay with it, though, you can learn to step out of your own solution and convert it into a problem that you can articulate using your prospects’ language.

And that’s the secret of building trust on calls. It’s the missing link in the whole process of cold calling.

6. Recognize and Diffuse Hidden Pressures

Hidden sales pressures that makes The Wall go up can take a lot of forms.

For example, “enthusiasm ” can send the message that you’re assuming that what you have is the right fit for the prospect. That can send pressure over the phone to your prospect.

You must be able to engage people in a natural conversation. Think of it as calling a friend. Let your voice be natural, calm, relaxed…easy-going. If you show enthusiasm on your initial call, you’ll probably trigger the hidden sales pressure that triggers your prospect to reject you.

Another element of hidden pressure is trying to control the call and move it to a "next step".

The moment you begin trying to direct your prospect into your "sales process ", there is a very high likelihood that you can "turn off" your prospect's willingness to share with you the details of their situation.

It's important to allow the conversation to evolve naturally and to have milestones or checkpoints throughout your call so you can assess if there is a fit between you and the person you are speaking with.

7. Determine a Fit

Now, suppose that you’re on a call and it’s going well, with good dialogue going back and forth. You’re reaching a natural conclusion…and what happens?

In the old way of cold calling, we panic. We feel we’re going to lose the opportunity, so we try to close the sale or at least to book an appointment. But this puts pressure on the prospect, and you run the risk of The Wall going up again.

Here’s a step that most people miss when they cold call. As soon as they realize that prospects have a need for their solution, they start thinking, “Great, that means they’re interested.”

What they don’t ask is, “Is this need a top priority for you or your organization to solve, or is it something that’s on the back burner for a while?”

In other words, even if you both determine that there ia a problem you can solve, you have to ask whether solving it is a priority. Sometimes there’s no budget, or it isn’t the right time. It’s important that you find this out, because months later you'll regret not knowing this earlier.

Putting the Pieces Together

Have you ever wondered where the “numbers game” concept came from?

It came from someone making a call, getting rejected, and the boss saying, “Call someone else.”

But with the new way of cold calling, it’s not about how many people you call. It’s about what you say and how you come across.

Do you remember the definition of insanity—continuing to do the same thing but expecting different results?

If you go on using the same old cold calling methods, you’ll go on experiencing the ever-increasing pain of selling.

But if you adopt a new approach and learn how to remove pressure from your initial cold calls, you’ll experience so much success and satisfaction that it’ll really change the way you do business, bring you sales success beyond your imagination—and eliminate “rejection” from your vocabulary for good.

With a Masters Degree in Instructional Design and over a decade of experience creating breakthrough sales strategies for global companies such as UPS and QUALCOMM, Ari Galper discovered the missing link that people who sell have been seeking for years.

His profound discovery of shifting one's mindset to a place of complete integrity, based on new words and phrases grounded in sincerity, has earned him distinction as the world's leading authority on how to build trust in the world of selling.

Leading companies such as Gateway, Clear Channel Communications, Brother International and Fidelity National Mortgage have called on Ari to keep them on the leading edge of sales performance. Visit http://www.Unlock-The-Cold-Calling-Game.com to get his free sales training lessons.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ari_Galper

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Top 10 Tips For Cold Calling Success

2006-12-27T16:53:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Top 10 Tips For Cold Calling Success
By Gavin Ingham

At some point or other every sales person has to cold call. Whether it’s ringing totally new clients, chasing leads, gaining referrals, networking or following up on a conference card handed in it’s not something that many salespeople are that comfortable with.

Being able to cold call confidently, professionally and effectively will not only open up more potential business for you it will also allow you to feel more in control of your own destiny and much more empowered. Here are my top 10 tips for cold calling success…

1. Plan and prepare your opening statement.

The more individuals I train the more important I think this is. I have made tens of thousands of calls and listened to far more. Whether cold or indeed warm calling the biggest problem by far is lack of client engagement. This can be down to several factors but by far the most significant is a failure to plan and prepare a decent opening statement.

An opening statement needs an introduction, a hook (what’s in it for client) and a bridge to your questions or your close. Without these it’s impotent. Make sure that the benefits you offer are a) really benefits and b) relevant to the person you are speaking to and not just you! My top tip would be to imagine your self in your client’s shoes and then ask, “What will this call potentially do for my business and why should I care?”

2. Get into the right state of mind and expect success.

Unmotivated people to not make good salespeople. Let’s face it, who would buy off someone who didn’t appear to believe it themselves. When I train teams I am constantly amazed at the number of salespeople who pick up the phone expecting rejection. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they are making cold calls, customer care calls or follow up calls … only a small percentage of top performers absolutely expect success.

Attitude and mindset are infectious. Clients know within seconds whether you are congruent with your message or not. I once did a verbal survey with my clients asking them why they bought from me in the first place. The overwhelming (and surprise at the time) answer was, “It felt like the right thing to do!”

Expecting success is a crucial part of your success.

3. Know WHY your need to do this.

On a day to day basis most of us forget WHY we are doing certain things. We find ourselves cold calling because we have to or because we are told to. If you want to make change in your cold calling habits then it is going to require some commitment, some focus and some persistence. The best way of leveraging these attributes from your self is to ask yourself, “Why is cold calling important to me? What does it do for me? How does it link to my goals and my dreams?”

When coaching individual sales people on teams I can usually tell who will act and who will not and it’s usually down to whether the individual has a need or a want or not. Holding your self to a higher standard is hard if you have no reason to so spend some time and work our why cold calling is important to you right now.

4. Practise delivery focusing on pace, pitch and tone.

When I listen to sales calls I am frequently shocked by the message within the message. In face to face sales 55% of the message is non-verbal. On the phone, this element is missing and this means that the message consists only of the words and how you say them. Whilst the words are vitally important the way you say them will be directly linked to your success or ultimate failure.

Having listened to thousands of calls I can honestly say that the message behind the message for most calls is … “I’m bored, tired and putting in the numbers and you’re probably tot say no anyway!”. Would you buy from someone was saying this to you?

Get someone you trust to listen to your calls and give you feedback on pace, pitch and tone. What message are you sending out?

5. Plan and prepare relevant questions.

Questions and client interaction are paramount for selling. Most salespeople think that they are good at questioning. Most are wrong. Planning and preparing good questions is something that all salespeople should do regularly.

Questions are incredibly important because they focus the mind. This is as true when talking to others as it is when talking inside your own head! Most of us put the focus in the wrong place both internally and externally by asking the wrong questions.

Imagine ringing a new client, introducing yourself and giving a few benefits. They’re listening but they’re not on board yet!! Now imagine asking questions uch as, “Does that sound like something that would be of interest to you?” and “Would you be interested in meeting up then?”

These questions are an absolute waste of time and the resounding answer that you get will be, “No!”.

Questions need to focus the client’s mind on something that you would like them to think about such as, “Have you ever had any difficulties…?” or “How do you currently…?”

6. Have your support tools to hand.

Part of being professional is being prepared. When you get on the phone you need your diary, notes, paper and pens to hand. I cannot count the number of times I have watched a sales “professional” start to close for a meeting and then realise they don’t have a diary open on the desk or on the computer. One long pause later… rapport and meeting lost!

Expect success, work out what support tools you need to be successful and make sure that they are to hand.

7. Divert calls and minimise disruptions.

A recent survey studying working habits suggested that the average worker actually works for less than 3 hours in an average working day. This seems quite high to me! Most people seem to find so many extraneous and irrelevant tasks to do that it’s a wonder they ever get anything done. To be a sales superstar you need to work out what activities bring you success and then set aside time to do them.

Work out your ratios and then work out how many calls you need to make to achieve your personal goals. Once you’ve done that get on and do it. Most salespeople actually spend too much time “on the phone”… the problem is that they’re not focused enough when they are on the phone. Try turning off your mobile, diverting all calls and asking not to be disturbed. Get your self energised and prepared and then make 45 minutes worth of top quality, proactiver calls. You’ll be amazed by how much you can achieve in ¾ of an hour!

8. Set clear objectives for your session.

Many salespeople make calls without any objectives or goals. This is a complete waste of time. You need to plan and prepare for all proactive sales sessions. Pre-decide on your activities and how you are going to measure them. Set realistic objectives and targets and stick to them. Only this way will you be able to improve and grow.

9. Don’t put your phone down.

Whether cold or warm calling it’s important that you keep the energy flowing when you are making proactive calls. It’s too easy to get distracted, start doing something else or take ever increasing breaks between each call.

One very effective way of achieving shorter break time and therefore more proactive energy is to not put the telephone down between calls. Not only does this work but you also save on the psychological energy of having to pick the phone up again every call!! I also recommend that wearing a headset increases the work rate of nearly all telephone sales people

10. Master your physiology.

Your physiology is the way you use your body… your posture, movement, facial expressions and breathing. Changing your physiology changes your state. If you were to walk into a room full of salespeople on the phone you would instantly know if they were “up for it” or not by the way they were sitting, moving, talking and so on.

Take a moment to think about your physiology now. Think about the best telephone call that you’ve ever made… How were you sitting / standing? How did you move? What were your facial expressions? Voice patterns? How did you hold your head? How was your breathing? Did you use a headset / handset?

Get your log-book and make a note of your findings. Over the next week I want you to concentrate on starting all of your telephone sessions from this physiology and maintaining it throughout. If you find your physiology changing then get yourself straight back into the right physiology. Remember that doing this in front of the others in the office at 830am in the morning could feel unnatural… and so will the extra commissions when they roll in but I think you can cope with that!!!

So that’s it. 10 top tops for being a great cold caller and a better salesperson. If you want to know more about cold calling or develop any of these strategies in more detail then have a look at my website...

Visit http://www.gaviningham.net now to join Gavin's free monthly newsletter packed full of sales secrets, strategies and tactics. Join now and get Gavin's ground-breaking 9-part objection handling course absolutely free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gavin_Ingham

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Expert Says You Have The Right To Contact ANYBODY!

2006-12-27T16:52:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Expert Says You Have The Right To Contact ANYBODY!
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

I’d like to share with you a story from the 1960’s that is told around inside sales departments and among co-workers as they gather for off-work refreshments and conversation.

Lyndon B. Johnson was President at the time, and being a Texan he was also a Dallas Cowboys fan, and that team was supremely successful in his era, headed to yet another Super Bowl game.

The President fell ill, went to Bethesda Naval Hospital for tests and treatment, and one of his fellow Texans put two and two together.

Reasoning that all Presidents have Super Bowl tickets and seeing that LBJ couldn’t make it to the game because of his health, this “old boy” figured that there would be at least one unused seat at this sold-out venue that he could occupy.

So, he called the White House offering regrets about LBJ’s health, and then he asked for his tickets, “In light of the fact that he can’t use them and I’m a loyal constituent.”

Sure enough, legend has it not one but two tickets arrived in this gent’s mail a couple of days later.

The moral to the story is that he was the only person who summoned the gumption to reach out to the one person who could “buy” what he was “selling.”

I believe a lot of people are daunted by cold calling because, simply put, they don’t feel they DESERVE to speak to strangers, especially those that are perceived to enjoy high status.

Needlessly, they put others on pedestals, telling themselves it is a discourtesy or a form of disrespect to contact others without a prior invitation.

This is sheer foolishness.

Instead, we need to repeat, if necessary: “I have the right to contact ANYBODY!”

Then, like that Texan, go right ahead and do it!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

The Cold Calling Conspiracy

2006-12-27T16:50:00.002-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

The Cold Calling Conspiracy
By Frank Rumbauskas

A consipiracy exists in the world of selling. A cold calling conspiracy.

What I’m talking about is the requirement by most sales organizations to make cold calls on your time and at your expense. They say that cold calls equal appointments equal sales, but that’s not true anymore. All sales managers are guilty of teaching it, believing it, and using it. “Increase your activity and increase your income” are the mantra. We’re told to do the sales math to “motivate” ourselves. Have you heard this one? “If you make five hundred dollars commission per sale and it takes five appointments to get the sale and twenty calls to get an appointment, then each cold call is worth five dollars in your pocket.”

Did anyone ever really believe this?

Hey boss, put your money where your mouth is! If that were really true, companies would pay us the five dollars per call! They don’t because that equation never works in the real world... for anyone. The simple fact is that we are only paid for completed sales, not for attempts. Directing salespeople to make more calls and increase activity is a weak excuse for a sales manager or trainer to justify his or her job. Cold calling is an expensive waste of your time. The reason companies have you cold calling is because it is a waste of your time and your money, not theirs. You only make money when you sell something, yet over eighty percent of most salespeople’s time is spent looking for someone to sell to.

The bottom line is that we, as salespeople, cannot afford to continue fooling away our time on low-percentage activities like cold calling. It’s a way for companies to save money at your expense. We must focus our attention on activities that get real results in this new Information Age economy, and the effectiveness of cold calling fell dramatically when we left the old Industrial Age and entered this bold new era. Forget cold calling and learn how to market yourself intelligently, systematically, and automatically. Self-marketing is the key to success in today’s selling environment and the “secret” of all those top producers who obviously don’t cold call and won’t tell you what it is they’re doing to make those huge numbers every month. Remember, Napoleon Hill’s great work is entitled “Think and Grow Rich,” not “Work Harder and Stay Broke.” Don’t become a victim of the Cold Calling Conspiracy - learn to market yourself successfully and join the elite club of top producers. I did it and you can too.

Frank Rumbauskas is the author of Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In The Information Age. He is the founder of FJR Advisors, LLC, which publishes training materials that educate salespeople on how to generate business without cold calling. For more information, please visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_Rumbauskas

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Pro Suggestions

2006-12-27T16:50:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Pro Suggests Asking: "Hello, Bill?"
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

I used to compare cold calling to ice fishing, but then I learned a little about ice fishing, and it isn’t that tough.

But there is one similarity: To get a positive result, you need to break the ice.

Prospects who come to the line and who don’t recognize your voice or your name can be very frosty and forbidding and it is our job to warm them up, and fast.

I’ve found one of the best ways is to ASK their name instead of STATING it.

So, let’s say you have called Bill Smith, and he answers the line with a suspicious, downbeat, “Hello.”

How can you perk him up and thaw him out, instantly?

By all means do not echo his down-sloping tone, which is our natural tendency.

Instead, deliberately sound more upbeat than he does by ASKING his name.

Say: “Hello, Bill?” or “Hello, Mr. Smith?”

I assure you his voice will rise in pitch, instantly making him sound as if he’s in a better mood.

Why do you want him to sound more cheerful, especially as a call begins?

(1) The initial tone of the call informs the overall receptivity to your message. If you leave a prospect down in the tonal dumps, he’ll tend to stay there.

(2) By elevating his tone you unconsciously make him more cheerful. We monitor our own emotional states and we tend to perpetuate them. If we’re whistling and we notice it, we convince ourselves that “I must be happy!” If Bill sounds receptive to you, he’ll convince himself he is.

(3) It is much more agreeable for you to proceed with someone who sounds warm than cold.

Try this technique, knowing from the get-go that more cheerful sounding prospects reject you less and buy more!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Scripts Are A Waste Of Time

2006-12-27T16:49:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Scripts Are A Waste Of Time
By Tino Buntic

Let's say that you were a business owner or executive manager at a company and you get a phone call that went like this:

Good morning Mr. Decision Maker, this is Cold Caller from XYZ Corporation. The reason I'm calling you this morning specifically is so that I can stop by and tell you about our new product that will cut expenses for your company. I’m sure that you, like your competition, are interested in cutting expenses.

(Cold Caller now waits for a positive response from you)

That's great Mr. Decision Maker, let's get together. How's tomorrow morning?

This is a variation of a sample cold calling script from Stephan Schiffman's book "Cold Calling Techniques That Really Work" in which the corporate sales trainer discusses methods of cold calling to prospect for sales leads. You could find many more examples of free cold calling scripts by searching the internet. So how would you respond to such a phone call? "Well, golly gee, I certainly want to cut expenses. Come as soon as possible. I can’t wait." A canned sales pitch certainly deserves a sarcastic reply.

I don't advocate cold calling as a prospecting method, but if you do do it and if you do use cold calling scripts, think about how you sound. Would you buy from someone that speaks to you like this? Of course not. You buy from salespeople that are empathetic and salespeople that you think are trustworthy. These traits cannot come from a canned sales pitch.

Don’t even think that you can pull it off. You are not a Hollywood actor. If you were you would be reading scripts in front of a camera. You are a salesperson and you earn a living by closing sales and earning commissions. You won't get many opportunities to close sales without any sales leads. And, you won’t get many sales leads by using a cold calling script that makes you sound like an emotionless computer.

Cold calling scripts are a waste of time

Create a free professional profile on http://www.trade-pals.com, Tino Buntic's website, to receive qualified B2B and B2C sales leads without cold calling or prospecting - for FREE

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Does Not Generate Sales Leads

2006-12-27T16:48:00.001-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Does Not Generate Sales Leads
By Tino Buntic

It is a fact of life for most new sales people; they get the dream sales job with unlimited earning potential and expect to earn so much money that they can now enjoy the fruits of their coming wealth. Everything seems perfect until they realize that before closing a sale and earning the big commission, they must first prospect for new customers (read, cold calls). Cold calling is hard to do. People hate to make cold calls and people hate being on the receiving end of them as well.

Prospecting is the most difficult part of the sales job. There are many ways to go about it but, for some reason, sales managers preach cold calling as the only way for young sales people to generate leads. As someone who has been through it, I wish that these attitudes would change.

I recently read one of the best selling books on cold calling. In this book, the author stresses persistence. He uses the 15-3-1 rule. That is, you need to make fifteen cold calls to make three appointments with prospects. Out of these 3 appointments you will close one sale. By being persistent and making fifteen cold calls a day, this will translate to, on average, one sale a day, five sales a week, twenty sales a month, etc. Further, the author explains that he doesn't mind the rejection that he gets when he cold calls. The reason is that since it takes fifteen calls to get an appointment, that means that he will hear the word "no" (rejection) fourteen times before he hears the word "yes."

This is simplistic and anybody reading this book may get overexcited and think that this is easy. It's not easy and the author's arguments don't hold up in real life selling.

Take the fifteen cold calls a day rule. Anybody reading this book will think that fifteen cold calls a day is nothing. If it takes 2-3 minutes to make a phone call, it shouldn't take more than 45 minutes to make your mandatory 15 calls. Then the rest of the day is spent selling in front of prospects.

But it doesn't work this way. If you've ever cold called, you will know that it usually takes at least 10 phone calls to reach a decision maker. Think about it, executives aren't sitting in their offices waiting for your call. They're either on the phone, in meetings, on vacation, or they just don't want to talk to you. So now, to talk to fifteen people, you need to make 150 cold calls. This is not 45 minutes of work; this can take days.

Further, for someone to say that he enjoys hearing the word "no" because it means he is getting closer to a "yes" is just misleading. Although a select few people can take this kind of rejection day in and day out, most cannot. It is only human nature to be discouraged by so much rejection.

There are better ways to get sales leads and increase your sales. People buy from people that they trust. Your time should be spent networking with your friends, colleagues, and business contacts. Get referrals, get introductions, get testimonials and the sales will come. Not only that, your job will be better; nobody likes the rejection and time consuming nature of cold calling.

Tino Buntic is a former insurance broker and ex-cold-caller. He is currently an entrepreneur and has created a system to get sales leads without cold calling with his website www.trade-pals.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Basics of Cold Calling

2006-12-27T16:47:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling
By Frank Salisbury

If your business requires a lengthy face to face sales then perhaps your primary objective whether telephoning or turning up unannounced should not be to sell, but to make an appointment.

After you have introduced yourself and told them who you work for and what you do - 'The reason I've called round to see you today is to make an appointment to see you at a more convenient time - unless that is of course you have ten minutes to spare now?'

This works with personal or business customers. The choice for the customer is to see you now or to see you later. If they decide to see you now make sure that after ten minutes you stop and ask:

'I said I would only take up ten minutes of your time which I now have - do you want me to arrange a further appointment or would you like me to continue?'

The question is do they want to see you later or do they want to see you now. The question is never do they want to see you or not. People are conditioned to respond in a positive manner if you present a positive alternative.

Many salespeople selling to businesses assume that the main barrier to getting to see a decision maker is the secretary or the receptionist. It is further assumed that part of their remit is to keep people like you away from the boss. The reality is that it depends on who you are. If you are an annoying individual with nothing to say then you could be right.

The person to help you do this is the secretary, the receptionist, or a personal assistant. They are great source of information and contrary to popular belief can help you to see the decision maker. I even knew a salesman who would make his presentation to the secretary prior to seeing the boss so that he could get quality feedback.

You can either call into to see them face-to-face, or telephone them up. I personally favour speaking to people face to face. The first thing you need to know is the buyer's name, and then the buyer's secretary's name. The switchboard is always willing to help you with this. E.g.:

I wonder if you could help me please? I'm looking for some information so that I can write to the correct person in your company.

Ask for the names of the person responsible for buying your product, their job title, and the name and job title of the secretary. Make sure to ask how to spell their names.

Then ask to be put through: Hello. Can you put me through to Niall Smyth please? I believe that he is Peter Brown's assistant. Is that right?

Hello, is that Niall Smyth? Niall, my name is Frank Salisbury. I work for Business & Training Solutions Ltd. Niall, I wonder if you could help me please?

Niall, I'm putting together a letter to Peter about my company. I just wanted to make absolutely sure that I have his job title correct, as well as spelling his name properly.

My company provides training and consultancy services to organisations such as yours. Am I right in thinking that Peter is the person responsible for buying these sorts of services?

Niall, I know how busy Peter must be, and he probably only scans most of the mail that arrives on your desk, let alone take time to see the people who want to make appointments with him. My problem is, that I know I can help your company to improve it's profits, however the only way I can effectively explain how, is to take 15 to 20 minutes of Peter's time. That's why I wanted to write to him first. In your experience, what would I have to say in my letter that would convince him that I am worth seeing when I ring up a few days later to make an appointment?

If the prospect is not in and the assistant suggests that you leave your number and he or she will call you back say: when would be the best time to speak to x? You need to establish when next to call and when the chances are favourable for getting through to the decision-maker. Relying on the customer to ring you back rarely works unless they know you personally.

When you have established a good time to call say - 'would you put my name in Peter’s dairy and say that I will telephone at that time?

Send a brief fax saying that you have called and when you will telephone back.

There is no secret to cold calling. Confidence in cold calling comes from practice, perseverance and a positive attitude.

Frank Salisbury is a motivational an inspiring business coach and trainer. He has designed and delivered a range of personal development programmes for individuals and organisations aimed at helping people achieve their potential. He has spoken at numerous conferences and seminars where his style has received acclaim from those who hear him speak with a passion for life and achievement.

In 2006 Frank was elected a Lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Sales Institute of Ireland. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Commercial Management; a member of the Institute of Leadership & Development; a member of the Association for Coaching, and a Council Member of the Gerson Lehrman Group Business Services Council.

http://www.btsolutions.ie

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_Salisbury

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Five Ways Cold Calling Beats Competing Methods

2006-12-27T16:44:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

"Five Ways Cold Calling Beats Competing Methods"
By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

You’ve probably been a little confused by the ads and articles that say opposing things.

Some tout cold calling as a great tool, while others claim it is a waste, passé, and too difficult.

As I’ve pointed out in my best-selling books, REACH OUT & SELL SOMEONE and YOU CAN SELL ANYTHING BY TELEPHONE, it is a phenomenal way to get business, providing you do it well.

There are at least five ways that it beats the pants off of alternative sales techniques:

(1) It is active, not passive. I can’t overvalue this aspect because by being active you make things happen and you get your blood pumping. You’ve heard the expressions that say fortune favors the bold, and the harder I work the luckier I get. They’re true. Take charge of the sales game and it will take care of you.

(2) You never know what kind of gold mine you’ll be entering. An existing account only has so much potential, but a new one can offer a rich vein of untapped treasure. The key is to get in and then to spread out, as one very successful Xerox computer systems manager used to say.

(3) People admire people with courage, and you show this quality when you cold call. The higher you reach in an organization, the more credible you become, because senior managers and business owners wish their people did what you have the guts to do.

(4) If you can cold call successfully, every other sales activity becomes a cake walk. When you get a warm, inbound lead, you jump on it, hug it to death, and don’t let go until you have converted it. Why? You appreciate it all the more because you’ve been doing some heavy lifting. I call this the “lead bat” phenomenon. If you swing a lead bat and then pick up a regular bat, the latter always feels light as a feather.

(5) You respect yourself because you turned nothing into something! Let me say that again, for emphasis: YOU HAVE TURNED NOTHING INTO SOMETHING! This is exactly what all creative people do, but your creativity can be measured in dollars and cents, and you can thoroughly own your results. Nobody did it for you. You did it for yourself.

These are simply five ways that cold calling is superior to other methods. Who you become in the process of mastering this technique may be more important in your life than the dollars you earn through it!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

www.ColdCallFacts.com

Cold Calling Help

2006-12-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

www.ColdCallFacts.com

"Want Help With Your Cold Calling?"
By Sean McPheat

Yesterday I received an email from Janet Brooker who wanted some tips on how to make her cold calling more effective.

Here's exactly what she asked:

Dear Sean,

I am an Area Sales Manager for an IT hardware provider.

I am having real problems with my cold calling. I call up to get interest and to set up an appointment to see businesses about their hardware requirements but I never know what to say in response to objections and excuses.

Could you give me some quick pointers please?

Thanks a lot

Janet Brooker

My thoughts:

Cold calling is full of ups and downs but your success will always come down to two things:

1. What you focus on during the call

and

2. Your technique

Your primary focus on the call is to set up a meeting.

FULL STOP!

It's not to send brochures out.

It's not to engage in the pros and cons of what you can do and it's certainly not about giving up on the first objection that you receive!

So that's what you need to go into the call with on your mind - EVERY TIME!

Now, on to your technique.

We run telesales courses that cover all of this in great detail but here are some quick tips.

In an over simplistic view, here is the approach that you should be implementing on every call.

1. Get the person's attention

2. Identify yourself and your company

3. Give your reason for the call

4. Make a qualifying statement/questioning statement

5 Set the appointment

Good morning Mr Jones, this is Janet Brooker from XYZ. We specialise in ABC and we have worked with EYZ, BNY and 10 other organisations within your industry. The reason I'm calling you today specifically is so I can stop by and tell you about PRODUCT/SERVICE Y and how it can (BENEFITS)

With this opening make sure that the company you are calling are aware of the businesses that you drop into the call - this will create curiosity!

You can even go one step further

Do not be frightened to ask for the appointment right up-front.

Okay, they will most likely respond in any of the following ways

Yes, let's set up a meeting (YIPPY!)

No thanks, I'm happy with what we have (BOO, HISS)

I'm not interested (BOO, HISS)

I'm too busy (BOO, HISS)

Send me some further info (BOO, HISS)

Tell me about it now (BOO, HISS)

No money (BOO, HISS)

Remember what your goal is?

Yes, it's to set up an appointment!

Here are some quick tips on how to respond to each:

WE ALREADY HAVE WHAT YOU ARE OFFERING

A lot of other companies (then name several other businesses that they may know) have said the same thing before they had a chance to see how our program/product works and could save you XYZ or another benefit in here. I'd like to stop by and just tell you about what we do or I'm in your area next week...

I'M NOT INTERESTED

Mr Jones, a lot of people had the same reaction you did when I first called before they had a chance to see how what we do will benefit them, I am in your area on the 15th, are you free at 11am?

I'M TOO BUSY

Usually salespeople respond with When will it be a better time to talk?

Instead...

They say - I'm too busy to talk
You say - Oh, well the only reason I was calling was to set up an appointment

SEND ME SOME LITERATURE or TELL ME NOW

Can't we just get together? It will be a lot easier and I am in your area next Wednesday and Thursday

Reacting To Negative Comments

too expensive
not right for us
not a good fit

Mr Jones, a lot of our customers initially had the same reaction until they actually got a chance to see the benefits. You know, we should really get together to go through the full picture

Mr Jones, that's what other people said who decided to work with us. We really should get together

Mr Jones, Some other people we work with now had the same reaction at first. That's why we should get together

You use someone's negative response as a reason to get together!

NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY YOU COME BACK WITH

That's why we should get together

If you are really going nowhere with the call then gather some intelligence for later when they might be in the market for your product/service.

Say something like..

Just out of curiosity are you working with anybody right now?
when does your current contract end?
what is important to you in a provider?
etc

So, in summary:

Focus on getting the meeting.

Respond to objections 2 times and then if it's still a no then gather some information for when they will be in the market for your services and then follow up with them when the time is right.

This is pretty much a whistle-stop tour of cold calling but I hope it helps you.

Sean McPheat provides sales coaching, sales training courses and sales consulting to a number of businesses around the globe. He is the owner of MTD Sales Training and designs and delivers sales training, programmes and consultancy assignments across the UK, Europe, US and the Middle East.