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Sales expert, Andy Preston, explains what steps you and your team need to take, right now, to get more appointments from your cold calling.
You know, it’s always interesting to read articles on cold calling from people that don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. A client sent me a few articles this week that he was laughing about – all about cold calling – all written by people that can’t, won’t or don’t cold call; it was hilarious!
Cold calling isn’t dead
All of the articles my friend sent to me were saying how cold calling doesn’t work, how it’s ‘dead’. They’re wrong.Cold calling is still one of the best (and quickest) ways to get new business. But it’s evolving. And you need to be aware of what’s changing so you can stay ahead of the game and your competition.
As most of you know, I’m well known for my cold calling expertise and results I’ve got with clients from implementing the methods. So here are five tips for getting more appointments from your cold calls. Study them. Pin this article up on the wall. Make the techniques work for you, and I promise you’ll see a marked difference in your sales figures.
Stop asking ‘When is your contract up for renewal?’
This is probably one of the worst questions you can ask early in a call! You might as well say to the prospect: “This is my pathetic attempt at qualifying you in order that I can decide if you’re worth my time or not right now, or whether I should call you back in 9/12/15 months time in the vain hope you remember me (rather than forgetting me within seconds of putting the phone down). Please let me know the answer to this so I can get on with calling the rest of my list of people I’m supposed to call today.”
You know that if you ask this question early in the call that they’re probably going to lie to you, don’t you? How do you know? Because you’ve been lied to in the past, haven’t you? Ever called someone previously who told you their contract was due to renew in June, but when you ring them in March they’ve just renewed? Yep, you’ve been lied to! Are you going to continue doing the same thing, or do you want a different result? So stop asking the question!
Have a strong reason for calling
This is another thing the average telecoms salesperson fails to do. So if you do it, you’re already well ahead of the game. The prize for worst ever call reason goes to someone who I once heard say: “The reason for the call is to find out when your contract is up for renewal.” Brilliant! Abject failure to understand tip number one and tip number two! Great effort. Collect the envelope containing your P45 and join the queue at the job centre.
Your ability to grab your prospect’s attention is a major factor in whether you get a little more time on the call. And an important part of that is having a strong call reason. You do have a strong reason for calling, don’t you? And it’s about the prospect, not you?
Call with confidence and belief
This part is often missing, particularly if the salespeople concerned are calling over a period of more than an hour. If they’re not careful, their motivation can drop off over time, and their confidence and belief can be affected in a negative way just by one bad call!
Prospects can hear confidence and belief in your voice, and they notice when it’s missing. You need persuade people to buy into you and what you offer. They need to have faith in you and trust that you know what you’re talking about. But if you don’t have strong belief and confidence they won’t do either. Lost sales opportunity!
An example of how vital this area is I worked with an internal sales team last week whose role it is to get appointments for their field sales colleagues. Purely focusing on motivation, confidence and belief we achieved a 60% increase in appointments. Note: I didn’t change anything about what they said, just their motivation, confidence and belief.