Friday, October 24, 2008

Gaining Appointments on the Phone

As experienced sales people you have a list of people that you can contact on a regular basis. You have a relationship with them and they are likely to give you business. However we all know that natural wastage can occur and this can happen for any number of reasons none of which have anything to do with you. For example, in my world, natural wastage is more often the result of my contact moving on and the ‘new broom’ likes to ‘sweep clean’.

Needless to say that it makes good business sense for us to be continually on the look-out for new business. Obviously there are many ways we can do this but a quick way is to pick up the phone and make some ‘cold calls’ with a view to filling up your diary with appointments. Sometimes even the most experienced people fear this process. Here are some tips that might prove helpful for such individuals.

1. GET READY
Preparation is the key to success in all that we do in life – try getting married or taking a holiday without it! First, clean up your list. Make sure that those companies, telephone numbers and people still exist. You can do this by making a call ‘just for a little information’. I often say “I don’t want to speak to anyone now but could you tell me…? And then I ask my questions and thank people for the information.

When you are ready to make your call, you might find that if you are dealing with corporate clients, sometimes at switchboard level you will be asked the purpose of your call. In your mind you should have a ‘ready reason’. For example, ‘they used you, your company or business sometime ago’, or ‘you sent information recently’ or ‘you want to inform them of something new that could help their business’. If you have any concerns about calling to make an appointment, then having in mind a reason to call makes you feel comfortable in making the call. Next, decide on your objective. To determine your objective, ask yourself ‘what do I want to happen as a result of making this call?’ Next, have EVERYTHING you need to hand and then MAKE THE CALL!

2. GET THEM LISTENING
This stage is crucial because people are not waiting for your call. So plan a good opening to get the ‘prospect’s’ attention. This opening statement needs to have some benefits built in so they can see why they should talk to you, which in turn earns you the right to continue speaking. Here are some reasons why people might want to talk to you: you can save them money; you can save them time; you can help to increase profits. Once you start to look at what you or your business can offer you will find information to help you create a good opening. But the best way to create a powerful opening is to put yourself in their shoes and ask this question: “if I was this person about to receive a call from someone like me, what would I want them to say that would make me want to listen?” Plan your opening until you are happy with and then hit the phone.

3. FIND OUT WHAT THEY WANT
The only way to get into people’s minds is to ask them questions. Don’t assume that because your product or idea is good you should simply talk about it. Try to find out about people and their business before making suggestions. Because what you want is an appointment, you don’t need to ask more questions than is necessary to ‘qualify’ the prospect, but the few questions you ask need to be carefully crafted. To find the best questions to ask prospects about their business, ask yourself this question: “what do I need to know about their business to determine whether or not my product/idea will suit their company?”

At this stage, many people having established that the prospect company could indeed use their products and services are tempted to start TELLING the prospect about the wonders of their products. Try to resist the temptation because remember, you want an APPOINTMENT, which is the PRODUCT you are selling right now. So the next stage is to:

4. ASK FOR THE APPOINTMENT
The words you use here are very important. If you FEEL that you have built good rapport with the individual you might simply ask ‘would you be happy for us to meet?’ But more often than not the ‘asking’ needs to be dressed up a little; the following example works extremely well for attendees to the one-day course on this subject: ‘it seems from what you say that it might be a good idea for us to meet because we can help with... Do you have your diary handy?’ The rest is about fixing day, dates and times that are suitable to you both.

2 HANDY HINTS

The job of Gaining Appointments on the phone requires momentum. This means that you need to make call after call to a) find the prospect available to speak and b) to actually get an appointment as (unfortunately) not everyone will agree to seeing you

Set mini-goals. This is where you determine that you will make X number of calls before having a second coffee, bun or Mars bar! Or that you will speak to 5 decision makers before doing the same


Good luck and see you next time!

Presentation Skills and Introductory Sales Skill Courses also on offer
.