Month: July 2007

Are You Prepared to Win on the Phone?

By Paul Bunn

High Probability Selling

“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.”

Joe Paterno

A great number of salespeople pride themselves on being able to think on their feet and come up with the perfect response for whatever a prospect says.  Upon closer examination of the consistent top performers in sales, there’s more to it than just picking up the phone and having conversations, hoping they’ll lead to business or making a sale.  It takes preparation.

If you want to improve the results of your next prospecting session, and turn that into an effective prospecting process, the following are four things to have ready before you make your first call of the day:

  1. A clearly written offer – whether you call it an offer (our preferred term) or script, or pitch, having what you are going to say written out ahead of time makes it easier to listen to your prospects.  This also makes it easier to find what’s working or change what isn’t.  This takes preparation.   It may feel more comfortable to wing it, or “go with the flow”, but improvement nearly impossible.   
  1. A statistics form or some type of consistent written record of prospecting activity.  You can only improve upon things that are measured.  Peace of mind comes from knowing, not just having a feeling of, what works, when it works, and what the results are likely to be from a given activity.  Excellence in prospecting is about the process, and you are not only as good as your last call.
  1. An easy-to-read display of the your best responses to your market’s most common answers or questions that you hear when prospecting.  This helps you maintain control of the conversation and virtually eliminates the need to keep thinking of what you’re going to say next.  Result: You can listen much better and the prospects sense that you are paying attention to them…because you are.
  1. Have a recording device.  This is to record your side of the call only.

Recording yourself speaking will accomplish two things:  1) Make it very easy to adjust your tone and clarity on future calls (hint – you don’t want to sound like a salesperson) and 2) catch those moments when you make an unintended change that can improve your offer…and you find yourself saying, “that was different…if only I had written that down”.

Whether you’re working off a list of current customers, seminar attendees, information requests, or a new list of names or contacts from a list broker, these are the basics of structure needed to prepare so you can prospect efficiently. 

Coming next – Now that you have some structure in place, you have to be willing to use those things in a way that has a high probability of success. 

 

Note added later:  take a look at this example of a prospecting-activity-record-2009-06-22

 

If you want to learn the process and mindset of top producing salespeople, you want to learn more about High Probability Selling.

Until Next Time…Sell Well

Jacques Werth – High Probability Selling

Copyright 2007.

 

Tags: How+to+sell, The+secret+to+selling, Selling+and+Persuasion

 

Objection-Free Selling?

By Paul  Bunn

High Probability Selling™

 

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”

–   Mark Twain

 I’ve done a bit of internet searching about objections.  In the majority of sales training websites, “overcoming objections” is listed as a critical part of any sales process.  There are a multitude of techniques and tactics offered, including memorizing the 150-plus common objections and using 135 or so phrases to overcome them. 

When you are trying to get people to do something they don’t want to do (such as getting them to give you an appointment, or persuading them to buy something they don’t want to buy yet) you generate sales resistance in the form of objections.  Sales resistance is the most prevalent root cause of the objections that salespeople have to continue to try to overcome. 

What if there was another way to achieve a closed sale without having to overcome objections?  What if there was a way to prevent the sales resistance that causes nearly all the objections heard by salespeople? 

Our research, compiled over 40 years of observing top salespeople in the field, has shown that they eliminate the cause of most objections… by changing the approach to selling.  Several key observations came from this research, two of which are:

Top producers approach prospecting in a very different way.  Instead of attempting to convince a prospect to make an appointment, the goal of their prospecting is to find the prospects that don’t require convincing and persuasion to make a purchase.  Contrary to popular belief, these prospects exist in every market we’ve encountered. 

Then, these top salespeople approach selling in a very different way.  On the rare occasions that an objection comes up, they acknowledge and discuss it with the prospect in a manner that we describe as “full disclosure.”  They discuss the detriments of their offering as well as the features and benefits, which prevent an objection from becoming a deal-killer.

The result:  Objection-free selling.
 

 

If you want to learn the process and mindset of top producing salespeople, you want to learn more about High Probability Selling.

Until Next Time…Sell Well

Jacques Werth – High Probability Selling

Copyright 2007.

 

Tags: How+to+sell, The+secret+to+selling, Selling+and+Persuasion

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