Today’s Blog post comes from
“Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work)”
by Stephan Schiffman
Get it off Amazon Here
You have to cold call or you’re dead in the water. Cold calling gets you your business – not just immediately, but for the future. The cold calls you make today are creating the commissions you’ll earn six months from now. It’s time to start learning HOW. From “Cold Calling Techniques (that really work)”
Important rules:
- You have to cold call or you’re dead in the water. Cold calling gets you your business – not just immediately, but for the future. The cold calls you make today are creating the commissions you’ll earn six months from now.
- You’ll have to do more preparation. This is different from what came before. The sales climate is changing.
- A positive attitude will set you apart and because people tend to respond in kind, it’ll improve for making the sale.
You can use Social media as a way to expand your networks and find potential leads. You can use email creatively to get in touch with prospects and to follow up on appointments. All this is valuable and important, but we still come back to the basics: To sell you need to talk to people, and to talk to people, you need appointments. And to get appointments, you need to cold call. There isn’t any way around it. As I say several times, the object of each step in the sales cycle is to get to the next step. And cold calling is the first step in that cycle.
- Cold calling is absolutely fundamental to the sales cycle, but it’s also something that a lot of you don’t like to do. I understand that, but it doesn’t change things. You must make cold calls, and you must keep track of your numbers.
If you follow the steps – the system will work! Once you begin the book, do yourself a favor. Make a commitment to drill the techniques repeatedly until they become 2nd nature. Don’t waste a year – or more!- of your precious time doing “the same old thing” just because it feels more comfortable than trying something new!
Chapter 1- Cold Calling is Essential.
A famous Harvard Business School professor once asked his students to name the number 1 reason that businesses don’t succeed. He got all kinds of answers. The number one reason that businesses fail is….”lack of sales.” In most selling environments, if you cannot get an appointment to see somebody, you’re not going to sell.
To become a successful salesperson, you have to develop a solid base of prospects. The base will only remain solid if you continue to prospect successfully – and the cold call plays a large part of the successful prospecting. Cold calling is the best and most economical way for you to develop prospects on an ongoing basis and to get appointments with them.
Who is your biggest competitor? Your number 1 competitor is the status quo. The status quo is what people are doing right now. If you understand that, you’re going to be successful. It’s rare that we’re really up against a competitor – we’re usually up against the incumbent, the status quo. Remember: you’re up against the way your prospects are doing business now!
Where sales come from: First I want to discuss something that upsets many salespeople. The fact of the matter is you’re going to get one-third of your sales no matter what you do. Let me repeat that: You’ll get one-third of all of your sales no matter what you do. Successful people understand that they’ll get one-third of their sales no matter what the say, simply because they knock on enough doors.
The Sales You’ll Never Get: Then there’s 1/3 of your sales you’re not going to get. No matter what you say, 1/3 will never buy.
The Sales that are Up For Grabs: The last 1/3 are up for grabs. This is where good salespeople separate themselves from mediocre salespeople. If you see enough people – figuratively, if you stand there saying “Wanna buy, wanna buy, wanna buy” – you’ll eventually make a sale. The point again, is that you’ll eventually make a sale if you see enough people. But this story illustrates that it’s equally important to make the most of the opportunity.
Appointments that you generate today are what create the prospects that you meet, which ultimately give you your sale at the end of the sales cycle. But, you can Reduce the Sales Cycle. By setting the next appointment on your first appointment, rather than waiting until later, I accelerated my sales cycle by 3-5 weeks.
Let me explain. Typically, on an appointment, a salesperson will tend to say to the prospect “I’ll call you in a week.” Now we’ve added at least a week to the sales cycle. Then what happens? We might not get the person on the phone the next week. Now we have to wait. Finally we get the person on the phone, setting an appointment for perhaps 2-3 weeks later.
- By setting the next appointment during the first one, we can save all this wasted time.
- The longer the sale goes out of the normal cycle, the less likely it is to happen. Gerbil salespeople fun around in circles all day but get nowhere.
