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sales career can be challenging, but even more so if all of
your sales activity is accomplished over the telephone!
Use a good CRM tool. Make sure your company
or your management team provides you with a Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) tool that enables you to schedule your calls,
follow up on scheduled calls, has a good calendar, a task
and list manager, an “alarm” system for important
calls, etc.
This will be critical to your ability to keep
up with your top customers, as well as your newer customers
while building your pipeline. Make sure you take excellent
notes so that with follow up calls or return calls, you have
a reminder of your last conversation.
Schedule your calls one week out. Effective
planning is critical to having quality phone time. Scheduling
your calls one week out will ensure you constantly have a
pipeline of calls to make, and if you sort them by prospect,
cold call, follow up, close, etc, you will also be reminded
of the nature of the call as you pull up the next company
in your list to call.
Develop Great Rapport in 3 seconds. Over the
phone, you have only 3 seconds to establish great rapport.
The reason for this is simply that you will not have the ability
to use body language to convey your message, so you need to
have a bright, cheery personality when you call and talk to
someone on the phone.
It’s critical that you don’t come
across too salesy or as if you are reading from a script—it’s
much more important that you use your personality to your
biggest advantage so you can sell your products and services.
Getting past the 3 second hurdle is critical to effective
and productive phone selling.
Be cognizant of your client’s time.
When you call someone, you are interrupting their day. Make
sure that you let your client ( or prospective client) know
that you are aware of that, and ask if this is a good time
to talk for a few minutes. If they say no, take that opportunity
to schedule time with that client at a later time. This will
ensure you have more undivided attention from your client.
Also, if you say your phone appointment will
only take 15 minutes, do not go over the 15 minutes allotted
for the call. This will help you gain respect from your client,
and will enable you to develop stronger relationships than
you will if you go over the time allotted. Tip: If you get
to the 15 minute point and you still have information to share,
let the client know you’ve reached the time limit, and
ask them if they would like you to continue, or if they would
like to reschedule for another time.
If you are doing a great job, the client will
allow you to continue right then, and you might even find
yourself with a sale that day!
Follow up, follow up, follow up. If you say
you will follow up, do it. Make sure you follow up on the
day and time you say you will. Otherwise, you will lose credibility
in the eyes of your client, and will be unable to regain that,
especially over the phone.
How
to sell using the telephone | Techniques
to Use When Selling Over the Phone | Effective
Phone Selling Tips |
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Phone Selling Tips | Effective
Sales Presentations
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