improve-phone-salesRegardless whether you make your living as an inside salesperson, a selling admin, an upselling service tech, a call center sales rep, or an outside residential or commercial seller; proficiency on the telephone is as critical to you as air and water. Phone skills are vital for proposal follow-up, appointment setting, prospecting, and who knows, maybe one day you’ll even field an inbound call from somebody who you gave a business card to.

But my guess is that you’re not as good as you think you are or as good as you need to be with that electronic tool, so I want to address a half-dozen areas where most folks commit some serious errors and omissions. By fixing these faux pas your sales performance will automatically improve.

Rev up your delivery and project some passion

On the telephone, your voice is the magnet that draws in and engages prospects as it creates a picture of your solution. When you fail to include some passion you diminish your chances of making a sale. On the other hand if you are cold calling for new business, that same lack of passion will snuff out your ability to engage suspects. On the phone too many people are way casual about the tone and inflection of their own voices, and this has a negative effect on their success. Don’t believe me, conduct some personal surveillance and listen for yourself.

Respond specifically to what was said by the person on the phone

I’ll bet you don’t realize how often this miscue occurs. You ask a prospect how they are doing today (because you think you are supposed to), but totally ignore their response. Or your prospect asks for the price of a particular service, and you roll into telling them how good and effective that service is.

Actions like these leave prospects feeling like you either don’t care or aren’t listening, and that is often the point at which they start to check out.

Recommend the uniqueness or exclusivity of your offering

“Me too” talk seems to always occur during telephone sales calls primarily because salespeople don’t emphasize features that are exclusive or unique from other offerings in the marketplace. Most sales managers and many sales trainers fail to understand how important this principle is. The purpose of “unique selling propositions” like I mention here is to make the prospect feel they’d be double-barrel crazy to buy from anyone else but you, regardless of the price of the service or product.

The quickest way to know if you’re messing up is if your competitor can claim it, it is not unique. If you’re bloviating about solutions being “the best” on the market or that your company “bends over backwards” to deliver great service; everybody can and does say that. Emphasize exclusives and uniqueness’s or hang up the phone!

Relate well to your prospect before making any attempt to sell

There is always an invisible wall between buyers and sellers. Prospects nearly always display some amount of defensiveness toward salespeople. Remembering that they buy from those they like and trust, make it a point NOT to start your selling process until you have established some level of likeability and trust. If you don’t you can rest assured they won’t be listening very closely.

open-ended-questionsRequest rather than tell

You should never jump in and start yammering about features or advantages of your solution until you are able to understand what’s important to a particular prospect. Remember that questions are you best friends and you should lead with them in order to gain sure-footing. For example, if your prospect wants you to tell him about a particular service your company offers, the worst thing you could do is to jump in and begin to tell him by parroting the features and benefits.

You would be much better served if you would lead by first asking a few strategic questions, such as:

“I will be glad to provide you the details of my service, but first, with your permission, I’m curious if you currently use this type of service from another provider?” If “yes” ask how it is working for him and why he is contemplating making a change. If “no” ask what specific problem he wants to solve by using this service.

By learning answers to these basic questions you will know what direction your explanation and discussion needs to take.

Resolve to always close EVERY call with a logical next step

How often to you find it difficult to reach someone for a follow-up call? When you do re-connect do you find the prospect exactly where they were during the last contact with no evident progress?

Both of these issues occur because salespeople don’t set clear objectives and steps with prospects for their next call or contact, which always derails the sales process and the prospect rarely buys. So at the end of every call it’s critical to agree on a logical next step with a purpose and an objective, and when you do your closure rate will immediately improve.

All six of the suggestions in this post will help you improve your telephone performance as well as your sales results. Phone sellers often erroneously blame their lack of success on incorrectly using specific sales techniques, when the problems are frankly the deficiencies we just discussed.

———This Banker Loves My Blogposts———
“One of my favorite times each week is when Doug’s newsletter hits my email. It’s an opportunity to tune out the demands of the day for a moment and reconnect with “why” I do what I do; along with ways to do it better. It’s personal, it’s sincere, and I’ve seen results driven by his sound advice. I love sharing the content with my team and encouraging them with fresh ideas. Thanks Doug!”
Kyle Lovell, VP, SunTrust Bank, Atlanta
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