GUIDE

9 before 9: Top Tips for Telephone Selling.

9 BEFORE 9 The art of telephone selling is often regarded across the sales sphere in a “marmite” fashion. For some, the buzz and adrenaline gained from flying past the gatekeeper to prospect a potential lead, build rapport and get that date in the diary creates an appetite for getting on the telephone: and high-flying telephone sellers that won’t fail to deliver results. For others, the inevitable rejections that come from prospecting hundreds of leads makes cold-calling a tiresome, yet necessary evil. It’s the area of selling that holds the most negative reputation, particularly in the B2C sector. Yet when undertaken correctly, it can prove invaluable: and deliver tangible, concrete sales results. As such, it remains one of the most sought-after skills within any industry, and can greatly impact upon career prospects and desirability to any potential employer. Leading telephone sellers are perhaps the greatest asset to any market-leading organisation.

Pareto’s industry-leading sales trainers have compiled a brief guide of top telephone selling tips, designed to help you make those small changes that will make a big difference amongst your telephone sellers.

MIND OVER MATTER: THE MENTAL STATE

The success triangle suggests that successful sales people are made up of 12% knowledge, 18% skills and an astounding 70% attitude. Confidence, self-belief and a strong self-perception sells: alter your mental state by ensuring you don’t take rejection personally, are proactive in your approach and enter into a call with the belief that you will reach the desired outcome, and you have already significantly improved your chances of success.

PLANNING AND PREPARATION

The warmer the lead, the better the prospect. Preparation in terms of data cleansing, qualification calls and basic research into the organisation and decision maker are invaluable, enabling you to adapt sales scripts to each individual prospect. In addition, follow a set call structure. This enables you to control and direct conversation, ensuring all content is covered. The popular SALES framework is an excellent example and creates ‘checkpoints’ throughout the call.

9 BEFORE 9: TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Too many sales people restrict cold calling sessions to set hours within the working day, not only limiting the sheer number of prospects they can realistically contact, but also the success rate of those calls. Install a culture where selling begins promptly at 8am and continues past close of play. Gatekeepers are frequently the last into the office, and the first out: calling outside their working hours removes one major obstacle between you and the key decision maker. In addition, others aren’t calling, which gives you a major advantage over your competitors.

VOCAL IMPACT: IT’S THE WAY YOU SAY IT

In a telephone selling scenario, we remove the visual aspect, which would normally make up 55% of the way we communicate. Instead, 70% of the way we communicate is weighted in the way we speak, and just 30% comes down to the actual words. To ensure success within these boundaries, we need to look at the finer details of how we speak. Small changes such as achieving an optimum speed of around 160-180 words per minute , using impact statements and repetition to drive key points and adopting positive buzz words and intonation are all vital to engage and inspire your prospect.

THE GATE KEEPER Perhaps the greatest hurdle many face in the cold calling process is the first step: the gatekeeper. The true VIP of the process, they are key to success with a prospect. Always obtain the gatekeepers name and ensure the first impression made is the right one: it’s the one that lasts. Persistence pays, so build rapport and conversation. However, don’t do business with the wrong person.

The pitch is for the prospect; the gatekeeper is merely the cliff notes version. Finally, always end sentences with “thank you”: it is assumptive, yet polite, and therefore stimulates a response.

If the gatekeeper is a true sticking point, consider point 3: ring outside of business hours, and avoid the hurdle altogether.

QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUETIONS...

The most successful sales people ask 70% more questions than their counterparts. When selling on the telephone, use it to your advantage. People’s favourite topic of conversation is, simply, themselves. Structure your questioning to stimulate conversation, beginning with ‘open’ questions to get the prospect used to answering and build a profile of the key ‘W’s: the what, when, where, who and why. Having asked a series of background questions to establish

the prospects challenges, have them then develop the effect that can be gained from addressing that cause for concern. Taken into a place of security and potential, they build their own utopia:

“We’ve been having issues with distribution to X countries; addressing this issue would see our profits increase by X% and open up marketing channels which are currently inaccessible to us”.

The solution has become the prospects idea, providing motivation to create a change. Follow this with negative questioning to identify the impact of not taking action, creating the urgency required to push for a sale:

“If we don’t move into these marketing channels, our competitors will increase their market share, leading to a decrease in growth and profit for us”.

Conclude by repeating back the prospects’ positive and negative effects, and the need they have established. Summarise with a call to action that- all being well- leads to that sought-after sale. The prospect has done all the hard work: you have simply guided them along the way.

OBJECTION HANDLING Where there are sales, there will also always be objections: and more often than not, they are the single factor standing between success and failure in the lead up to a sale. If objections arise and are either brushed aside, dismissed, interrupted or simply not addressed fully, all the work put in can be destroyed in an instant. All objections are valid: take the time to hear them out. In addition, practice handling objections. Simple acronyms such as EMC (Empathise, Message, Close) or CLEAR (Clarify, Listen, Empathise, Answer, Recap) can help structure the process to ensure control of the situation is maintained. However, perhaps one of the best tips for handling objections is to keep a clear head. Manage this, and all else will follow.

EVIDENCE Providing evidence to back your claims will establish authenticity and make your proposal or offering applicable and appropriate to the customer. Research the industry sector and market of the prospect and subsequently tailor evidence. If you can reference one of their major competitors and claim that your organisation has improved their offering, increased their sales or turnover, even better. Names, figures and percentages are all tangible forms of evidence that the prospect understands and will stand out in any pitch. Have vital stats to hand or memorise them ahead of your calls: don’t be caught out when your prospect enquires after previous success stories or testimonials.

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THE VOICEMAIL When the prospect isn’t available and a voicemail is the only option, there are ways to make your message stand out, and increase call backs. The ideal voicemail is short and precise, yet arouses curiosity. There is no reason to try and tell the prospect everything: this removes the need to return the call, and weakens the strength of a sales pitch which can be more effectively developed through two-way interaction. Alluding to what it is your organisation can offer but remaining vague will spark interest, causing the prospect to consider who you are and what you may be able to do for their organisation. Be creative and innovative in your approach, to make your voicemail stand out from the crowd. Inspire the prospect to believe you are doing them a favour by contacting them, and not the other way around: don’t ask to be called back, tell them.

ART OR SCIENCE Telephone selling encompasses a vast range of skills, potential hurdles, tools and selling mechanisms that go above and beyond traditional client-facing sales. Industry leaders have engaged in repeated debates over the years as to whether telephone selling is an art, or a science. Experience in recruiting and training sales professionals indicates that actually, it’s a carefully balanced combination between the two. While there are ‘natural sellers’ who boast the attitude and personal attributes that pave the foundations for great telephone selling, almost every sales person – whether novice just dipping their toe in the water, or experienced pro with years of calls already under their belt - can impact upon their conversion rate and telephone sales success by investing in skills training, or even simply making a few, minor changes and adjustments to the way in which they approach telephone selling.