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Avoid assuming anything about making a sale before you make a call. For one thing, you have no idea whether prospects can buy what you have because you know nothing about their priorities, their decisionmaking process, their budget, etc.
If you assume that you’re going to sell them something on that first call, you’re setting yourself up for failure. That’s
core problem with traditional old-style cold calling.
Stay focused on opening a dialogue and determining if it makes sense to continue conversation.
5. Start With Your Core Problem Question Once you know what problems you solve, you also know exactly what to say when you make a call. It’s simple. You begin with, “Hi, my name is Ari. Maybe you can help me out for a moment.”
How would you respond if someone said that to you?
Probably, “Sure, how can I help you?” or “Sure, what do you need?” That’s how most people would respond to a relaxed opening phrase like that. It’s a natural reaction.
The thing is, when you ask for help, you’re also telling truth because you don’t have any idea whether you can help them or not.
That’s why this new approach is based on honesty and truthfulness. That’s why you’re in a very good place to begin with. When they reply, “Sure, how can I help you?,” you don’t respond by launching into a pitch about what you have to offer. Instead, you go right into talking about core problem to find out whether it’s a problem for prospect.
So you say, “I’m just giving you a call to see if you folks are grappling (and key word here is ‘grappling’) with any issues around your sales team chasing prospects who turn out to never have any intention of buying?”
No pitch, no introduction, nothing about me. I just step directly into their world.
The purpose of my question is to open conversation and develop enough trust so they’ll feel comfortable having a conversation.
The old way of cold calling advises asking lots of questions to learn about prospect’s business and to “connect.” The problem is that people see right through that. They know that you have an ulterior motive, and then you’re right back up against The Wall. These ideas may be hard for you to apply to your own situation at first because trying to leverage calls based on what we know about our solution is so engrained in our thinking.
If you stay with it, though, you can learn to step out of your own solution and convert it into a problem that you can articulate using your prospects’ language.
And that’s secret of building trust on calls. It’s missing link in whole process of cold calling.
6. Recognize and Diffuse Hidden Pressures
Hidden sales pressures that makes The Wall go up can take a lot of forms.
For example, “enthusiasm ” can send message that you’re assuming that what you have is right fit for prospect. That can send pressure over phone to your prospect.
You must be able to engage people in a natural conversation. Think of it as calling a friend. Let your voice be natural, calm, relaxed…easy-going. If you show enthusiasm on your initial call, you’ll probably trigger hidden sales pressure that triggers your prospect to reject you. Another element of hidden pressure is trying to control call and move it to a "next step".
The moment you begin trying to direct your prospect into your "sales process ", there is a very high likelihood that you can "turn off" your prospect's willingness to share with you details of their situation.
It's important to allow conversation to evolve naturally and to have milestones or checkpoints throughout your call so you can assess if there is a fit between you and person you are speaking with.
7. Determine a Fit
Now, suppose that you’re on a call and it’s going well, with good dialogue going back and forth. You’re reaching a natural conclusion…and what happens?
In old way of cold calling, we panic. We feel we’re going to lose opportunity, so we try to close sale or at least to book an appointment. But this puts pressure on prospect, and you run risk of The Wall going up again. Here’s a step that most people miss when they cold call. As soon as they realize that prospects have a need for their solution, they start thinking, “Great, that means they’re interested.”
What they don’t ask is, “Is this need a top priority for you or your organization to solve, or is it something that’s on back burner for a while?”
In other words, even if you both determine that there ia a problem you can solve, you have to ask whether solving it is a priority. Sometimes there’s no budget, or it isn’t right time. It’s important that you find this out, because months later you'll regret not knowing this earlier.
Putting Pieces Together
Have you ever wondered where “numbers game” concept came from?
It came from someone making a call, getting rejected, and boss saying, “Call someone else.”
But with new way of cold calling, it’s not about how many people you call. It’s about what you say and how you come across.
Do you remember definition of insanity—continuing to do same thing but expecting different results?
If you go on using same old cold calling methods, you’ll go on experiencing ever-increasing pain of selling.
But if you adopt a new approach and learn how to remove pressure from your initial cold calls, you’ll experience so much success and satisfaction that it’ll really change way you do business, bring you sales success beyond your imagination—and eliminate “rejection” from your vocabulary for good.
Ari Galper is the founder of Unlock The Game™, the only selling program that completely eliminates pressure from the selling process. His Unlock The Game™ Sales Program has helped thousands of entrepenuers and sales professionals worldwide. Visit http://www.UnlockTheGame.com to take a Free Test Drive!
