Quick self-assessment: When you pick up phone to make a sales call, what are you hoping will be outcome?

Let me guess:

* Get information * Find decision maker * Schedule an appointment * Make a sale

In other words, you want something even before person you call says "Hello."

It's time to throw out your "selling" language and unlock your natural language.

Here's how:

Be willing to challenge everything you have learned about selling up to this point. If you aren't open to questioning conventional sales thinking, you'll never have a chance to experience selling in a completely different way. * Replace your goal-oriented agendas with trust-building agendas.

* Learn to enjoy processing of building a new relationship.

* Build a dialogue.

* Avoid centering conversation on you and your offerings.

* Enter conversation without assumptions. * Trade overconfidence for humility.

Any signs of overconfidence when you first make contact with a potential client will only set off "sales alarms." Humility (not weakness) starts trust-building process.

Visualize person you are speaking with as a potential friend rather than a potential client. This will help you to converse rather than "sell."

When you tap into your natural language abilities, it triggers person you're speaking with to tap into their own natural language as well.

Like you, they will abandon their "business language" and begin communicating with you in their most natural way.

Natural language is crucial secret to transforming outdated, ineffective "buyer-seller" role into a trust-based relationship based on open, natural communication.

6) DON’T HARD SELL!!!

Don’t pressure people or make it hard for them to get off phone. Tell them what you do and that you'd like to send them an email with a link to your website with samples and testimonials (or with an attachment containing samples), then leave them to it.

7) Follow up with an email

If you have permission, always send a follow-up email – and do so immediately. Be specific in your subject line. (TIP FOR COPYWRITERS: If you’re an advertising copywriter or website copywriter, use words "advertising copywriting" or “website copywriting” in subject. Most people don't get many emails with this in subject line, so it'll be distinctive and probably won’t be snuffed by their spam filter if they have one.) Address email to them (e.g. "Hi Joe"), keep email short 'n sweet. Include only essential info, make it easy to read and conversational, and bold important words or phrases as they'll probably only skim it. Include a link to your website, reference day and date you talked on phone (and thank them for that time), mention any names you learnt (e.g. receptionist's name, especially if receptionist gave you an email address but you didn't actually get to speak to decision maker), tell them that you'd like to follow up in a few weeks (assuming conversation indicated that this would be a good idea).

8) Follow up with another call

If lead looks promising, make sure you follow up. And when you do, always mention day and date of original call, as well as fact that you sent an email. Give a quick summary of who you are and what you do, and say that you're just calling to make sure they got email. Most of time, you’ll find lead will talk to you about your services, if only to remind themselves of what you do!

9) Don’t expect to make too many calls

On a really good day, I've made 80 cold calls. Most days, though, you should be very pleased to average around 40. You’ll spend a lot of time playing telephone tag.

10) Don’t leave message

Unless you absolutely have to (or you’ve just about given up on lead), don’t leave messages. Most people have trouble returning phone calls from people they know and like; returning phone calls from someone who’s trying to sell them something isn’t high on their list of priorities.

11) Don’t expect to qualify too many leads

Depending on your business, if you get one good lead a day, you're probably doing very well.

12) Don’t expect immediate conversion

Unfortunately, most leads take a long time to come to fruition (up to 2 years). So you have to be prepared to be patient.

Good luck and happy calling!

* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.