Listening – The Key to Your Success with Cold Calls
Do you make your cold calls with the goal of listening to the other person? Probably not, because very few people do. But it’s one of the most important skills you can have in cold calling.
In the old cold calling approach, you don’t really listen. You speak. You talk about yourself, your company, and what you have to offer.
And long before your introduction is done, you’ve probably “lost” the other person. Within the first few seconds, they’ve put up a wall. Most people aren’t interested in being “sold,” and they don’t like sales pressure.
What do you think would happen if you make your cold calls with the idea of listening to the other person? Some remarkable things start to shift. Instead of talking about yourself, you’re listening to the other person. You’re inviting them to share the truth of their world.
Truth Comes Through Listening
A great way to do that is by starting your call differently. If you say something like, “Hi, I’m Joe from XYZ company, and we provide a wide array of electronic filing systems,” you’re not listening to the other person. And very quickly, your prospect pegs you as just another caller out to make a commission.
Why? Well, to be frank, you’re coming across as somewhat self-absorbed. That’s a hard thing to say – but think about it. People know you’re a “salesperson” (in a negative way) because the verbal tone you’ve created is all about you and what you have to offer.
A better way to begin your cold calls is with a question around the other person’s problems and issues. Focus on what’s important to them. Isn’t that the best way to start any new conversation anyway?
For example, you can say something like, “Hi… maybe you could help me out for a minute? I’m just calling to see if you’re experiencing lost revenue due to manual invoicing filing systems?”
Now you’re focusing on the other person’s world and what matters to them. You’re sincere with your question, and you’re inviting the truth.
This isn’t just another sales technique. ruthfully, it’s not about sales at all. It’s about listening to discover whether you can help someone.
You Can’t Hear If You Have an Agenda
Haven’t you had the experience of talking with someone who’s already made up their mind about something? Maybe you didn’t know it right away. But eventually it becomes clear that you aren’t having a real conversation. You’re only being invited to hear what the other person has to say.
And so it goes in the old way of cold calling. In the old mindset, you’ve already formed an opinion before you pick up the phone. You believe – really believe – that the other person should buy what you have to offer. You’re enthusiastic, persuasive, and focused on your goal.
But you can’t truly listen when you’re in this place. If you have an agenda, you’re not really open to what’s important to the other person. And they can always sense that.
So you won’t be regarded as someone who’s concerned about your prospect’s well being. They’ll feel they have to protect themselves, because they sense you’re only out to make a sale.
What makes this new cold calling mindset so different is that you let go – entirely – of the desire to get a sale. You’re not hiding a sales agenda. You’re not even interested in shaping a sales event. Rather, you’re listening to discover whether you can help someone.
As listening becomes more and more important in your cold calling, you’ll be regarded as someone who’s trustworthy. It’s a profound shift. You’ll be surprised at how easily prospects welcome you into their world and share the truth of where they stand.
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Adam Price is a professional online business networker, sales trainer and author around effective referral networking & internet marketing. Learn how tap into the powerful online world of networking, sales and trust building by visiting: http://www.Law-Of-Attraction-And-Success.com/SalesSuccess.html
How to Move Through Your Prospect’s Biggest Blocks
I’ve come to know that there are three big blocks that most often come up when anyone is looking at using a professional’s service or getting ready to buy a product.
1. Money.
2. Time.
3. Timing.
This is also with the understanding that everything else between the two of you is what I call an energetic match: They have a need and you can serve that need. They feel connected to you. You have established trust. And you both feel excited and the energy of possibilities is clearly in the air between you.
But then one of the major blocks pops up.
What now? How can you help?
Let’s start with first understanding the energy behind the blocks. By doing this you are able to come from a place of empathy, rather than sympathy. As a service provider it is a disaster move for you to join them in their block. That might sound something like, “I know exactly what you mean Ms. Prospect there are a lot of things that I really want, but can’t have either. I hate it, too.” This is a HUGE disservice to them and also to you (in more ways than we can fully get into in this one article).
So what you are really looking at here is fear (of the unknown, success, change, doing something positive for themselves… the fear takes different forms for different folks, but fear is fear.) Even if they really don’t have the money, have absolutely no time and are in some way not ready or able, they are making excuses to mask the fear.
People make excuses because they can’t see the difference between an outer reality and an inner belief regarding that reality. Most folks have a hard time separating the two and make them the same.
It might sound something like this:
I’m not ready now = I’ll never really be ready.
I don’t have the time now = I can’t see how to make the time.
I don’t have the money now = I don’t believe I can generate the money.
Back in the summer of 1999 I was studying in Ashland, Oregon and one weekend we found this beautiful lake to swim in and saw that across the lake people were cliff-jumping. Now, this is something I use to do a lot when I was in high school. So I swam across, climbed to the top, got to the edge and froze. I could not jump off that cliff. Every time I looked over the edge I thought, “this is a fifteen foot cliff; what if I miss and slam into the rocks, I could break my leg, I could die, I could…”
And then, as I stood there, this boy, maybe he was eleven, came up next to me and asked, “are you going to jump?” And I started to come up with all these excuses, but sighed and just told him I was really scared. And what he said to me I’ve never forgotten:”
It’s air and water. Just jump.”
As I watched him sail over the edge and then bob up to the surface just seconds later, amazingly to me, I jumped. It was exhilarating! (And, obviously, I survived.)
And this, my friend, is exactly how a prospect feels when considering working with you. They see a financial investment, an obligation of time and a challenge they’re preparing to face – a cliff to be jumped off.
So the automatic-human-fear-reaction is to make an excuse.
And, again, the worst move you can make is to join them. “Yes, this cliff is really high. You’re right; it’s impossible to jump. I understand how hard it is, so let me call you back in a few months and see if you’re ready to jump then.”
I can tell you, they will never be ready. (I know if that’s what I’d heard, I would still be standing on that cliff or worse I would have turned around and gone back the way I came.)
Again, assuming your offer is right for them and they will truly benefit from working with you, then you are NOT serving their best interests if you “just let it slide.”
And telling yourself that you are is your own excuse.
The energy of commitment is very strong. Let your prospect know that when you make a commitment the Universe begins to line up for you. Things may start slower than planned, but when you truly commit, it happens. Let them know that, together, you will take care of their concerns (money, time, doubts etc.).
My sense is when YOU commit then you’ll hear, “Let’s do it!”
Can I tell you it will ALWAYS go this way 100% of the time, no, but what I can tell you is that if YOU make the commitment to take a stand for the truth about the difference your service will make for your clients (and don’t back down when they give you excuses), you will have a client who puts themselves completely in your process and together you will produce magnificent results. And the world will be better off because of it.
So Go Ahead. Take A Stand. You Can Do It.
Your Call To Action:
When clients are afraid to move forward, they will make excuses that will keep them from going where they need to grow.
As a professional, you need to call forth the magnificence of your client to support them in activating the change they want, not join them in their fear.
Take a stand for them.
Take a stand for you.
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Enjoyable Cold Calling – Is It Really Possible?
Five perspectives that will (honestly!) create enjoyment in cold calling. Most of us dread our days of making cold calls. We take a deep breath, pump ourselves up, and prepare to talk with a perfect stranger. Is there any wonder a gray cloud sometimes hangs over our desk?
It really doesn’t have to be this way. Cold calling can be an interesting, intriguing, fulfilling adventure.
Here are five perspectives that will give you an entirely new outlook on cold calling. When you apply these new perspectives, cold calling can actually be enjoyable. It can become personally fulfilling as well as financially rewarding.
1. Focus on Helping the Other Person
It’s against our nature as human beings to create an uncomfortable situation with another person. That’s the core reason many of us get that knot in our stomach when we start dialing a cold call.
When we’re only focused on making the sale, this is not a natural meeting place for both people. We want the sale, but the other person usually wants us to go away! Being intrusive is not the finest of character traits, and on some level we know it.
So how can we feel good about cold calling? We change our mindset from getting the sale into being helpful. We look at cold calling as an opportunity to assist.
How can we possibly feel uncomfortable doing that? Helping people is one of the best character traits we possess.
When cold calling is aligned with our very best way of being, it becomes an adventure. We truly want to help people. We feel very good about this, and it shows in our voice. People hear it. And their response will surprise you.
2. Be Honest and Truthful
You’re in a very good place when you choose to be truthful in your cold calling. If you’re not trying to fool anyone, you naturally feel better about making the call. You know that you’re trustworthy. And people respond to you in a positive way.
When you approach a potential client with integrity and common sense, you’re more personable and less tense. Being fully honest is one of your better attributes. And it gives you an opportunity to enjoy the interaction rather than being artificial or manipulative.
People do seem to have a sixth sense about integrity. When they feel you can be trusted, you can truly shine as a person as well as a potential supplier.
3. Be Yourself
Engage people in natural conversation. The more natural you are, the more comfortable you will feel. This makes the other person feel more comfortable as well.
Avoid playing a role, especially reading from a script. Most people can tell when you’re using a script. There’s nothing personal about it, and they pick up on that.
Being artificial puts you in the “typical salesperson” category, which is exactly the role most of us detest. It doesn’t feel authentic. And unless you’re a born actor, it makes you feel skittish about cold calling.
Give yourself permission to follow the rhythm of natural interaction. Allow the conversation to “breathe.” Let it be the kind of conversation you would have with a friend.
Practice this and it can turn your cold calls into pleasant conversations. And you may actually look forward to meeting that new person the next time you pick up the phone!
4. Get into the Other Person’s World
Shift your mindset away from what you have to offer and focus instead on what their problem is.
So many of us have been trained think about our services and products, that we don’t think about the client’s point of view. We aren’t really interested in their issues and how we can help solve them.
Be interested in their world and their challenges. You’ll find this intriguing! Most of us have a natural flair for problem solving. We enjoy “fixing things.” So find out what’s going on with the person you’re talking to.
Make sure the solution you have really does “fix it.” Get rid of any hidden agendas and truly listen. Let them know you’re interested in them and their world.
Move outside your own sales agenda to focus on the needs of others. This makes you a better human being and helps you leap past the fear of cold calling.
5. Let Go of Expectations
Never assume anything beforehand. Allow the conversation to be one of exploration and discovery. Stay focused on the dialogue instead of any private agenda.
Determine whether it makes sense to continue the conversation by truly listening. Never presume your prospect should buy what you have to offer, even when it seems they’re a perfect fit.
You are not calling to create a situation that is focused on your personal gain, but on helping the other person. Simply have a conversation to explore whether you can help them in some way. This takes pressure off both of you. You’ll be more relaxed and they’ll be more honest about where they stand.
Believe me, once you start applying these perspectives it will transform your day-to-day worklife. Instead of dreading cold calling, you’ll anticipate the adventure of creating a situation where everybody wins.
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Adam Price is a professional online business networker, sales trainer and author around effective referral networking & internet marketing. Learn how tap into the powerful online world of networking, sales and trust building by visiting: http://www.Law-Of-Attraction-And-Success.com/SalesSuccess.html
3 Steps to Crushing Out Your Fear of Cold Calling Forever!
If you’re like most people who sell, you probably have some serious resistance to making cold calls. The fear of cold calling is practically an epidemic – but not the kind that gets publicized. It’s a silent and personal struggle.
But it really doesn’t have to be this way. Your fears can be overcome when you keep in mind these 3 basic concepts to cold calling the new way.
1. Rejection doesn’t have to be a part of cold calling
Cold calling the old way means you’re probably preparing for the call by “thinking positive” and hoping for a sale. But the problem with this is that your mindset almost guarantees disappointment when a sale doesn’t happen. And so you keep dialing, hoping that the next contact will result in a sale.
But let’s stop for a moment and think about what would happen if you shift your focus away from “getting the sale” into seeing whether you can help someone solve a problem. In other words, you’re not eager for a sale – you’re exploring whether what you have to offer can help someone. And if not, you’re comfortable with the outcome.
You see, when your mindset shifts away from targeting a sale, you can be relaxed and okay with any result. You can approach your cold calls from a place of wanting to assist. And if it turns out your product isn’t a “match,” for the other person, you can leave the conversation feeling fine.
When you shift into this new mindset, you’ll no longer feel deflated and disappointed when a sale doesn’t unfold. The fear of rejection vanishes. You’re more at ease. Others can sense this, and many more cold calls will turn into productive, pleasant conversations.
2. You can make cold calls without feeling intrusive
In the old cold calling approach, you dial a number, introduce yourself, and hope someone will be interested in what you have to offer. It feels somewhat intrusive to both of you, and that’s one of the reasons you have a knot in your stomach when you call
Well, there’s a better way to start your conversation. Instead of talking about yourself, your company, and your product, you can focus on the other person. It’ll feel much less awkward.
So you might say something like, “I’m just calling to see if you’re grappling with loss of revenue due to unpaid invoices.”
This kind of introduction revolves around the other person and their world. It’ll feel much less intrusive, and they’ll be more likely to explore possibilities with you.
3. You can be natural when cold calling
Many people find themselves putting on an artificial persona when they make cold calls. Maybe they’re reading from a script, or they’re trying to carry the other person along with high enthusiasm – or both.
Well, artificial enthusiasm actually backfires on you.You see, it includes the unspoken presumption that your product or service is a great fit for the other person. But you’ve never spoken with them before, much less had a full conversation with them. You can’t possibly know much about them or their needs.
So it’s really much better to simply be natural and unassuming. You’ll come across as a real person who’s really interested in them and their needs. And others will respond much more positively to your calls.
We all want to feel good about what we’re doing. Following the new mindset in these three important ways will help banish the fear of cold calling and allow you to feel comfortable and relaxed in your work.
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Adam Price is a professional online business networker, sales trainer and author around effective referral networking & internet marketing. Learn how tap into the powerful online world of networking, sales and trust building by visiting: http://www.Law-Of-Attraction-And-Success.com/SalesSuccess.html
Selling In A Recession – Why Some People Are Going To Crash And Others Are Going To Fly!
Over the last few months there has been a lot of talk of recession. Wherever you look and whatever you read, ever since the American subprime crisis, talk of a recession seems to be bombarding us from every possible media. Every expert there is seems to have something to say about whether there will or whether there won’t be a serious recession and if there is, how long will it last and just how severe will it be?
If there is a serious recession, learning how to keep on selling in a recession will be vital. Sales training might well be the key.
I have worked with many clients who have weathered recessions, grown their businesses through recessions and even set up and started successful businesses in recessions. Now is not the time to be panicking. Now is the time to be checking your sales activities, sharpening your sales training activities and applying solid sales principles.
1. Believe you can and stay positive!
One of the problems with all of this talk about recession is that once people believe there is going to be a recession they start to feel negative about their prospects. The nature of belief is such that people only tend to see what they believe rather than believing what they see. Once you believe that there is going to be a recession you tend to only notice articles, comments and statistics that support your beliefs.
What’s more, your negative beliefs quickly affect your outlook and the way that you feel about your business prospects. Think about it for a second… If you thought 2008 was going to be a great year for business, your best year yet; how would you feel? Conversely, if you thought 2008 was going to see a major recession and that it was going to hit you and your business hard; how would you feel?
10 Activities Guaranteed To Prime The Sales Pump
Zig Ziglar tells a great story centered around a pump. In
fact, he used to carry around a chromed hand-pump to his
sales seminars to help illustrate his point. He would
present the idea that a pump only worked after it was
properly and sufficiently primed.
Priming requires a combination of technique, resources and
time. After a successful priming period, water would flow
from it freely and bountifully. It is the same with people
and success. We must develop and invest the proper skills,
materials and time in order to reach a wellspring of
selling rewards.
The following are several proven activities to assist you
with the priming of your success pump:
1. Re-evaluate and refresh your goals.
Goals are dynamic. A successful strategy must include
regular internalization and review of your goals, your
progress and the adjustments needed to guarantee your
success. Take an honest look.
2. Get congruent with your sales plan. Perform a GAP
analysis.
Review your sales plan. Notice the gap between where you
expected to be and where you are. What can you do about it?
Plan Out Your 3-Year Vision for Attracting Clients
In practice building (and getting clients) it seems to be
that most self-employed people just hope for the best. They
simply keep doing what they’ve been doing and don’t have a
strategy for creating the practice they’d be truly and
deeply happy with. This is a big mistake in my opinion.
I used to write down my goals each year, but it never
really worked for me. I just didn’t feel really excited
about my new goals. They didn’t seem to propel me in motion
and so I kind of viewed them as being useless. I never
really looked at them, probably because they seemed like
“shoulds” rather than “really-meaningful-wants.”
Then I came across the concept of creating 3-year visions
instead of just a list of goals for the upcoming year. This
visioning wasn’t just about business goals, but also
family, financial, spiritual, and relationship goals. It
became a “holistic” way of looking at what you wanted in
your life. All the pieces looked like they would work
together, but only because you were compelled to make it
all work together, which was the first time I’d done that
in such depth.
The coolest thing about visioning 3 years out came to me
after I started doing this regularly. I noticed that ONE
year goals were never too much of a stretch. They seemed
like timid goals, goals that didn’t really get me excited.
But having to create a vision of what 3 years down the line
would look like allowed me to REALLY think BIG.
Customer Service: A Missing Skill?
You have to make more sales! This is the message that is
drilled into every salesperson’s mind on a daily basis.
Usually they’re expected to achieve this through cold
calling and other age-old techniques in a hope that they
will be able to make a sale. However, this single-minded
focus on sales figures tends to leave the customer unhappy
and unwilling to buy from the salesperson a second time.
How is this possible since they successfully sold the first
time?
The answer is not, as you may think, in the product or
service. The reason for this customer dissatisfaction is
that many salespeople are excellent at selling, promising
unparalleled service but are unable to meet customer
expectations. There is such a single-minded focus on making
a minimum of 50+ calls per day, but how much time does that
really leave for a salesperson to deliver? The need to make
so many calls in a day leads to an ineffective use of a
salespersons time. Yes, they may make a sale but it is
vital for salespeople to adapt their methods to focus on
long term client relationships.
Cold Calling Executives – a Way of Life
If you plan to cold call high-level decision-makers expect a mental transition to come. The time of transition comes to different people at different points in time, often without the seller even realizing it has happened. The way you think will morph into the very kinds of thoughts top decision-makers think. Seemingly, suddenly you will have their perspective of the world and be able to communicate in a way that gets fast results.
You’ll no longer be stuck in the quagmire of low-level
decision-makers who make decisions within limited decision
making capacity as dictated by the high-level decision
makers. You will be free to think and move through business
transactions with the same abilities as higher levels of
your prospects’ organizations.
A case in point.
This week on the fourth day of waiting in the hospital’s
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for “official” updates re: my
sister-in-law’s health disposition. Finally, on the fourth
day I flipped over to my cold-calling-executives mindset.
Nurses said they could provide no information, seven
different physicians said they were not the attending
physician and could not counsel the family.
For whatever reasons these medical professionals were
limited in their problem solving ability. The hospital
administrator was the next logical stop – as he was “the
buck stops here guy who was accountable to share holders.”
One call to his office resulted in an on site visit by his
personal assistant; the appearance of the previously
unknown “attending physician”; and the collection of
family’s constructive feedback was reported back to the
hospital administrator.
