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The Sales Buzz Issue 111 - Making Sales Appointments by Telephone
February 22, 2011
Hi,

I'm Stephen Craine from the website Sales-Training-Sales-Tips.com


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Making Sales Appointments by Telephone

Making sales appointments by telephone is how you get the opportunity to sell to your prospects and earn your commission or grow your business.

But for many people it can be a problem. When you phone a sales prospect to make an appointment you have a few seconds to grab their attention. If you manage to get them to listen to your introduction you still have to keep them listening and gain their agreement to meet with you.

If you can increase the number of prospects you meet with, and fill your sales diary, you will have more chances to close sales and make money. It’s a key part of your sales skills.

Because appointment setting is so important I developed a sales appointment training course for my working sales teams. Below you will see how using a simple structure you can build a cold call introduction in just a few minutes.

This is just the basics of an introduction and there is much more you can add.


A simple structure for your introduction

  • You – Your Name – Your position, title, or a qualification
  • The Company - A simple name, short and easy to communicate
  • About the company
  • The Reason for the call
  • Qualifying Questions


Start with your name…


You – Your Name – Your position, title, or a qualification

What works really well here is a job title that sounds customer friendly and helpful. You don’t want to introduce yourself as a salesman.

You’ll see later on that a really great benefit that you could use as the reason for the call is a free assessment or evaluation of their current product, service, or situation, relating to what you sell. If you can give yourself a title relating to this benefit it will support the reason for the call.


For example:

A surveyor or technician would be appropriate for assessing buildings in the home improvement direct sales market. Once the survey is complete they can move smoothly into a sales pitch.

I have worked with a recruitment agency that uses a similar technique and when each of their staff make a call they introduce themselves as Advisors, Managers, or Specialist preceded by the industry relevant to the prospect they are calling.

Now introduce your company


The Company - A simple name, short and easy to communicate

Do not add more information, such as the name of the corporate group your company belongs to, unless you can see a really good reason for doing so. Keep it short and simple unless there is something you can add that the prospect will recognise or see a potential benefit in.


About the company

A broad piece of information about your company that could be a potential benefit to the prospect.

It could even be just something the prospect may like or connect with. This piece of information can change to suit the prospect being called.


Examples:

We specialize in helping companies like yours that do not have ...

We work with ....(type of business related to prospect)... to make ..(using the product or service)... simple / easy / profitable etc.

We have worked with companies like yours and helped them to...


The Reason for the call

The most important line of the call.

This is where you grab the prospect’s attention and give them a reason to listen to you. This is where you want a wide ranging potential benefit for the prospect if they do business with you. Here are some examples that sales people have developed while using the course:


The reason I’m calling you today is:

Because we are currently offering a free survey of some qualifying properties that will test the effectiveness of your damp proof course and alert you to any potential problems before they cost you money.

Because we are a local business we can offer you services that the national companies cannot provide and this gives you the flexibility to choose the most profitable package specific for your business.

We specialise in providing courier services to businesses like yours and we have a new facility in your area which means we may be able to help you make substantial savings compared to your current costs.


Qualifying Questions

If you need information from the prospect before making a decision on whether it is worth your while arranging a sales appointment, you need to motivate them to answer by giving them a reason by way of a potential benefit.

Using the first example above you could then continue:

To see if you qualify for the free site survey let me ask you...

Once you have asked the sales questions, to establish whether or not they qualify as a sales prospect that you could sell to, you can move to the next stage and gain their agreement to a sales appointment.

In the course I use with my sales teams we again follow a structure to gain the prospect’s agreement to an appointment. Each individual adds the words that work best for them.

To see how to create your own sales appointment introduction, and the rest of the call by following a simple structure, open Making Sales Appointments by Telephone.


Making Sales Appointments by Telephone is published only by the website provensalestraining.com



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