by Dave Lozier
(Ca - USA)
Making cold calls for sales appointments on the run up to holidays, such as Christmas and New Year, can be tough. Your prospects have an easy get out line of,'Can you call back after the break.' But we are sales people and we need to meet with buyers, so how do you cold call on the run up to a holiday?
One answer is to have a really good Reason for Calling. Your reason for calling is the most important line in your Sales Introduction stage of the cold call.
The Reason for Calling is what makes the buyer listen to you. It should tell the sales prospect, What's in it for Them.
Make the Reason for Calling work
Use the Reason for Calling to innoculate your cold calls against the seasonal sales appointment objections.
Try this: In your sales appointment cold call tell the prospect you are calling because it's ... And then add whatever seasonal objection you have been getting when cold calling.
So in December the reason for your call could be:
I'm calling because it's nearly the holiday break.
I called today because it will soon be a New Year.
The call today is because it is the run up to Christmas.
The follow up line
Your next line should relate to your reason for calling but it doesn't have to explain it fully.
An example: I'm calling today because it will soon be New Year, and we have a range of products that other businesses like yours have found to be making good profits.
Unless the buyer is genuinely too busy because of the time of year they will not use the seasonal objection. How can they, you have already told them that is the reason you are calling them.
To object to your cold call using the reason you have given for the call would not make sense. It's like spoiling a joke by telling the punch line. It takes the power and the reasoning of the objection away.
Try it out and see if it works for you!
Comment from Stephen Craine
What a great cold calling tip.
I agree that the reason for the call is the most important line of the sales introduction stage of a call. I would even go as far as saying it is the most important line of the whole sales appointment call.
Structuring the introduction stage is worth spending some time on. Take a look at Free cold call scripts for sales introductions for more ideas on appointment setting.
If making sales appointments is something you want to work on there is a free sales appointment training workbook that focuses on the introduction stage of the call.
For those that are serious about wanting to make more sales appointments take a look at the training workbook I use with my sales teams. The Sales appointment workbook course is a set of exercises that builds your sales appointment call a stage at a time.
Not ready for a full course yet?
Take a look at the sales appointment mini-course making sales appointment in a nutshell.