Making Sales Appointments Proven Examples
Making sales appointments for direct selling to prospects at home, these examples of effective Reasons for Calling will help you improve your results.
The reason for calling is the most important line of any cold call, even more so when calling prospects at home.
It tells the prospect early in the call why you’re calling and why they should listen to you.
Get this one line right and you will get fewer early objections and rejections.
On this page you can see examples of this important line from different industries, and explanations of the sales techniques behind the words.
Once you understand the techniques in the examples below you can adapt the ideas for your own call scripts...
Examples of Reasons for Calling Direct Sales Prospects
Appointment Calls to Car Insurance Prospects
Most people buying car insurance are looking for the cheapest deal that also gives them the cover they want. The professional telephone sales training given to cold callers uses this as the reason for calling.
Example of reason for calling:
I’m calling so that you can check if you are paying too much for the car insurance cover that you want.
Notice the focus is on checking if the prospect is paying too much.
No mention of selling them a cheaper cover plan. The check is the benefit to the listener, and it’s relatively non-committal.
Why wouldn’t a prospect let them check if they’re paying too much.
Offering to check if they're paying too much is a hook that grabs their attention and motivates them to listen to the callers next few lines.
There are many variations on this theme and you can play about with the words to suit your calls, your sales angle, and your company image.
A nice idea I’ve seen used is to expand on the example above by adding a line that says, once you have checked on what the prospect is currently paying you will look for alternative quotes and then they can make a decision on whether to move forward.
Could You Use This Technique
Could you use a price check as a reason why you are calling. If pricing of your product or service is simple and easily compared to your competitors then maybe it will work for you.
Direct Sales Insurance Appointment Call
When it comes to telephone sales training for calls related to life assurance, insuring earnings, and protecting the prospect’s family, saving money isn’t always the main motivator or attention grabber.
Making sales appointments to direct sales prospects for this type of insurance sale you should use a reason for calling that mentions protection, family, cover, etc.
Example:
The reason for my call is many people buy insurance that will protect their family should anything happen, but they don’t always review it as their lifestyle and circumstances change. Can I ask you, when did you last review the safeguards you have in place for your family?
What I like about this example is that not only does this reason for calling grab the prospect’s attention with a logical statement, it moves smoothly into the next stage of the call where you ask the First Question.
Would it Work for You
This telephone sales training works by asking if the prospect has reviewed the suitability of a service or product to their current situation. It will work for you if what you sell could be replacing something the prospect may have had for a while and is no longer the best way to meet their current requirements.
Making Sales Appointments for Direct Sales of New Kitchens
When I was making sales appointments with kitchen sales people we looked at the benefits of adding value to a house by investing in a new kitchen and how we could use this as the reason for the call.
- Ideas we played around with included:
- Image and status when entertaining friends and family.
- Traditional family benefits such as the heart of a home.
- And of course the financial value it adds to a house.
Making sales appointments for kitchen selers should not be about features such as granite worktops and shiny fittings. It's about the benefits that a buyer will get from those features.
Kitchen sales cold calls can also make use of a technique that disguises the fact that you are making an appointment to try to sell to the prospect. There’s a full page on this very successful direct sales technique at Telephone Sales Skills...
Making Sales Appointments for
Cable or Satellite TV
When making sales appointments how do you ask a prospect if you can come round to their home to sell them a cable or satellite TV service?
If you have good sales training the answer is: You don’t ask that question.
Instead you create a really good reason for calling that grabs the prospect’s attention and prevents any early sales objections.
To create a reason for calling start with a few features that the prospect could receive from ordering a TV service:
- Family entertainment such as children's channels and films.
- Educational programs.
- Large choice of programs and channels.
- Pay for view events.
- Coverage of the prospect’s favourite sports.
- Benefits from additional technical features such as storing and playing back shows.
Each of these features will have several benefits.
There are plenty of benefits to use for this product, but when it comes to a reason for calling a prospect: These really good benefits are good only if the prospect has a specific need for them.
Use Benefits That Prospects Want
You should only use benefits in your reason for calling that meet the needs of the prospect.
In the above example for making sales appointments there are lots of benefits you could use.
But to know which ones will grab the attention of the prospect you would have to know more about who lives in the house and what they like watching.
So the types of features and benefits listed above should be used later in the call.
Or maybe saved for when the sales person meets the householder at the appointment stage.
From the above you can see that the big benefit that stands out is the wide range of features and benefits that a television service provider can give to a customer.
Think about it, we all watch TV for different reasons, we have our own favourite channels, and only some of us make use of features such as pay on demand viewing, catch up TV, or record and playback.
So we have identified that the wide range of features and benefits is a possible benefit that you could use as a reason for calling.
Examples of Reasons for Calling:
I’m calling you today because our range of channels is now so big that you might be missing something really good with your current provider.
The reason I’m calling is because we now have such a wide range of channels that we can tailor the service we offer to our new customers and that means you only pay for the channels that you want to watch.
Add to those two examples any free offers, trials, reduced prices for new customers, and bundled packs of channels, and you can see how we are starting to create an effective reason for calling.
Now Create Your Reason for Calling
You’ve now seen some real examples of reasons for calling used in different industries, and the thinking behind the techniques used.
If you’re ready to create your reason for calling we have a full page of sales training on how to do that.
You may have already read most of the page How to Cold Call Sales Appointments for Direct Sales before you were directed here.
If so go back to the last section on that page and follow the 3 simple steps on Creating Your Reason for Calling...
If you haven’t read the page How to Cold Call Appointments for Direct Sales you can go to it at How to Cold Call...
Would You Like More Help?
You probably still feel that you would like more help on making sales appointments and to create your reason for calling.
Perhaps you would like to improve some of the other stages of your calls as well.
Take a look at the appointment training I use to train my successful sales teams and appointment setters.
A full course on creating a sales appointment call script, including the reason for calling, and valuable notes on how to make the calls. See more by clicking the image or going to Sales Appointments...