How much do you know about the calls you make before you make them? Do you have a well rehearsed script flowing through your head or are you busking it from the moment you pick up the phone?
What are you going to say?
Let’s set the scene for a moment: you have a list of contacts to call and you have a product to sell. All pretty familiar, right? Most salespeople will recognise that. Now let’s throw in some variables. You don’t know anyone on your list personally, so you don’t have an established rapport. Ah. Which makes your calls … cold? Brrrrr. So what can you talk about? What can you say that is going to make your prospects want to listen to you? That is one of the most important decisions for any salesperson in any sales situation.
OK, so what can you do about it?
What you say is dependent on the product, the service, the circumstance – the time of day and so on – and of course your own natural personality. There isn’t a fixed answer. Sorry. There is however, a hard and fast rule which every sales professional should cling to: whatever you intend to say, plan it. Prepare it. Practice it. Work it until it is completely natural. Making it up on the fly is for suckers.
Why?
Because there are things you need to say if you are to make a sale. There are benefits and highlights that you need to mention if you are to transfer the appropriate sense of ‘wow’. At the same time, you need to sound confident about your product and yourself if you are to make the customer feel confident. Put simply, you are better off not picking up the phone at all than you are making calls when you haven’t worked out what you want to say.
This all sounds a little ‘slick’
It doesn’t have to be. It isn’t about being slick. It is about being prepared. The more you know your subject, the more relaxed you can be talking about it. This isn’t an invitation to learn things by rote so you can talk like a robot. On the contrary, it is elementary stuff for anyone who doesn’t want to run the risk of blabbering like an amateur. It is just simple, useful, common sense.
