If you have positioned your offer well and done some rudimentary research on your prospect and their business then they may well be open to continuing the conversation. Thank them for taking the call, state you will be brief in your introduction then be brief. Remember that this is an unsolicited call, your prospect is busy and you are interrupting their daily flow so acknowledge it. That’s simple - just be frank, open and honest - which is always a good way to start a relationship. From experience I am far more receptive to an assured sales person than I am with someone trying to be my mate. Put it this way, the quality of your conversation openers could signal the quality of your product or service in the mind of your prospect. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t attempt to build rapport but do it in a meaningful way. These are typically meaningless comments that bring nothing to the relationship. This stems from all those sales training sessions we’ve attended where emphasis has been placed on building rapport by deploying ice breaker questions. Because we’ve subscribed to the outdated notion of rapport building. This could result in the prospect giving you into a false sense of security by agreeing to your request for them to ghost you from that point onwards or they could even hang up on you.Ģ. This is perfectly natural yet it is counterproductive as chances are you are likely to irritate the person you are speaking with who will be in a rush to get you off the phone. Naturally many of us experience anxiety when it comes to rejection which is why we often deviate from the task. We look to get the call recipient on side so that we can seemingly raise the matter of what we sell and hope that the person we are speaking with is charmed into submission. Like I’ve mentioned previously, many of us feel uncomfortable picking up the phone for the purpose of making the sale so in order to get through the ordeal we try to be as affable as possible.Any mentions of the weather or anything else equally innocuous - I’m sure you get the point and have examples of your own. It typically manifests itself as “how are you?” (as if that will elicit a genuine response). It’s throwaway questions or statements that do not add value to the conversation. I know I’m not alone in my frustrations given the conversations I’ve had recently where this topic has come up. From my perspective as a recipient of these types of calls it’s incredibly annoying getting asked, “how are you?” from a stranger who is obviously trying to sell me something - it simply comes across as insincere. It’s at this point I want to share that inane small talk is a pet peeve of mine. It’s here you get the typical pleasantries and small talk that is delivered under the guise of building rapport but it actually serves to deviate from what we’re trying to achieve which is to engage with the prospect and identify if there’s an opportunity to make a sale. With this in mind it’s understandable that we try to make the task pleasant for ourselves by attempting to befriend the person on the other end. What I’m talking about is picking up the phone and making a sales call. We all get them and for many of us starting in business we have to make them which can be an incredibly uncomfortable experience.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |