by Nancy Calabrese | Aug 28, 2019 | Advice, Best Sales Practices, Cold Calling Tips
Cold calling success is largely based on the ability to differentiate yourself from others doing the same exact thing that you are doing. It makes sense that successful cold callers catch a prospect’s attention and build a relationship by being different in their cold calling approach. It starts with the first phone call and the cold calling script. Here are nine ways to differentiate yourself when cold calling:
- Craft a script that sounds genuine, and unique. Messaging must catch the attention of your audience. Interject something unexpected. Incorporate content to make your script your own.
- Catch the prospect’s attention. Successful cold callers make the first 30 seconds memorable by tailoring the message based on the prospect’s communication style.
- Be likeable. Incorporate a genial approach that builds trustworthiness. Trustworthiness leads to being influential.
- Inject humor. Connect with people over shared human experiences and tell stories that leave a positive effect.
- Be sincere. Differentiate yourself by being genuinely interested in the prospect and the prospect’s needs and wants. Generate trust by truly caring about your prospect.
- Ask the right questions. Incorporate high-value, thought-provoking questions. Pose enough deep, probing questions to really learn what the prospect needs are. Keep questions short following a response that the customer just shared to encourage them to talk more.
- Embrace active listening. Pay close attention to the prospect’s words, their tone of voice and their body language. Remember, it’s all about them. Distinguish yourself by being able to truly understand and respond to your prospect and their particular situation.
- Be prepared. Since prospects are inundated with sales calls, voicemails and emails, it is crucial to differentiate from all that noise. Come to the conversation with a knowledge of the prospect’s business and the kinds of challenges they face. Be ready with relevant open-ended questions. Sales is all about language that is pertinent to the prospect.
- Add value at every opportunity. Offer blogs, videos, white papers, etc., to be a thought-leader, not just a “seller”. When buyers see you as an expert, they will welcome your call.
Implementing these suggestions will help you cut through the noise and really stand-out when making your cold calls – and that is the first step to setting up qualified appointments and closing sales!
Need help crafting an effective script? Or does your team need coaching and management to be more productive? Click Here to learn more about our Call Center in a Box program where we train, manage and monitor YOUR inside sales team to improve YOUR bottom line. No inside sales team? With One of a Kind Search we find well trained sales people to work for you or call us at 908.879.2911 – we LOVE to Cold Call for you!
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 5, 2019 | Cold Call ROI, Cold Calling Tips, Lead Generation, Sales Prospecting
While psyching yourself up to make that first dial of the
day may be the most daunting part of cold calling, MAKING the calls is NOT the
ultimate sales goal for most organizations. Setting QUALIFIED APPOINTMENTS and
CLOSING SALES are what impact your organization’s bottom line. Understanding
the full sales process and knowing (and monitoring) your KPI’s will help you
meet your ultimate sales goals.
KPI’s are ‘Key Performance Indicators’ – clear, specific
actions YOU need to take, during a specified time, to achieve a specific
outcome. In the example above, picking up the phone and making calls IS key,
but the specified desired outcome is to set appointments with qualified
individuals and then to close sales with those prospects.
If you are responsible for making that first call, your KPI
might be to make X number of calls per hour, day or week. If the other
subsequent metrics are falling or failing to be met, this number may need to be
increased.
Are you responsible for setting appointments? That KPI
might track the number of calls that result in an appointment. If this number
slips, go back to the initial call script and make sure it is solid. Re-work
that as needed to ensure the calls you are making lead to appointments.
The next metric to track would be the number of appointments
that are converting to actual sales. If you find this number slipping, you
don’t necessarily need to make MORE CALLS (though that may help increase your
odds) but you need to work on the delivery and content of those calls so that
when you are setting appointments, they are with people who are truly QUALIFIED
to close a sale.
Clearly identifying your goals and monitoring
your progress towards those goals is KEY to ACHIEVING them! Knowing and
monitoring YOUR KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) will help you stay ON TRACK
to meet and exceed your sales goals.
Are your calls not converting? Need help with your scripts or to tune up your teams’ delivery? Give us a call – our training programs can boost YOUR team’s results.
And if you still need help, WE LOVE COLD CALLING! Give us a
call at 908.879.2911 to see how WE can make calls for YOU!
by Marta Malyk | Oct 26, 2021 | Uncategorized
At One of a Kind Sales, we call our proprietary approach to Cold Calling ‘Conversational Selling’.
We approach each call as a conversation and an opportunity to discover two things:
1. Are we speaking with a decision maker?
and
2. Are they experiencing problems now, or in the future, that we can solve?
We do that, in conversation, by asking a lot of important and pointed questions.
Sales 101
Take for example, the classic sales exercise where you are asked ‘sell me a pen’.
Most people launch into ‘sell’ mode, listing all the features and benefits of owning this particular pen.
With Conversational Selling, we deliberately take a different path. We need to know what is motivating the person’s need for a pen before we know if this is the best pen for them.
Rather than going directly for a sale, we pause and spend time asking important questions to determine if this pen is the best fit for them, or if another might be better.
Build Trust
This approach does a couple of things. First, it earns you the trust of the prospect. They can see that you are genuinely curious to learn about THEM and THEIR needs, as opposed to just selling YOUR product.
Qualify the Prospect
It also provides you with the opportunity to decide if this buyer is a good fit for you!
Don’t Rush
This approach also forces you to SLOW DOWN.
Many salespeople are guilty of approaching each prospect with an attitude of ‘ let’s close this deal and move onto the next’.
When you do that, you often miss important details and information which is key to determining how to best sell this prospect.
You need to learn how THIS prospect wants to buy. Listening and drawing information out through questioning provides you with this info.
Equal Stature
When you approach a sales call as a conversation you create equal stature that allows you to determine if this prospect is a good fit. And to determine whether you can solve their problem.
This takes the pressure off of the salesperson AND the prospect.
A Proven Track Record
We have been practicing this method for over 29 years, refining our approach, and messaging as needed. Not only has it been successful for us and our clients, but it has also worked well for the salespeople that we have trained.
In addition to making you a better salesperson, our Conversational Selling training will benefit you across all areas of your professional and even your personal life by helping you become a better LISTENER.
Be Deliberately Different
At the end of the day, Conversational Selling will set you apart – people remember people who are different.
As you know, I love this quote from Coco Chanel who famously said, “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.”
Being deliberately different, by design, will improve your sales, fill your pipeline and relive you and the prospect of the pressure of a hard sell.
Invest in Yourself
Sales training benefits individual salespeople and companies as a whole, by sharpening their skills, increasing the knowledge base, keeping the company competitive and growing revenue.
Ongoing sales training should be a part of every employee’s weekly schedule, at every level. Yes, even management! This keeps people involved, up to date on the industry best practices and engaged with their team and their prospects.
If you need help shifting YOUR mindset from selling features and benefits to Conversational Selling, give us a call. Our ‘Call Center in a Box‘ and ‘Close the Deal‘ programs provide the ongoing sales training you and your team needs to succeed!
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