The Green Sheet :: GS Archives

The Art of Selling Over the Telephone

By Alex Horvath

�The phone is, once again, your friend.��1999 California telephone company slogan.

A re you utilizing the telephone the way you should? Is the phone a convenience item in your sales organization that allows you to occasionally call or be reached by business contacts? Or is it an essential tool that you cannot do without, something you use to reach out and try to touch over 100 potential customers a day?

The intelligent sales professional knows that the more tools in the sales arsenal the better. That is the reason many sales organizations have added entire telephone sales departments to their companies. It�s simply easier and more effective to reach large volumes of people over the phone lines than an individual could do in a single day cold calling on the street. The phone, to some, is merely an appointment setter. But others create entire lucrative deals over their phone headset, culminating in signed contracts submitted via fax. The ISO of tomorrow might be someone who never leaves his home or office, except to close occasional special deals in which the client requires their presence.

So how do you make the phone work for you? To have some control over this, give yourself a daily quota of calls you have to make that you plan to live by. A figure such as 100 to 120 calls per day sounds like an aggressive goal, but it can be easily reached. Plan on doing 60 to 80 calls per day when sales are happening or there is extra paperwork. A structure around how many calls you make is essential to being successful. You can even tweak this structure to include how many minutes per call you would like to have and how many proposals per day get sent to prospects.

Try not to sound �scripted� or �canned.� Try to make each call sound fresh. Be yourself. There are a couple of ways to assure this happens. First, know who you are calling and who is the correct decision making individual before you start a conversation. (Why waste your breath talking with the wrong person?)

Next, ask if it is a good time for you to be calling to talk about either your service, or a way that they are going to be able to increase their profits. If possible, relate a business contact they may be familiar with who is using your program. Tell them about how many years your company has been in business. To make certain you sound unscripted, I recommend that you occasionally tape your side of the conversation and listen to yourself deliver your pitch. This is an invaluable sales tool, as you can observe your tone of voice, pace of speech and overall message delivery. Is there any room for change?

By now you have your foot in the door and are on your way to creating a proposal. But that doesn�t guarantee the sale. What will bring you closer to the close is the rapport you must build with the client over the phone. The good news is that once you get started it�s not unlike regular sales where your customers are in front of you.

First, get them talking about themselves and their business. Remark on recent events in the news that might affect their company or be of interest to them. Let them know important information about your company such as if you have 24-hour customer service, approval ratings, claims processing, and other things that will help their business be successful. Speak as the authority on the subject that you are�but don�t forget to listen to the prospect and also address their concerns. Before changing topics or hanging up, make sure you ask, �Is there anything we haven�t talked about that you find important and would like to discuss?� You will be surprised at how often the customer has many things they would like to ask about-but may not have if you hadn�t given the opportunity.

After addressing their questions, it�s a natural time to go for a close.