December 15, 2008
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In this issue of The Sales buzz
How top sales professionals stuff their diaries with potential money making appointments
As we approach the start of another sales year you may have thought about now making next year your best ever. Top sales professionals are taking actions now to give them the best start to next year, and you can copy their ideas.
The whole of this issue is given to helping you increase your appointment making skills and earning more money from the sales you they generate.
Making sales appointments isn’t everyone’s favourite sales action.
Yes I know, many of you sales people would rather be in front of buyers, pitching your sales, closing the deal, and exploding your commission payments. But without making sales appointments first, you’re not going to get that comission earning opportunity.
In this issue of the The Sales Buzz you can gain:
Top tips from working sales professionals on packing your appointment diary full of sales potential.
The basics of setting up your telephone session so you spend less time making appointments and more time selling to qualified prospects.
How you can get a complete appointment making training course in a workbook, that you can put into action in just a few days and start earning the benefits.
Make sales appointments
Make money
sales appointments
I manage and train sales teams for an international company. Now you can try the appointment making tips proven everyday by working sales teams.
making telephone sessions?
Do you plan your telephone sessions, or just make the calls? By taking a few simple actions to get the most out of a planned telephone appointment session you can multiply your appointments, or half the time you spend making them.
Let’s start with where you’re going to phone from
Take yourself away to a quiet office where you won’t be disturbed. No incoming calls, no interruptions, no discussing last night’s sports results. Nothing to catch your eye and take away your focus. Get right away from all those attractive people in the office.
Set yourself a timescale
Put a set amount of your valuable time on one side as an investment in your future sales. By setting a time period you can now focus all your attention on nothing but appointment making.
Have your prospect list ready for phoning
...It really irritates me when I turn up for a telephone session and the sales person hasn’t got a prepared list of prospects to phone. For more on building a list of potential prospects to phone, open Prospecting Tips.
How many calls to make
How many calls can you make before you get bored? At what point does your mind start wondering and excuses for not making calls start to enter your mind?
First it will be a cup of coffee. Or something you need from the car. On the way you pass a colleague and have a chat. Before you know it the day has gone and you haven’t made enough appointments to fill a day let alone a sales month.
Make 10 calls and then have a 5 minute break. ...That’s 10 contacts with decision makers, not just 10 outgoing calls... Pace yourself like you would at the gym or on your early morning run. When you come back after a break fire yourself up and get the most you can from your next 10 calls.
Set yourself a target
Set yourself a target, You’re a sales professional you work great when you’re motivated to achieve a goal. Work out your target of how many sales appointments you need to make in each telephone session. if you’ve never considered how many appointments you need to hit target take a look at Sales Prospecting and see a whole new viewpoint that top sales performers use to make the best use of their selling time.
Powerful body language
If you sit down and make appointment calls for any length of time you will slowly move into a body posture that slumps downwards. Sitting at a desk and looking down into a notebook, or at a computer screen, is not an open posture that allows your voice to resonate.
Sit upright, or even better stand up and think on your feet. No slumping forward, or sitting back with your feet on the desk. It will come through in your voice. Let your body language communicate that how motivated and wide awake you are.
You have a limited amount of time to grab the prospects attention. Make every word work for you on your appointment setting call. Don’t leave anything to chance. Bring the whole call into conscious focus.
Negative words
What does the word, appointment, make you think of?
Doctors appointments, accountants, bank managers, tax men, and other unfriendly appointments ...even worse...it could bring back memories of dentist appointments. It could do the same for your prospects.
So maybe you could use other words such as meetings, getting together, meet up, calling in, or even a friendly dropping by.
Contract can sound too formal, and many people have been caught out with contracts they were tied into at some time. You should choose another word like package, or how about agreement...that's friendly.
Never describe your appointment setting call as just a call, or a quick call. The worst example I hear a lot in call centres is, this is only - caller's name - it's just a quick call.
These are weak words that demote the importance of you and your call. If you don't sound like you think your appointment setting call is important don't expect the prospect to give you their time.
For more free information on the words to use when you make your sales appointment calls open Appointment setting and have a click around.
Combine all these powerful sales techniques and linguistic skills together, and launch them along a pathway created by an appointment making strategy.
Use a strategy as a process to get you from the very first contact with a decision maker, through the questioning stage of qualifying the prospect, to gaining the agreement to an appointment.
Fill your introduction full of possible benefits for the buyer
Motivate the buyer to move with you to the questioning stage
Only ask the questions you need to so you can make a decision to sell to the customer
Have a closing line that gets agreement from the prospect, without any pressure, using motivating benefits and simple professional closing skills.
Imagine how many sales appointments, selling opportunities, you could make for 2009 if you used could use all the above tips and techniques. You can now learn how to put all the selling techniques you have seen here into action in just a few days.
Take a look at the Appointment making and cold calling techniques workbook training course I use with my sales teams. Read the detail, and then you can decide if it’s the right course to help you make more money and gain real job security in these uncertain times.
The Sales Buzz
How to use NLP in your sales meetings with buyers.
I'm a practitioner of NLP. I incorporate NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) into the sales training I use in my daily job as a sales manager. Over the next few issues of The Sales Buzz I'll be giving sales tips and sales training on how to use NLP in your sales role.
These will be proven selling techniques and some new ideas I am working on with my sales teams.
That's my aim with The Sales Buzz Free Newsletter and with all the selling and career techniques on the sales training website. You can learn sales skills without spending huge amounts of money or ploughing through long boring books.
Pick up sales techniques and sales skills from wherever you can. You do not have to spend huge amounts of money to get the learn sales skills that are right for you. I present sales techniques that are:
Easy to learn sales skills
Short and to the point
Simple to put into action
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Wishing you the very best with your sales career.
Stephen Craine
Sales-Training-Sales-Tips