«Price is what you pay. Value is what you get».
Warren Buffett
Cold Calling
The main part of Active Sale it’s Cold calling. What is cold calling?
Cold calling means soliciting potential customers who were not expecting to speak with you. The term ‘cold’ refers to the fact that you haven’t laid any groundwork for your call. If you are calling prospects who have already shown an interest in your products, such as a prospect who fills out a postcard or a website request for some additional information, then it’s referred to as ‘warm calling.’ Cold calling is a basic thing in sales.
Sales funnel
A sales funnel is a visual presentation of the steps required to sell your product or service. A sales funnel gives you a complete overview of where in the sales process your money is.
A sales funnel reveals how many prospects you have in each stage of your sales cycle, and also details the conversion rates for each stage. This will tell you whether you have enough deals in your funnel to meet your goals, and whether you need to draw special attention to certain deals.
Cold-Calls Fear
Some people reluctant to make cold calls.
When people think:
- This is a useless phone call. «I’m not sure whether it’s important»
- «The prospect probably already has a vendor she/he is happy with»
- They might say, “No, I’m not interested.”
- I don’t know what to say.
- My client might be very busy, I wouldn’t like to disturb/distract/trouble him/her.
- «I need more time before I make a call», «I might lose a sale», «I’m not able to close the deal».
- I am not comfortable with my script, I need a better script. «I’m not well-prepared yet», «I need to plan questions, update the scripts, make notes, set clear objections and run through my script over and over again»
- About negative associations (negative past experience).
- About failure (what your energy is low or off you are not going to transfer good energy and succeed over the phone in sales).
It’s a fear! There is only one way to get over fear — make a lot of calls, about 100.
After 100 calls you will be feel more confident and will have a good experience in making phone calls.
How to be emotionally prepared for cold calling
- The most important thing is to get in the right state of mind and expect success, to feel optimistic and stay positive.
- Assess your image to ensure you look professional and make the exact impression you want to give off.
- Motivate yourself, a very good idea could be watching films about sales or reading books on sales techniques.
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Examples of films:
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Boiler Room
- The Americans
- The Pursuit of Happyness
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Remember: «You earn money by making calls. If don’t call, you don’t earn».
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Figure out some factors that can kill your conversation and work with them. Plan possible answers to flight responses objections, think of possible ways how to re-shape the 1st impressions you have made, practise your script.
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6. Research your prospect before making a call (internet search, database, websites) — seek for insights into goals, benchmarks and use in your script. Craft a tight script and practice it until you feel «at home».
6 Steps to a Successful Sales Calls
Sales is not a chaotic phenomenon, is a controlled process. If you know this process, you will cope with manage your sales.
In this sessions i’ll look into a classic scheme of sales calls:
- Greeting
- Identifying Needs
- Sales presentation
- Dealing with Objections
- The close
- Customer Maintenance
Greeting
We never get a second chance to make a first impression.
When you speak with a customer you should be polite but persistent.
If you have an incoming call, you should say: «Hello it’s Unaa website, my name is Ruslan, can I help you? » — a general way to start a conversation.
When you have an outgoing call, you should follow several rules:
- When you speak with a company you can start conversation like this: «Good morning/good day my name is Ruslan, I’m from Unaa web site, can I speak to… »
- Identifying a Decision Maker: Who’s in charge of?
- When it comes to pitching a deal, it is important to establish that the lead is qualified and you are talking to the decision maker. Decision makers can be different depending on the type of products or services you are sell.
Identifying Needs
Sales is often of a questions game. Unless you ask the right questions, you won’t find out the right needs. Unless you ask the right questions, you won’t figure out the issues to solve.
There are two types of questions — open and closed. What is the difference?
Open questions. They start with (what, where, when, how much?…) cannot be answered with just ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Closed questions can be answered with either a single word, a short phrase or just yes/no.
When we want to solve a problem and identifying Needs we can the following questions:
- What’s the deadline to sell your car/rent?
- Do you know about «premium place» on our website?
- How often do you place ads in our website?
- How many cars are you going to sell?
Sales Presentation
If you ask right questions — you will know your customers wants and needs.
After that you should offer your clients what they want.
You should use scheme «Features, Advantages, Benefits», what does it mean?
Most salespeople don’t understand difference between features and benefits. These professionals need to understand that features (characteristics of service) support the benefits or value to the prospect and his or her company. Benefits are often expressed in terms of dollars saved or enhanced, time saved or enhanced, and/or reduction of risk. It’s just that simple and not any more complicated.
Features these are facts or about your business, products, and services.
Advantages are what the features do.
Benefits answer why someone should value the advantage. It connects the facts about your product to a solution for your client.
For example:
- We have great solution — it’s «special ad». Have you heard about this?
- When you start use our «special ad» your add will be highlighted green colour and appear higher on mobile and desktop <Features>
- And of course, it speed up the process of sales and you will have all lot of potential clients. <Benefits>
- Why it’s work? Our website the most popular website in …and to attracted more than 180 000 (depend on website) user per month. <Advantages>
Dealing with Objections
Prospect objections should instantly make every professional seller is body the adrenalin produce. When you hear the first objection, you get excited and it’s all about kick off.
Here are 2 arguments you get excited and why it is motivating hear objections from your prospects:
1. Objections mean the prospect got interested, but would like some more information to make the a decision. Your job is to provide that information.
2. Objections mean your sales call is progressing and moving forward.
There is a good way of dealing with objections. You should agree with the customer but stand your ground, for example:
— When the client says that everything is expensive, you might say « Only two days your ad the first in our web site your ad has been placed «premium» just for two days on our website and you have already had many calls you might sell your car soon… Do not think it’s a bargain?»
The close
Closing is a make-or-break moment in sales. The final stage that shows whether your efforts made, have lived up to your expectations.
It’s natural to feel a bit apprehensive about it at first. However, without that feeling of a successful deal wouldn’t be so thrilling. This is the feeling that makes salespeople strive to do more sales calls.
Over the past years a large number of closing sales techniques have been developed thanks to the sales professionals who supposed generate the possible win rates.
Salespeople who use this closing technique reiterate the points the customer is hopefully purchasing (stress the value and benefits) in an effort to make the prospect to make the deal.
«We need to sell your car within two weeks. Correct we if I’m wrong. And we speak about the best opportunities — TOP…»
By summarizing previously agreed-upon points into one impressive package, you’re helping prospects visualize what they’re truly getting out of the deal.
Customer Maintenance.
The best customer is a regular customer! If you have good relationship with your customers, you will get a lot of orders. Remember that!
