When trying to make a living from cold call sales you will soon learn that having a love hate relationship with administrative secretaries or gatekeepers will be part of your every day life. I’ve been in the industry now for almost 4 years and to date this has been one of the largest obstacles I’ve had to over come as a salesperson.

First you have to understand that these gatekeepers or secretary’s are only doing their jobs and most of the time that is to ensure little or no cold call sales get to the workers inside their company. The idea here is to play head games and eventually out smart them at their own job.

Some tricks I use that are affective are as follows,

1. Ask the gatekeeper who they think you should be speaking with. Sometimes your simply asking to speak with the wrong person. You know it’s not always the presidents and CEO’s that make management decisions. By asking the gatekeeper who you should speak with your empowering them to be the decision maker and most of the time they know exactly who you should be speaking with.

When I do my cold calls I ask the question in the following manner, “Hi there, do you know who would be most appropriate for me to speak with regarding the company’s software solutions?”

2. When calling ask to speak with the individuals title instead of a name. So for example I would call and ask to speak with the VP of Operations, VP of Information or VP of IT. In some cases its also appropriate for me to speak with an IT Manger. The benefit of this method is even if you get the wrong contact you can probes this individual for issies

3. When contacting the company let the gatekeeper know you have the presidents contact information but your worried she/he may not be the right person for you to speak with regarding software. I’m not sure what it is about admitting you don’t know who to speak with but it opens the gatekeeper up to giving you more information as opposed to simply saying you want to speak with the president.

4. Simply avoid the gatekeeper and use the dial by name directory. Sometimes this isn’t an option but if it is give it a shot. This could be a great way to avoid the gatekeeper while still getting into contact with the president or whoever your trying to reach out too.

5. At times you have to stop calling all together and start sending information via postal mail. This is always my last resort but it you have a prospect that can use your product and the gatekeeper is stopping you from making contact get the postal address and send a hard copy of your product information to them.

I know at times it can be frustrating to deal with the secretary or gatekeeper. I can’t stress how important it is to keep your cool and try to work with them. I have spoken to many gatekeepers in which I want to rip the heads off but we cannot do this lol.

I’m always open to feedback from my readers. Make sure to let me know your thoughts and post a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Brian

No matter how you look at sales in the end it’s all a numbers game. The more calls you make the more sales leads your going to get. Sometimes picking up the phone seems hard but you have to move past this moment and continue on with your cold call sales.

Remaining positive while making so many cold calls can be a battle for many sales associates. At times cold call sales can become overwhelming and repetitive but it’s needed in order to become successful.

Many people ask how many calls one needs to make in order to close a sale. This number changes from one industry to the next and is rarely the same for any one individual. Statistics do show the truth and to find your magic number follow these suggestions.

What you have to do is start tracking and monitoring your daily sales calls over a long period of time and eventually divide your total sales leads with total calls. This will give you a realistic average on the amount of calls needed in order to generate any one given lead.

For example if you make 300 calls on average per week and get one lead naturally you would have to make 300 calls to get one lead. If you were to get 5 leads over the 300 calls you would say on average I get one sales lead per 50 sales calls.

I sell ERP, E-Commerce and Warehousing Software for a living and needless to say my statistics are very low and require a lot of sales call activity. My job isn’t to get a sale that delivers cash my job is to get an online demo with my prospects. I have to call and uncover a need that will be used to convince these companies they need to see our software presentation.

So far in 2011 I’ve made a total of 500 sales calls averaging a total of 7 interested prospects. This means on average I’m getting a company that is interested in looking at new software for every 70 calls I make. Seeing I have already worked a total of 13 business days this year I’m making on average 38 cold calls a day.

This isn’t a very high number by any means but I also only work an 8 hour day. In the morning I check my e-mails, build my calling list and prepare myself for a positive day of calling. Also take note that I market research all of my prospects. I have to find their website, contact names and anything else that will help me close the demo.

So at the end of the day have a look at your personal productivity reports and make sure your setting goals to hit higher cold call numbers. This will eventually increase your success and perhaps even get you that raise you wanted at the end of the year.

I’m always open to feedback from my readers. Make sure to let me know your thoughts and post a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Thanks,

Brian

In order to be successful in sales you have be committed and dedicated to your job. The majority of successful sales people are self motivated and enthusiastic about the products or services in which they are selling.

In some cases success is driven by other motivating factors such as the necessities of life which include bills, groceries and other personal responsibilities. However for most successful sales people it’s about passion and believing in the products and services their selling.

There’s many factors that come into play when trying to be successful at selling your products and services. The good news is this difficulty is not only happening to you but all sales people so don’t feel disappointed with yourself. Let’s take a look at some of the obstacles or attributes sales people must over come or have in order to become successful.

Dealing with Denial – Everyday as a sales person your going to face denial and the majority of your prospects will not have an interest in your products or services. What you have to do in order to overcome this is understand it has nothing to do with you personally. You have to brush off your shoulders and move onto your next prospect.

Don’t take no for an answer unless your absolutely sure the company is not in the market for your product or service. If you truly believe your product or service can help this company do more business, become more efficient or increase their profit margins then you must keep pushing.

Commitment – You have to demonstrate a high level of commitment to your career. This comes in many forms including persistence in your cold calls, dedication in your market research, and commitment to yourself.

You must want to succeed in what you do in order to truly be successful. If you don’t want to succeed there’s a good chance your not happy with your career and it might be time to start looking at something new that will motivate and inspire you.

Dedication – You have to be dedicated to become successful. Saying you want to be successful and actually becoming successful are two entirely different things. Get ready to put hard work and focus into your career. You have to dedicate time and energy into your job and apply yourself daily.

At the end of the day it’s only you that can make a difference, it’s only you that can make a change and it’s only you can create your own success. I’m always open to feedback from my readers. Make sure to let me know your thoughts and post a comment below.

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Brian

Marketing takes a certain kind of skill especially when it’s cold call sales. The job gets boring redundant and seems it will never end. Well you’re right it never ends and if you have this attitude everyday then perhaps it’s time for you to look at a new career.

The first thing I would like to discuss is how aggressive you are in your cold calls. When you do your initial sales call you should be prepared for rejection. This will allow you to have a back up plan all the time. When you do your cold calls not only are you selling a product or service you’re selling yourself. At this point you should be attempting to build the relationship.

A rejection today should equal a sale in the future

When rejected you should be prepared to get some basic information form your prospect.

1. Do you have an e-mail where I can send you my contact information?
2. Would you be interested in seeing what we have to offer for future purposes?
3. Do you know of anyone else within your industry you could refer me to?

If the prospect gives you the e-mail

Prepare a nice friendly e-mail to send to your prospect. Add information regarding your company and products. Most importantly review their current operations and provide the prospect with compliments on how they currently do business or something along that line. What we want to do here is build on the relationship. Get to know your prospect, become friendly and keep in consistent contact.

Say something about yourself

In order to become friends with your prospect you have to find some sort of commonality between the two of you. Something has to pull you together and when you find this you have created what I like to call a future prospect.

Send the Product Specifications

This is an important part of the prospecting process. Research your prospect and find out where they are having bottleneck or internal issues. This way you can gear your information towards the needs of the company.

Determine the prospects Needs

Understanding what your prospect does and needs it of most importance when trying to build on your relationship. Stop and listen when they talk. Take notes and if possible record your conversations. There’s nothing worse then an uninformed sale person calling your company thinking they can help you do what your doing better when they know ntohing about you in the first place.

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Brian

When listening to your prospect you can possibly answer many unknown questions you have as a salesperson. We always have questions within our minds regarding the sales process that we need answered and is normally based of assumption and hope. I would like to name a few and suggestions on how listening to your prospects can help you determine what your next move will be.

Are we going to be considered as a final candidate?

When a company has a need they look at many vendors or companies that can provide a solution. Understanding and determining if your company will make the final cut is of most importance. When you know you’re not making the cut you can offer special discounts or promotions to get back into the game. At this point you might want to ask some of the following questions to your prospect.

• Can we come on site to discus our options in more detail.

• We would like to set up a meeting in order to discuss our next step.

• We would like to visit your operations to better understand your companies needs.

The reason I’m asking these questions is to qualify us as a possible solution for the prospect needs. If the prospect replies with a no, later  or you get a “a perhaps we”ll see what the next stages bring”, there’s a good chance you’re not going to be included in the final vendor selection. Trust me if you were one of the companies they were going to pick they would had agreed upon your visit and would had set an on site visit date.

Examine the answers

Take a moment and examine the answers your prospect gives you. Deep inside the answer are small messages ringing clearly with evidence helping you know if you’re considered a final vendor or not.

Record your calls

Get a tape recorder and start recording all your calls. Not only will you learn new ways to approach your prospects you can then in more detail examine the flow of your conversation, determine if it’s positive or negatively influenced.

Do you have other suggestions on how to listen and understand your prospects?

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Brian

Understanding your customer!

This is the first step you have to take to ensure your can establish the proper marketing techniques and approaches. Ensure what you’re offering is needed by the end consumers. In my particular case seomkt I am hitting my end consumer 100% as you are here to better market and promote your websites to your consumer.

I started off by mentioning you have to understand your consumer but I must also include a very important piece of information. This is regarding your product or service you have to offer. Please before you go wasting your money on advertising make sure you actually have a market in which you can profit from! Don’t waste money on a product or service in which there is no need for. Also take into consideration who your competitors are. You should considering the following question when comparing your product or service to the competitors.

• Are my product less, equal or far superior to my competitors?

• Is my product or service under priced, competitively priced or overpriced compared to my competitors?

• Are my competitors products and services holding the majority of market share and if so how can I compete?

• Is the consumer loyalty based on product experience or price?

Understanding your product or service will be vital to you successfully penetrating your target market and without this information you’re liable to fail at your attempt to launch. So I urge you to take a moment and try to better understand your end consumer because if you don’t take the timer your competitors will. Also take a moment to analyze your competition as they may be offering a better product and or service already.

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Thanks,

Brian

Finding a need: Finding your prospects need is never easy. In all reality 90% of sales people or companies lose their sale because they just didn’t truly understand the needs of their prospects. If I need apple and you’re selling me an orange we have a problem. This example is really good because the initial need I had was simply for fruit.

Listening: Listen to your customers. I’m really bad for this. I make sales calls to prospects and sometimes find myself rambling. This isn’t good and for many reasons. You an literally close the deal using the wrong words and potentially scare away your prospects. This means the more you listen and less you talk the better your chances are of determining your prospects needs and closing a sales.

Uncovering internal issues: Alright this part will be achieved by the above suggestions. Unlike listening you must do some talking here, specifically related to probing questions. (see below) These are a form of open ended questions that will reveal the true needs or issues of your prospects. Questions must be open ended and try to focus around your products. Remember we are trying to quality our sales lead so we don’t waste our time and most importantly their time.

Pricing: Can your prospect afford your product? Yes it’s great, yes it’s competitive or even advanced for the industry but does your prospect have the capital or budget needed to afford your products or service. Pricing is make or brake in today’s economy so make sure you pre quality your prospect by researching what their annual sales are or at least some GP information.

Qualify your sales prospect: At this point you should have enough information regarding your prospect and to start qualifying them as lead. Just because someone has a need doesn’t mean your product or service is the right solution for them. Compile a list of features advantages and benefits your products has and start comparing them to see if in fact you can fulfill the need of the prospect.

Probing Questions (Open Ended): Let’s assume I’m selling software solutions. These are a few of the open ended questions I would ask.

• If you could improve the way you’re doing business today what are some of the steps you would take?
• What are the most important and missing elements in your products today?
• What do you like the most about the way your competitors are doing business?
• Where are the places within your business you think productivity could be improved?

Depending on what products or service your selling your questions will change. See the idea here is to ask questions they will encourage a response from your prospect. With out any talking you will never know what that specific prospects is looking for.

Do you have any more suggestion for qualifying your sales leads?

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Thanks,

Brian

This was a pretty cool part of my course during my education. The class was Sales and I think it was  first year second term. It took me a while to actually understand what in fact differentiated what was a feature, advantage, or benefit.

Feature: A feature would be about the products and services hopefully offering something unique and is part in parcel to the products or service it self. This means without us the consumer this would still exist.

Advantage: The advantage will be  something you as a blogger will have over other bloggers that encourages a reader to visit your blog rather then your competitors. This will be a feature unique to your service.

Benefit: This is what the product or service does that is also unique but needs the consumer to take affect. Stand alone the benefit does not exist without the Feature or Advantage.

The consumer using the Feature will have the Advantage and gain the Benefit. Now how can we add this into out daily blogging? How can we ensure our visitors are seeing the advantage and feeling the benefit?

Creating FAB’s to improve the quality of your blog.

Features for your Blog: Creating features with your blogs for readers will depend on who’s reading your blog. Seeing the majority of my reader are blogers I will focus on my niche but you should be able to understand the point if your reading and your in sales for a different product. I have added the following features to my blog.

• Comment Luv
• Top Commenter’s Plug-in
• Do Follow Comment links

Advantages for your Blog: The Customers Advantage would be allowing the blogger to build quality back links and instantly start building credibility with the Search Engines. Overall increasing credibility and SERP positioning. See how the Features mixed with the Consumer immediately become Advantages? I think it’s pretty nest stuff.

• Develop Quality Back links
• Increase SERP
• Increase Web Traffic

Benefits for the reader: Visiting your blog is not only fun but it’s educational or informational. Something positive has come from visiting, reading and commenting. When the consumer archives this stats they are satisfied with the Feature and Advantages. This normally creates return readers and consistent traffic for your blogs.

• Increase in topic knowledge
• Increase in blog authority
• Motivation booster.

Always try to be competitive in the marketplace you don’t want to be blogging for the wind. You want to increase your readership and the worth of your blog.

Q&A

Have you ever heard about FAB’s?

Do you think today’s article will affect how you blog in the future and what you’re offer your readers?

Do you try and practice this on your blog currently and if so is it working out?

Let me know!

as always don’t forget to vote for me over at blogengage

Brian

Take a step back and act as if you’re a customer of the prospect and start looking for issues or problems a typical customer of your prospect might face. This is an excellent way to determine if your prospect has a need for what you’re selling.

Finding these issues or problems opens the door and provides a great opportunity for offering a solution. If your company can provide this solution then you have a good chance of making a sale.

After you find the problem and come to a conclusion regarding the best possible solution you then should be deciding on how you’re going to approach the situation. Remember some people get offended very quickly. Even if you show they have a need and a problem with the current why their doing business you may offend them and they could potentially look at your competitor for the solution.

You have to understand how your prospect feels and works in order to get the best results form your suggestions. Remember you should come across with the attitude of helping change and not bringing change.

Take a close look at your prospects competitors and see what or how they are doping business. Will your products or services help the company become equally competitive or will they have an extreme competitive advantage?

FAB’s

Features – What type of features can you offer from your products and or service that will make it easier to sell?

Benefits – What are the benefits of using the products or service? Increase in productivity, efficient or management control?

Advantages – Finally what are the advantages of using your product or services?

Don’t try to simply sell your products blindly. Take the time to understand your prospects and find ways your products or services can help then achieve their visionary goals.

Suggestions are always welcomed! Post a reply and let us know your ideas!

Sometimes a person or company is simply to busy to take your calls and you will find yourself always heading to the voicemail. After leaving a few messages you start to get annoying and perhaps you could potentially lose your prospect from these repetitive activities.

Determine what your prospects needs are.

Before sending out information via postal mail to your prospects ensure you know what their needs are. You might have several products you can pitch to them but always ensure you know what they want.

Gather the correct data and contact information.

There’s nothing worse than addressing information to the incorrect party inside a company. Make sure you know who the proper contact is and always ensure you spell their name correctly.

Use a color printer and say less

Always print your specs in full color. This allows the prospects see the true beauty of your products. Ensure when you send the information you say as little as possible. Pictures can say more than one thousand words but one thousand read words is too much to read.

Why can’t I call my prospects anymore?

You can call them. What I’m referring to here is prospect you’ve been calling everyday for the past few months. Take a break from those leads and mail them something hard to hold in their hand.

When should I call them back?

Let’s say three weeks after you send the information. This allows the prospect time to receive, review and prepare for your call. Don’t rush your call trust me the majority of the time if they aren’t talking to you they aren’t talking to anyone.

I hope this help bring activity to some of your lost leads. Remember never give up there’s always a way to reach your prospects. Simple but to the point!