I have been using the phrase “don’t show up and throw up” on your sales prospects for a long time in my training and have blogged about it previously. I use it to persuade sales people from launching into a canned spiel that is focused on them, their product and their company.
The people you call and meet really don’t care for the “show up and throw up” approach to sales. They want you to be focused on their business, their business goals and their Customer Value Proposition (CVP) -that is how you help them win more business and add value to their customers.
The “origin” of my phrase on sales prospects
I have to be honest and say that I never really thought that I invented the phrase but I could not put my finger on where it came from. Until now that is!
I was just looking over some of my old sales books (which greatly focus on learning about sales prospects) and low and behold came across my source of inspiration in a book called: Knock your socks off prospecting. Continue reading ‘Don’t show up and throw up on your sales prospects!’
A great sales blog that has sadly shut it’s doors is sales itch which was run by Ed Mclean. I had chance to have a look at it again today and it made me smile. In particular, I love Ed’s sales bloopers series. In particular blooper number 2 – which starts off like this:
Me : “Good morning, may I speak to Mike Wright please?” Gatekeeper : “No, I am sorry, Mike doesn’t take calls” Me : “OK, no problem. Perhaps you can help, I saw that Mike recently made an announcement about the Hertford project. I have been working on a similar project and wanted to make contact. Is Mike in the office at the moment?
That’s one of the things that most salespeople on our sales training want to know is
I am not a big believer in the old style tips and tricks for ‘fighting’ your way through gatekeepers and have used a more personal yet professional aproach in my training for a long time.
Getting around gatekeepers
Recently a contact of mine Shaun Gisbourne showed me a really good blog post written by some sales pro’s and a gatekeeper. Have a read – it makes sense!
There is nothing worse than some one openly bending the truth in their first sales contact with you. It will blow your credibility and any chance that you ever had of some one taking you or your company seriously.
Why am i saying this?
Because it just happened to me. I just received this email:
Hello,
My name is xxxxx xxxxxx and I called earlier yesterday on behalf of Present.ly http://www.presently.com/ (An award-winning microblogging SaaS – Software as a Service platform that keeps your company connected in real-time). They are working with SalesConx to help them find more companies that could benefit from working with them.
I was running a sales training course last week where the attendees were making live cold/warm calls to prospective clients. One of the things that struck me is the influence that working in a team environment has because nearly every person had fallen into the same bad habit.
Cold Calling Habits
The habit was opening the call with a weak and meaningless statement that robbed them of their impact. This is not unusual within a company and I generally find that teams very often adopt one or more of the following weak terms:
“Hi John, you don’t know me” — There is nothing worse than this for flagging up that this is a sales call and that you have not prepared. You might equally say something like “Hi John, Its raining outside”
“Im calling to introduce myself” — I once coached an IT sales person around using the telephone to set appointments. When we examined his last 10 calls it was clear he was upset about the apparent lack of success. after all 10 calls in and no appointments. I pointed out, however, that he was 100% successful. He had made 10 calls with the aim to introduce himself. He did and the other person thanked him and then left the call as quick as possible.
Let me introduce you to Cold Call Collin. He is the very epitome of everything bad about telesales and cold calling / cold calling techniques.
Cold Calling Techniques – Cold Call Collin
Cold Call Collin is going to be a regular contributor to the blog and will help demonstrate some fantastic ways to fail in cold calling.
Cold Calling Techniques Video
See how many old style techniques you can pick up in the video? Leave a post to see if you have got them all right! You never know, there might be a prize. Maybe a coaching session with cold call Collin, sales training, or better yet some more intensive coaching about cold calling techniques.
One of the things people request on my telesales training courses is a day planner or calling planner. Now it just so happens that I have one and I would like to share it with you here:
Do you struggle to be able to pick up the phone and sell your own services? Are you looking for cold calling tips?
This is a common comment that I get very frequently in my sales training. It is usually made by business owners, consultants and sales people who have a direct and personal connection with the success of their cold calling. Very often it comes in the words “I can comfortably sell anyone Else’s services but I always struggle selling my own”.
Psychology this makes sense. It is natural for our human side to question our own value and our upbringing has generally been about not bragging or boasting about ones successes or qualities. In many ways this is a good thing because very few people like an ego driven boaster.
Focus on you mindset as well as cold calling tips:
