If someone says to you:

“Call my friend Geoff, he’s a nice guy”

You’d feel pretty relaxed when you picked up the phone to call him.

Think about the emotions that rush through you when you know you have to make a cold call. Some people get sweaty palms, even palpitations. The fear starts before you even pick up the phone. The negativity is there very early on.

I was doing some consulting work last week and had some time with a group of telesales people. Each of them described a different emotion and only 1 of them didn’t have any negativity AT ALL (were they being honest?).

I played some of my own recorded calls to my delegates and made a couple of calls with them all in the room. The feedback was that I sound very relaxed (almost too relaxed).

I’m going to let you in to a secret:

I tell myself that someone has told me to call them and psychologically I feel like that they’re possibly expecting my call.

If you are calling someone that you have been told is expecting your call (a referral) you will have a completely different mindset before, during and after the call. Think about it!

I have received 4 mail shots this week from different companies with this message as their title!!!

PITCH!!!…

This may just be an unfortunate selection of words but it’s a costly mistake to make in the business world of today –  a pitch is a dated way of selling.  A one way conversation that does not include the other person.

I, personally hate ‘pitches’ and would happily see the phrase disappear from the sales dictionary forever. You should have one objective and that is trying to engage someone in a two way dialogue.  This is the only way you are ever going to establish if the person on the end of the phone has a genuine issue that they are serious about resolving (even more so, if you DON’T have the possible solution – what an absolute waste of time; your time or your field sales persons time).

There is nothing more frustrating than driving for an hour to a sales meeting that is not a genuine sales opportunity. If you know you’re going along just to introduce your company/product or service from a customer service perspective that’s fine but if you’re travelling along thinking it’s a possible sales opportunity and it isn’t you are deflated from the word go and that relationship is damaged from the start!

• Be focused on one key benefit or pain in your initial approach that is likely to resonate with them, rather than having a vague, wishy washy, statement that is trying to appeal to everyone.

I could make an appointment on the majority of my calls by pitching but that is of no value at all to my clients, the prospect or ME!. Those appointments would not be genuine, honest appointments. 50% of them would probably cancel, 25% of them would see my clients out of fear of upsetting me (or anybody) by cancelling, and the remainder, well,  it would be pure pot luck as to their actual requirements because that kind of information would not have been covered throughout my PITCH as they would have been listening (maybe) and not telling me about their requirements.

• Grab the attention of your prospect rather than skimming through what you can do… Talk with them and not to them! It’s about conversation…
  

  NOT SELLING!