HARDISON’S TIPS – MAY 14, 2021 – PHONE SALES SKILLS (PART FIVE)
3. Sort Your Calling List Every Morning
When you think of phone sales tips, sorting your call list should be one of the first things you do to start your day.
While there is nothing wrong with doing blitz-style calling (in fact, I encourage this to be hyper-focused for a matter of time on subsets of prospects), I would encourage you to take time in the morning over coffee or your breakfast to go through and sort your calling list.
As an SDR (Sales Development Representative, this was always the first thing I did after arriving at my desk, powering up my computer, and looking at email.
The most effective technique for me was to first sort by last call date, and then for those with a specific follow-up date assigned to the account.
If you’re currently using a CRM with access to this feature, USE IT!
Our current CRM achieves this through “Creating a Task,” and an email is sent to my inbox when the call is due. This reminder email includes information such as company name, contact phone, and contact email. I can then view the task, which takes me right to the unique contact record.
4. Practice Makes Perfect
Phone sales tips are only as good as you make them, and your pitch is no exception. When I was an SDR, I practiced my pitch morning, noon, and night. I would find a mirror and watch for facial expressions until it seemed like my pitch was a conversation.
When my pitch wasn’t as effective as I would like to be, I would often turn to colleagues at a nearby desk and demo what I was using. More times than not, they would offer really great insight to something I was missing, or they would be really thankful because my pitch provided the missing ingredient for theirs.
Nobody woke up and was gifted the perfect pitch. Sure, they may have advantages in certain aspects of it, such as tone and pace, but in order to be a master, you have to put in the work.
Don’t let anyone fool you. There are no shortcuts on the road to success.
5. Listen
While this may seem like the easiest sales call technique I mention in this article, it’s probably the hardest to execute.
From our first day in sales, we are equipped with so much information about our product or offer, we naturally want to share it with everyone. For lack of a better term, we “verbally vomit” all over our prospects without even listening to the words they are trying to get out.
Actively listening is a huge key to building rapport because the prospect will appreciate you paying attention to their concerns, or even just the bad day they could be having.
If you continue to ignore or talk over your prospects, they will eventually lose interest, which will lead to them avoiding your calls or copping out altogether.
This is not due to your product/service, but because of YOU.
Listening to your prospects can help avoid miscommunications. When we interject quickly or interrupt frequently, this could confuse them about the purpose of your call. Allow your prospect to speak, as it only benefits the both of you!
