Selling to Anyone over the Phone : Connect with Every Customer - Generate Better Leads - Close More Sales

by Walkup, Renee P.

• ISBN13: 9780814414835
• ISBN10: 0814414834
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-01
• Publisher: Amacom Books

Summary

As companies cut back on their field reps and face-to-face contact becomes rare, sales success increasingly means selling on the phone. Whether you're a seasoned telesales professional or a newcomer just pulled in from the field, Selling to Anyone Over the Phone is the one book that will radically improve your sales numbers, no matter what the product or how bad the economy.

Author Biography

RENEE P. WALKUP is a sales and sales-management consultant with over 20 years of experience. She is a nationally recognized professional public speaker, a course facilitator at the American Management Association, and the president of SalesPEAK, Inc., a sales performance company.

SANDRA MCKEE is a professional career coach, corporate trainer, and a senior professor at DeVry University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Selling "Double Green"	p. xi
Setting Up for Success	p. 1
Apply New Tactics for New Times
Move to Phone Selling Success
Begin Your Prep Work
Launch Your Call Day
Open Calls with Confidence
The Payoff
Managing Time and Information for Profitability	p. 17
Improve Your Time-to-Sales Ratio
Locate Quality Customers
Gather and Manage Customer Information
The Payoff
Identifying Personality Types Over the Phone	p. 37
The Precise Customer
The Energized Customer
The Assured Customer
The Kind Customer
Personality Matches and the Phone Salesperson
The Phone Salesperson's Quick-Reference Extra: The Salesperson ↔ Customer Match
The Payoff
Getting Gatekeepers to Work for You	p. 57
Engage the Person Answering the Phone
Use Voice Mail to Gain Useful Information for Strategic Calling
The Payoff
Asking High-Value Questions	p. 76
Establish or Deepen Your Relationship with the Customer
Use Questions as Tactics
Avoid Asking the Wrong Questions
Guidelines for High-Value Questions
Ask Questions at the Right Time: The Trust Scale
The Payoff
Listening and Presenting	p. 95
Listen from "Hello"
Listen for the Customer's Personality Style
Focus on the Phone: The Listening Challenge
Listen While Presenting: I-N-V-O-L-V-E Your Customer
Vary the Tools You Use for Effective Presentations
The Payoff
Selling Through Objections	p. 117
The Value of Objections
Techniques for Handling Objections
Personality-Type Objection Patterns
The Payoff
Negotiating the Close	p. 135
Set Up the Close
Eliminate Buyer Anxiety
Ask for the Business
Negotiate: Carve Out the Details
Seal the Close
The Payoff
Using New Technology in Phone Sales	p. 155
The Pros and Cons of New Technology
Guidelines for the Strategic Use of New Technology
The Payoff
Selling to Customers from Other Cultures	p. 177
The Importance of Time
The Role of the Relationship
Language and Communication Across Cultures
Culture and Personality
Dealing with Cultural Differences
The Payoff
PEAK Personality Type Assessment	p. 193
Handling Customer Complaints Effectively	p. 195
How to Present Powerful Proposals That Sell	p. 200
Index	p. 205
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction: Selling “Double Green”

Years ago, our entrepreneurial ancestors pushed a cart through the

city square to peddle their wares. And the profession of “sales” was

born. The interactions were in person. Face to face. And although many

a peddler burned untold calories pushing his cart around, he left no

effect on the environment in his wake. Since then, many sales evolutions

have taken place. John Deere and his wagon loaded with plows

led to the more modern day with hundreds of thousands of salespeople

on the road driving millions of miles each year to visit customers.

These numbers have steadily risen over time.

With the advent of better train and air travel, we’ve added driving

to stations and airports, hopping on trains as well as planes—just so

we could meet with our customers in person, hoping to close the sale.

And we have been very successful with this method in the past. But

consider this: It costs a company between $100 and $600 dollars for

a salesperson to visit a single customer in person (depending, of

course, on how close together customers are clustered).

A new day has dawned in sales, and with it has come rising travel

costs, increased wait times, and a lower return on investment for individual

sales staff because of the time/money trade-off. Time spent

on planes is not generating revenue. Time spent waiting to see customers

can also eat into return on sales investment because it’s not

direct customer contact time. Not only does selling on the phone virtually

eliminate these concerns, it adds the bonus of being a more

green method of selling.

Or, looking at this another way, the ROI of using the telephone

to sell is far more profitable for companies. More salespeople can be

employed, less waste takes place, and business gets back on track for

profitability.

One of our clients began an inside sales organization employing

six telephone salespeople in 1994. Her group’s sales grew to around

$500,000 the first year they were in operation. Today, she employs

over eighty inside salespeople and their sales have grown to over $100

million! Her departmental costs are a fraction of the outside sales organization’s.

Every salesperson has a desk and a telephone. Her salespeople

can make dozens of sales calls per day, as compared to outside

reps, who can make a maximum of only ten sales calls daily.

Senior management at this company is thrilled with their results.

Our client’s employees consistently win the sales awards at national

meetings, outselling and outproducing the salespeople who are also

using more of our earth’s resources to accomplish sales. In short, the

company achieves a dramatically better ROI for their inside sales

team than for their outside sales force.

Hence the “double” in “double green”—greener to the planet, and

more green in your pocket.

While you’re taking a more responsible stance toward the future

of the planet by utilizing the telephone more effectively and minimizing

travel costs, you may be wondering why customers prefer to conduct

business over the telephone as well. The answer is simple. Time.

All customers have a limited amount of time to work with salespeople.

If you’ve ever heard “I’m just too busy” from a customer, and you believe

there is sincerity behind those words, then you understand.

Meeting with a sales rep in person means that the customer has

to carve out valuable time away from daily job demands. A phone

call is less time-consuming for him or her, and just as effective for

you (if not more so), than that one-hour face-to-face appointment.

With a focused call, most trained salespeople can accomplish their

call goal in a quarter of the time it would normally take to meet with

the customer in person.

In this Second Edition of Selling to Anyone Over the Phonewe

explore how you can maximize your sales, save operating expenses,

and operate “in the green” by using the telephone. Instead of just

telling you to “call, call, and call,” we explain how you can effectively

use the phone to generate business.