Category: Sales Prospecting

Listen to this training call with Scott and Noelle Kim with her team of Advisors at World Financial Group (Aegon) to discover the secrets of selling like a pro.  Developing long-term successful client relationships is much the same whether selling individual services to consumers or selling multi-million dollar capital equipment to industrial process facilities.

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Hi Again,

I hope that you’ve all had a joyful and productive week.

It’s been some time since I’ve had a chance to put some of my sales leadership ideas to paper, so I apologize to my readers who look forward to these insights.

As an accomplished sales leader and coach, I am always looking for ways to leverage my limited time and the resources available, so I thought I’d share one of the most effective sales leadership techniques available to help you do the same.

Peer-to-Peer Sales Coaching

I have finally found the perfect system for automating my strategy for building customer rapport, and I must say that it is everything I had dreamed of.

For those of you who want to differentiate yourselves from your ‘peers’ and competitors by vastly expanding your network of contacts and generating a full pipeline of leads that know you and like you, this system is quite impressive.  I have put together a great description of how the system works at www.SalesRaceHorsesCards.com.

How do I get C-Level buyers to return my phone calls?
Be Likable.
“How,” you ask, “am I supposed to do that, when I’ve never even met the prospect, and I’m leaving a voicemail?”

Follow these 6 Steps to get your prospects attention when you leave initial voicemails:

“We don’t need your service.”

This objection means one of two things. Either:

“I have no problems related to your services right now,” or
“I am too busy with something else to talk to you,” or
BOTH, which is probably the case.

While customer profiling and targeting are keys to developing new accounts, sales prospecting is still a numbers and timing game. The fact is, you won’t get anywhere with anyone who has no need, whether actual or perceived. There are many ways to overcome this sales objection, and I recommend a good balance of grace and perseverance.

Potential buyers are inundated with reps’ sales prospecting efforts. Perform thorough customer research on your prospect before initial contact to understand their specific business needs and to formulate a preliminary value proposition that will increase your chances of getting the initial meeting.

If you’ve read our article on profiling customers, then you know that understanding how your prospect compares to your ideal customer can significantly improve overall selling effectiveness. Through proper profiling, you identified key attributes of an account that determine whether they are a good target for you.
Communicate Relevant Value

Sales prospecting is certainly a numbers and timing game, but none of us has an unlimited supply of time. Use your prospecting time more effectively by prequalifying your targets based upon specific business criteria.

Understanding and pre qualifying your target customers and/or new projects based upon key characteristics common amongst your most profitable customers/projects will help you to maximize the effectiveness of your sales prospecting efforts. By systematically eliminating ‘bad’ targets, you will have fewer false starts and more time to focus on closing the attractive deals.
Targeting Lifetime Customer Value

Successful sales racehorses understand that most prospects hate to receive traditional cold calls, and their first thought when they answer the phone is typically, “Oh no. How do I get rid of this caller?” The primary reason for this is that nobody likes to be sold. As a result, sales laggards often dread-and even fear-telephone prospecting. Consequently, they fail to execute one of the most important components of their profession: Qualified Lead Generation.

The successful technique I describe below capitalizes on the fact that prospects are often willing to help the caller if it provides a means for avoiding a sales pitch! Sales racehorses actually enjoy cold calling, because their objectives and goals for the process are different. With this technique, the opportunity for cold call rejection is minimized while the opportunity to grow the sales pipeline is greatly increased.
Prevent Cold Calling Objections