First, the bad news. You are interrupting someone with your call. And it’s a busy person, to boot. Not to mention the fact that your prospect rejects so many unwanted calls and other intrusions that they will be in an automatic rejection mode when they pick up the phone. They are not curious, they are More...

I’m going to be telling you the biggest mistakes that sales professionals make in using the telephone, and exactly what to do instead. I’m even going to give you very precise strategies and scripting. Let’s start with your foundation, your state. For many of us, the phone is an automatic state trigger. And what is that More...

Consider the strengths and weaknesses of the phone. On the plus side, it saves time, taking you nearly anywhere in the world instantly to do your sales magic. On the down side, it takes away much of the sales magic that you can provide in person. Unless you are in a business in which the More...

The telephone is truly a power tool for making contacts. But you have to use it properly to get the most out of it. Sales professionals waste a great deal of valuable time misusing their phone time. To maximize your phone skills, you must start by getting into the right state of mind. After all, More...

Remember that things change. Your rejected effort one month may result in acceptance six months later. Have a tickler that recycles your contacts. You may find that someone more open-minded has replaced the person who rejected your latest overture. Maybe this time upper management wants your contact to look into the very product you’re selling. More...

This is not just about getting to the sales presentation, it’s about doing it so efficiently that you not only have a high success rate in getting through to decision makers, but also a high rate of productivity in setting appointments in the first place. That means being fully psyched up for the process and More...

When you carry out your sales process, you want every phase to work perfectly. That means planning it in detail. Of course, you’ll have plenty of room to improvise. In fact, I think it’s essential to improvise, because every prospect is unique, even the ones that seem exactly the same. However, this improvising happens in More...

The negative responses have a mild behavior modification effect, acting as mild punishments, in that they are a little unpleasant. But they also make the position seem less desirable, because I highlighted something that is bad in the position. Notice that I didn’t add anything that wasn’t there. It was unspoken, but it was, in More...

The technique goes like this. When your prospect says something that is not very supportive of the sales process, if you respond to it, tweak your feedback to highlight what is least appropriate about it. When they say something supportive of the process, highlight what is really smart about it. Much of the time, you More...

I learned a very useful skill that you find among drug counselors, and I’ve been really appreciating what it does for sales momentum. No, I wasn’t in rehab. I just have a good board of advisors and collection of friends and contacts chock full of ideas. The pint of this skill is to get people More...