September 24th, 2008 by Barry Caponi
Many times we are tempted to try to get in a whole bunch of ‘value’ in the reason for the call hoping we’ll hit on an apparent need and get a ‘yes’. That causes us to make them (too) long and full of info.
However, there two operative rules in play that make that approach problematic at best. Those rules say:
1. Less than 5% of our targets believe they are in the market for what we’re selling when we call – so they don’t think they need to talk to us
2. We are interrupting our targets when we call – so they don’t want to talk to us
Therefore they will do anything, including lying to us to get us off the phone.
Ergo, save your better value points for the ‘Counter’ part of the call that will inevitably come on almost every call if you use our Bridge Question technique.
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September 11th, 2008 by Barry Caponi
In my White Paper, Is Cold Calling Really Dead, Searching for the elusive ‘Silver Bullet’, I talked about the myths and truths about appointment setting and, in particular, Cold Calling. One of the points I made was about attitude and what can happen if we approach this task with dread. Here’s what I recommended to eliminate that.
If we think that cold calling is not fun, it will come across in our voices (see September 3, 2008 Blog). Here are some tips to change your attitude by making it as easy and fun as we can.
- Track your results to make it a game, a competition, anything to make it less painful. You are competitive aren’t you?
- Take your average size sale, and divide it by the number of dials you must make in order to get a sale (guess if you have to by thinking about the three key ratios – Dials:Conversations, Conversations:Initial Meetings, and Initial Meetings:Closes). In the example I used in the White Paper, the virtual value of each of the rep’s dials was $250. Would you pick up the phone if someone would give you $250 each time you did? Well, if you imagine a ‘Virtual Bank’, that’s exactly the way it works. You just have to close the sale to get the bank to release the funds.
- Remember, if it were that easy, anybody could do it and we wouldn’t make as much money as we do (or can), so take the good with the bad and get after it.
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September 2nd, 2008 by Barry Caponi
Have you ever heard the expression, “I could almost hear her smile through the phone”? It is generally used when describing an exceptional receptionist or customer service representative. Well believe it or not, it applies to what we do in setting appointments, too.
Remember that we lose 55% of the available capability to effectively communicate when we call someone on the phone. Being able to read body language, facial expressions, etc. is lost on a phone call and it accounts for 55% of our ability to communicate effectively. That leaves 38% for tonality and 7% for content.
When we smile, our voice physically changes because of the muscles surrounding our vocal cords. Those we’re calling can tell the difference and we’re trying to do everything we can to increase our ratios, right? So smile when you dial!
To do that, place a mirror close to where you make your phone calls. Look into that mirror occasionally right before you dial and smile at yourself. Attitude is as important as aptitude and it comes across to those we’re calling.
Try it. You’ll like it!
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