London, UK
Sometimes the hardest part of cold calling or telephone sales are the opening remarks. Before you create interest by posing a question or making statement, you have to introduce yourself correctly and professionally, then you must establish rapport between you and your prospect. In most cases you’ll be speaking to gatekeeper who tend to give poor telemarketers or cold-callers short thrift if they are impolite, evasive or downright rude. Another one of the worst things you can do is to sound too slick, or putting it another way your script sounds as though it’s a script! My advice is to calm down, speak slowly and simply say something like:
“Good morning/afternoon, I’m Jeremy Jacobs calling from GDM marketing, we specialise in cross-cultural sales training”. Then pause, before continuing, “I need to speak to Mr Jones please”, or if you don’t have a name (less likely nowadays because you will have done your research) “I would like to speak to the person who holds authority for your training budget”. Alternatively, you could ask “Is Mr. Jones the right person I should be speaking to, or is it one of his colleagues in Procurement”?
Once through to “Mr Jones”, then you can start thinking about creating interest. More on that tomorrow.
jeremy
2010
cold-calling tips
London, UK
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London, UK
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London, UK
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London, UK
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London, UK
At one of my “D-I-Y Cold Calling “events last year, I pointed out to the delegates that it’s crucial to use the right words when having a telephone conversation. This is of paramount importance when making cold calls. As we all know, it’s very hard trying to persuade someone to see you, let alone [...]
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London, UK
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London, UK
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Be very careful what you say on the phone. One word out of place could lead to an order or opportunity lost
London, UK
You may have seen websites where live talking presenters, or sometimes even the author of the site, feature and explain what their service or product is all about.
I’m not entirely convinced that this works for the one-man band but may have more impact for large well-known brands. Just recently, I was asked to feature [...]
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