Home Add to Favorite Contact Submit  
             29 March, 2024
 

    
Category:  Articles » Business » Sales Training

 

Sales Appointment Calls and the One Line That You Must Get Right

Popularity:
         Views: 1949
2008-10-15 08:57:34     
Article by Stephen Craine

You're making sales appointment telephone calls. You've got through to the prospect. You want to have a great opening impact with a stunning introduction that grabs their attention and keeps them interested. So what do you say? What do you include in those important first few lines of your appointment call introduction?

No matter how good your sales skills are you can't use them until you are in front of a prospect. Learn how to make cold calls, and gain appointments, and you're diary will be full of potential buyers. The introduction must contain key pieces of information about you, your company and the reason for your call. Just enough to give the prospect the information they need, and not so much that they lose interest. Weaved into this information must be possible benefits for the buyer. The benefits are what motivates the prospect to continue with the call. The secret to making effective sales appointment calls is to use strong possible benefits for the prospect.

Let's start with your name. There are many ways to introduce yourself. There is no right or wrong way, and you should choose the one that's right for your prospects. Make a conscious decision on how you will tell the customer who you are. You have a limited amount of time to grab the buyer's attention, every word must serve a purpose. So decide if you are going to use both your first and last name, or take a more informal approach with just your first name. Are you going to use a friendly abbreviation, such as Mike or Dave? Consider the area you are phoning, the culture and age of your prospects, and whether you are phoning business or domestic customers.

Many call centre agents start their introduction with, 'My name is.' You don't want to sound like a sales caller. You want to project the impression of an important business call, or a friendly information provider. You choose the image that will work best for you in your market. You have many options that all give the prospect different pictures of who you are. If you have previously spoken to a customer you could use, 'It's David Jones. Another option is to say, 'I am david Jones.' Depending on the voice tone this can sound pretentious, almost like an announcement. The one I particularly like is, 'This is David Jones.' For my voice tone, and the type of customers I contact, it has the right level of importance, and doesn't sound like a telesales caller making hundreds of calls a day.

Next comes the company name, or in some cases the product name. This is where you are calling from, work for, or you are a part of. Some introduction phrases I've heard give the impression of a third party, or not working directly for an organization. These are lines that say you are phoning on behalf of, or that you represent, a company. This can put off some prospects as they will view you as an agent or broker.

A really good sales training tip is to follow the company name with a wide ranging benefit the customer could gain. You may not know much about your prospect yet so keep it big and open. You could use the fact that your company has the support of a national network and provides great customer service through local offices. You have a particular product or service, but make sure you state the benefits to the prospect not just the features. The company is an award winner. You have happy customers with similarities to the prospect. Spend some time and write a list of the big, wide open, benefits a customer can gain from doing business with your company. You are taking a grip of the prospects attention. It has to keep them focused on what they can gain as you go through the sales appointment call process.

Beware of using benefits that claim you can save the buyer money. Everyone makes this claim and many prospects are now immune to it. It can also lead to the prospect asking for prices over the phone rather than agreeing to meet with you.

You have said who you are, the company you are from, and you've caught their attention with a possible benefit. Now comes the most important line of the whole appointment setting call. This is the one line you must get right. The reason you are calling. When deciding on your reason for calling take the prospect's viewpoint. What reason will be a benefit from their perspective? Do not use, being in their area as a reason for calling to make a sales appointment. This implies the prospect, or the product, are not valued high enough to travel from out of the area.

Consider new products or services you have to offer. Changes at your company that will benefit customers. Relate your call to new legislation and how you can help the buyer. One of the best reasons for calling to make an appointment is because you have a referral from another happy customer. This type of sales call can be as warm as an incoming lead. You are starting the relationship from a good position. Ask your existing customers what they think are the strongest benefits they gain from doing business with you. Do a survey and use the results as a reason for calling to make a sales appointment.

We've only looked at the introduction stage and you can see already how important your choice of words and phrases can be. On the phone every word counts, so make conscious decisions on everything you say in your introduction. Keep it short and informative, with plenty of benefits from the customer's viewpoint. And practice your opening lines until you get the words and the voice tone just right.

Stephen Craine is a working sales manager and trainer for a major UK company. He uses his experience of sales, motivation training, NLP, and personal development coaching, to achieve results for himself through the achievements of others in a sales environment.

To learn more about building a great introduction, and the rest of the sales appointment call strategy, go to http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com/Appointment-Setting.html and you will find a whole section packed with information on making sales appointments.

For more free sales training and sales skills information, and to see what else might be of interest to you or your company, visit the website at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com

All the sales training presented here, and on the website, has been tested and proved by working sales people in real sales situations. There are no acronyms, buzz words, or complicated techniques to market training courses. The focus is on practical sales training that achieves results.

Stephen has recently teamed up with a successful clicnical hypnotherapist in Manchester uk to offer sales and career coaching to private clients and small businesses. Combining the power of hypnosis to make personal changes and overcome obstacles, with the practical experience of a professional sales coach, offers a unique training resource.

The aim is to help anyone looking to increase sales results, develop their career, or prepare for job interviews. The coaching program can also be tailored for small businesses to give them access to resources usually only available to large organisations.

Specialized in: Sales Training - Sales Tips - Sales Skills
URL: http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com
Print article      Bookmark this page
Related Articles 
How to Become an "Invited Guest" Rather Than a "Door to Door" Salesperson and Explode Your Business (Popularity: ): Do you know the difference between the "Invited Guest" and the "Door to Door" salesperson?Let's look at the "salesperson" for a second. When I say this I'm talking about the "BETA" networker. If you have done any reading on Mike Dillard you will know what that means. The reason I know these two profiles exist is because I went through the Salesperson routine for too long, before breaking into the ...
Presentation Skills (Popularity: ): Working in an office, a common problem is that you have great ideas: perfect ideas on how to improve productivity, awesome ideas for new products or services, brilliant ideas for marketing, but... you're not very good at presentation. It might not even be you, but members of your staff who have great ideas, but just can't seem to get it through to other people in the company. A lot of office ...
Cartoon Drawing - Play With Your Creative Ideas (Popularity: ): Cartoon drawing is considered to be a great form of art that artists use not only to express their creative ideas, but also to address some serious issues with a lighter outlook. If you become more talented in this art you will be able to find some interesting career openings for yourself and will be able to take up cartoon drawing as your profession. There are some suggestions that eminent ...
Custom eLearning Development (Popularity: ): The e-learning custom development process starts with a vendor. How does one go about choosing a vendor to create specific content for your organization? It's good to use a Request for Proposal (RFP) where vendors can convince you of their expertise.Vendors: First, you will need custom content vendors who are articulate and can provide the documentation which they expect to use for your project.Experienced support staff: Are your writers and ...
Building Value, How Far do You Go? (Popularity: ): As a salesperson, building the value of your product or service is a very important part of the selling process for two specific reasons. The process helps to reinforce and in some cases, even establish need or desire in the customer's mind and, equally valuable, it justifies the price that the seller is asking.So, the question is, when building value, how far do you go? How much time do you ...


Related Business 
Automated Appointment Reminders (Popularity: ): Send automated appointment reminder phone calls and text messages. Low cost, instant setup. Try it now free. VoiceShot’s Web based automated appointment reminder phone call and text message service is perfect for businesses, organizations, and health care providers that want to maximize productivity by reducing appointment cancellations and no shows.
Strutn J's Game Calls (Popularity: ): Offers a customized line of game calls. Provides specific line of turkey, big game, predator, and waterfowl calls.
Make Free Calls Online (Popularity: ): The only service that allows you to make 100% free calls to any phone no restrictions. No hidden fees and best of all it will not cost you a dime. You can make free calls from your mobile, land line and pcto anywhere. Make free international calls online, free international calls from pc, make free online calls, make free calls online in the US and around the world.
Appointment Setting Services (Popularity: ): Appointment Setting Services by Idea2Result offer experienced (3-8 years), educated (Bachelor’s degree or higher) Appointment Setters for your inside sales, lead generation or telemarketing campaign.
Strutn J's Game Calls (Popularity: ): Offers a customized line of game calls, including turkey, big game, predator, and waterfowl calls.
Watkins Duck Calls of Virginia (Popularity: ): Custom made hen mallard duck calls by Brian Watkins. Buy calls, lanyards, t-shirts, hats and decals on-line. Make sure to check out our hunting pictures! Located in the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia.
Meta Option LLC. (Popularity: ): Manage Your Calls is a mobile application for personal use to manage incoming and outgoing calls of the users. It provides the flexibility to manage calls by call blocking, auto answer function and record incoming and outgoing calls in Android phones. Features like log details of calls rejected, calls answered, calls recorded, play and delete recorded files have simple user interface that provides the users to manage and track all ...
Cheap international calls (Popularity: ): Signing up with high end telecom providers who have larger dedicated International call bandwidth/Channel, thecheapinternationalcalls.co.uk offers you high quality voice of International calls at very much cheaper rates. We stay ahead with cutting-edge competitions as we are very much reliable for good quality calls with access numbers at cheaper rates. Free from any other extra or hidden charges with us. At thecheapinternationalcalls.co.uk you are able to make very cheap international ...
Longbeard Calls (Popularity: ): Custom made turkey calls, including longboxes, double boxes, slate or glass calls, and scratchbox are available.
Bigmouth Waterfowl Calls (Popularity: ): Offering acrylic Canadian, snow, white-front or speck goose calls and duck calls for hunting or competition calling.