Archive for June, 2009

Have you ever been caught in the cold calling trap of voicemails? You make your calls and more often than not get hit by the brick wall we know as voicemail. I wouldn’t blame you if you just “hung up” and didn’t even bother leaving a message, because you’re more than likely thinkg “it’s no darn use, they’ll never get back to me” right?

Well this could be the case if you’re locked into the old way of thinking about cold calls, and it’s not your fault becuase you’ve been trained by a sales trainer that didn’t know any better either. The sad facts are, we quite often “leave a message anyway” because we feel so relieved that a real person didn’t answer the phone to “shut us down” and abruptly hang up, so it doesn’t hurt to blurt out your sales pitch!

This can be more of a frustration over time than a relief, because what happens when the sales manager does your KPI and you quickly realize that you “weren’t even close” to reaching your goals. You show that you’ve been making lots of calls and playing the numbers, however, you’re Not Getting Any Results!

When you learn a smarter, more open, way of channeling your sales message with more a more conversational, exploratory, yet low-pressure methodology, you’re going to find you “want” to connect with a live person, whether it’s the gatekeeper or prospect themselves. You’re going to find yourself wanting to dig out the receptionist, becuase all of a sudden there is no “sales rejection” and that feels really nice.

You might end up chatting with someone other than the prospect, but instead of trying to “dig out” who they are and bombard your way right over the top of that person, you ask their direction for the right way to go about finding that person. You will ask them questions that will open them up to conversationally telling you exactly where they are no problem at all.

Once you have this intelligence and befriended the receptionist in a low-pressure, to the point and open way, you’ll have a far better chance of getting through when you call back as they requested.