Growing your business doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. These simple, cost-effective ideas are designed to help you increase your sales and profit, without draining your budget.

You shouldn’t be trying to force people into purchasing your product or service. You should find people who want your product or service and then focus on offering any helpful information to them so that they can make an informed decision.

If you’re trying to target everybody, then chances are, you’re not targeting anybody. For example, if you’re selling something that homeowners would want, as opposed to renters, then target homeowners. State your target clearly in all of your marketing materials.

Fellow Cold Callers
It’s a competitive marketplace of the new millennium age.

I was told by fellow sales professional that once you get caught up in doom and gloom talk and attitudes some sales people make that ‘cold calling do not work.’

Could this be true?

What are your views on this? …I’d like to hear your comments on this.

I’ll tell you mine …I agree with that statement

Why … Because, if you are still using stale and UN-polished techniques that dies years ago with the Dinosaur, then of course it will not work.

However, if you use a sales dialogue that’ll engage your prospect into a meaningful conversation with you, you’re chances are is that they will more than likely be interested in wanting to know more about your product or service.

If you narrowly cantered on a specific market, cast a wider net in the prospect’s organisation, look for key people then immerse yourself in a little research about their challenges, needs and how you can help them solve their problem. You’ll stand a far better chance of winning their confidence in you.

To do this you’ll need to have ideas of what you are going to offer them.

For example:

Have you ever been in a sales meeting, conversation, face-to-face meeting where you need to come up with great ideas?

Using the right techniques to stimulate your brain…

To get great ideas, your brain needs extra stimulation … Well at least for cold calling a prospective client i mean.

But to come up with great ideas to sell to your prospective customers, you need to immerse yourself in understanding your customer’s particular situation.

How to confirm that the decision is theirs and the meeting is not cancelled

Here is how you will handle this situation

• ‘Mr Prospect,The exploratory discussion is the first of the two-stage process designed to give you guaranteed solutions to _______’. So you can _____’.

• ‘We’ll show you exactly what you can do to ______’

• ‘We’ll show you what additional ideas you can add to your _____’.

• ‘Based on what we have discussed, it’s clear that we should go ahead and conduct a meeting.’

• ‘Let’s arrange a suitable time for me to complete Stage one of the exploratory discussion with you. We will conduct stage one over the phone … do you have your diary handy.’

• ‘We’ll need to lock out about 30-mins … how does ______ on ______?’

• ‘We should also pencil in a time to go through Stage 2, working on the assumptions that Stage one goes well, let’s pencil that in now.’

• ‘We’re looking for a time about one week after stage one … we will need about 30 minutes to give you a thorough briefing on the opportunities in your business.’

• ‘Please call me if anything comes up that is likely to impact on the meeting in any way.’

Being very creative you have made a smart move here: It’s vital to know who else needs to be involved in the

decision making process that would hire you or buy your product. The final step here, then, is for you to set up a date and a time with all the decision makers for a meeting.

Finally, confirm once again that the decision is theirs and recap the benefits of working with you.

When talking to a prospect, consider asking the following questions that will lead them to a commitment.

Time and timing:

• ‘Mr Prospect, provided you like the solutions and you would like to become a client … is there anything whatsoever, that could prevent you from beginning immediately?’ 

Financial investment:

• ‘Your investment would be  _______ are you in the position to OK the investment?’

Other decision makers:

• ‘It’s been our experience that it’s crucial if anyone other than yourself will contribute to the decision making process, or needs to authorise the investment that they be included at the next stage … simply to ensure that the time spent is the most effective use of all our time. Who else would need to be involved? And what are their names?’ 

Take a lesson from Hollywood. Give your stories interesting characters and dialogue, plus a dramatic lesson that your prospects can relate to. Don’t say, “Certain companies have used our software.” Don’t even say, “IBM has used our software.” Instead, say, “Joe Smith at IBM said to me, ‘If we don’t increase sales turnover by 20%, we want make our projections’. We guaranteed them they could if they used our software. Six months later, Joe called and said, ‘You guys saved us.'”

If you are pitching a product that hasn’t been built yet, build a story about what it will be like for someone using it.

Everything else being equal, you’re way ahead of any and all your competition when your prospects relate to you, like you, and trust you.

Source: Patricia Fripp.