Whenever and whatever you’re pitching, dozens of factors will figure in the final decision of your prospects. All else being equal, you have the edge if you can establish a personal connection. Connect emotionally and intellectually, so they like and trust you more than your competitors. How can you get your prospects to like you? Try these tips. 

• “Divide and conquer.” If you’re doing a sales presentation, shake hands with everyone as they enter the room. Connect with them so you see them as individuals, and you become more memorable to them too. (People are usually more shy of groups of strangers than in one-on-one contacts.)
• Use technology to enhance your sales presentation, not drown it. PowerPoint can keep you on track, but it can’t establish trust. Source: Patricia Fripp

Whenever and whatever you’re pitching, dozens of factors will figure in the final decision of your prospects. All else being equal, you have the edge if you can establish a personal connection. Connect emotionally and intellectually, so they like and trust you more than your competitors. How can you get your prospects to like you? Try these tips.

• Focus and be sincere. If you appear nervous or unsure, you may seem devious or incompetent. If your sales presentation does not respond to their concerns and you just grind on with a prepared pitch, they will decide you don’t care about them and their problems. Look people right in the eyes and convince them that you stand 100% behind the ideas, products, or services that you want to sell them. Pick up on their concerns, and address them. Source Patricia Fripp

First, explore the possibility of other marketing methods, including advertising, public service, referral generation, press release distribution, networking and trade shows, and cold calling in person. Of course, this should go hand in hand with your current telemarketing efforts. After all, you don’t build a house using only one type of wood! You use 2x4s, 2x6s, and plywood and even then the job is only partly done!

Second, make sure your sales people are scheduling their cold calling. If your sales people are feeling too much pressure about making calls, consider this option: rather than rewarding them for each successful appointment from a call (which can cause too much pressure), instead reward them for the number of cold calls they make. One great example is a cash bonus of $1 per cold call in which they actually talk to a person, with an additional cash bonus if they make an appointment. (Create a list of items that have to be covered to count it as a call – like an introduction, asking for the appointment twice, etc.) and listen in to random calls to make sure it’s getting done. Even someone who is afraid of cold calling and feels the pressure will love to see themselves earning dollar after dollar as a bonus that they have complete control over! It’s a great way to motivate your staff to start calling.

Want to be more successful? Expand your sales techniques and empower your staff to make cold calls a daily priority. And always, always, always be asking the question: “How do we get our people to make more sales?”