30 sales calls 0 sales could really use some help

I made $65k last year. First time (commission only) phone sales. Wanted to learn sales the hard way. Downloaded tons of books, Grant Cardone's material, listened to a lot of motivational tapes. Thought I was going to be superstar from all I knew.

...Despite my "hard work"...first 6 months I made a measly $11k. Bottom of the barrel in a room of 15. Just scraped enough to get by and most weeks I was missing targets. Made a few friends and the manager took a liking to me, so I kept at it. I'd be there 2 hours early everyday practicing my pitch before it was official dial time (calling people 5 hours behind us). I did that to impress... but I also genuinely wanted to get good.

But I was anything but good. Anyway, you're probably thinking "rags to riches" part incoming, you're right...

One morning in July, the manager fired 5 people for "attitude and performance issues" right there in the morning sales meeting. At the end he called me into his office and told me I sounded !@$ on the phone. "What do you mean?" I asked
"Garbage. You need to listen to your calls" he said and gave me one week to start performing or I was done.

That was a huge blow to me. I was putting in the hours, slogging it out, but that moment I slowly realised my dreams were being pissed on. Reality sucks. But I go home determined to practice the pitch again to "sound" better.

It's now next week and I'm having a rough day. I let out some frustration on a call, when the manager calls me into his office. Instead of firing me, he loads the recording of my call and proceeds to dissect every nuance of my call.

I sounded like an idiot. Not letting the prospect speak...not repeating their words to build rapport... not using tie downs to engage...not pausing enough... adding in unneccessary statements and words... being too serious...

The basics! I thought 6 months on the phone meant I had mastered the basics and now needed something advanced... special... NOPE!

I remember feeling my face go bright red. I was nauseous and felt my body go weak from the embarrassment of listening to how PAINFULLY bad I was... but I managed to write down all his pointers and thanked him for the chance.

In the 6 months followed, I took home a paycheck without fail. I'm no superstar salesman, but I fortunately learnt the best lesson. Sometimes you don't need to add anything, rather take away what's unneccessary.

The best of the best analyse their own play. Boxers watch their fight videos. Athletes analyse their recordings for form and performance. Again and again.

I recommend you record your sales calls and analyse them. Even better, watch or listen to them with a sales mentor whose selling style is similar to yours. Pay them.

As a warning, listening to your calls isn't easy. Your voice sounds different to what you think it sounds. There are well known movie stars that refuse to watch their own movies... because they hate seeing themselves.

In my experience, as a salesperson it's feels so good when you buy a fresh new book on sales from amazon... and tease open the pages as the author tells you how selling will always be selling but living in 2017 the way people buy has slightly changed... and how this new book will bridge the gap and arm you with a new armoury to succeed.

Compare that to the effort required to painstakingly analyse your calls and failings. It's very difficult. And I still hate listening to my calls.

Find people who want one...!

Edit: If you make good videos, why not make a video to sell your stuff... Take yourself out of the equation...

I like to send letters out first. Then when people contact me they're warm leads. They convert far better than cold calls. Costs a little money but saves enormous amounts of time and effort. If you price your product correctly the cost of the mailing is a small price to pay...

It's going to take time. Phone sales especially take awhile to really get a good grasp of. You just have to further develop your sales funnel through trial and error and learn from you mistakes. That means every call really writing down and understanding what wrong with your sales call. It could be various reason why your sales calls aren't working. But it's up to you to really dig deep and find out why your calls are not turning out the way you want them to. Maybe you're selling to the wrong market, maybe you aren't generating enough desire for your product or the benefits of your product to their business. There could be so many reasons but it is up to you to find them if you really want your product to sell.

I'm probably the most qualified person here to answer this question. I've made millions of dollars selling over the phone.

If your getting warm appointments you should be rich right now. Closing the call is the easy part. Going from cold to warm is where the money is at. But based on what you explained above I can already see 2 HUGE problems. the first problem you already know about. You need a structured pitch and you need rebuttals written out for you. The second problem is your doing the process backwards.

You should be doing the consult call before the appointment. That should be where you qualify them in or out and get a good idea of there needs so when you call back for the appointment you can close them.

When you run a sales appointment your only goal is to close them, you cant turn a consult call into a sales call effectively. Let me ask you a question though. When you ask for the order at the end of your consult call. What kind of response are they giving you or what obstacle are you running into thats preventing you from locking down a contract?

I could see this as being a hard sell. Think for a moment here.. "explainer video" what is its function? It explains what a business does or what a product is - simple enough right? But the people you are talking to think they have the best thing since sliced bread and their web presents explains what the service or product is...

They ( the people you are trying to sell ) know what it is they do and sell... and you have to convince them that there is a gap... what THEY know, and what is communicated to potential clients. The explainer video should bridge the gap between the enthusiasm of the business to that of the potential customer.

If you look at 20 Animated Explainer Videos That Are Awesome you get an idea how that gap is closed.

So how do you close your clients? I would beat them up with numbers... web visitors make an evaluation of a site in 8 seconds.. more can be said in a 60 second video than 60 seconds of read time ( reading their site ) YouTube is the #2 web property on the web for good reason... video is the prominently preferred media choice of consumers today.

Ask these people directly.. when was the last time anyone shared a site link with you.. when was the last time someone shared a video link?

Video is sharable content, it can be housed on multiple platforms to be found by potential customers... be it youtube, vimeo, facebook, twitter.. where ever... the website is static in nature...

I would make an explainer video that covers these points Explain what an explainer video can do.. how it does it, and why it is so effective. I would then base my pitch on the video.

Once you have set the appointment.. I would send that one person the video... if the next call there is more than one person on the call I would ask.. have you all seen the video? I will bet they have... you will have just demonstrated the viralness of video.

Hope that helps

Been working hard latley! Managed to set 6 appointments in the last 2 days. That is going a lot better. I want to learn how to do sales calls but I'm kinda stuck with the reply of SalesGod. He says that I have a extra hard time selling because I do a consultancy call and going from consulting to selling is hard. What are your thoughts on that?