Realistic timeframe

There really is no realistic time frame. It all depends on past sales experience, general intellect, drive, passion, and luck.

The first time I ever picked up the phone to sell a website, I got a client. On my first dial, ever. Stranger things have happened, my friend.

Booking appointments does have advantages over closing in one call. It sucks that you were stood up, but that's not likely to happen twice in a row. Make sure you've got a solid prospect. Send an e-mail or call the afternoon/evening before to confirm that the appointment will still be happening. Not only does it validate things and help to ease concerns, some business owners will see that as punctuality and you will be viewed as even more of an asset.

Best Regards,
Jon Martin.

Are you confirming your appointments? It's always a good idea to get an appointment commitment when making the appointment. Let him know your coming a long way and if he can't make it then do the courtesy of letting you know in advance. Not that he may still stand you up but most people will honor the commitment if they know your going a long distance to get there. I have told people that when they were just down the street. I want them committed to be there.

What a good ploy, Lopaca. I'm gonna use that one LOL! Brilliant. I'm lucky because 90% of my clients are local and very close. Still would suck to be blown off, though.

SocialEntry, think of it this way: If the business person is unprofessional and unethical enough to blow you off, you don't want them as a client anyway. They'd probably be a pain in the ass, let alone rude.

It all depends.

I set blind, non-qualified appointments for a long time and was stood up probably 20% to 25% of the time.

My opinion is the quality of the appointment you have based on qualifying is related to the no-show rate.

But my experience is only from selling life insurance.

I got tired of that and did all my pre-qual work over the phone during the last few months of selling life insurance. I liked it better. And I would call to confirm, too.

Why do you have to see people face to face to sell these services? I can understand it fort whole project managments and big ticket itmes but small sclae stuff...is it necessary?

The best advice i can give you is a tad sleezy.

Find a call center that sells something, anything ( as long as its one call closes )
They will have a training class, go through the class, then work for them
for a few weeks.

Inside of a week you will be making sales with help from the floor managers
inside of two weeks you will be making sales all on your own,
and somewhere around a month on the phones inside a call room
you will be a bad mammer jammer and if your half
as smart as i think you are ( from talking to you ) you can gleen a ton of
how they do it, and bring it back to your company....

( i am not saying steal from them ) i am saying simply keep your eyes
open and see how they operate.

again, its a bit sleezy, but it happens to us quite often, and when i find out
it pisses me off, but there is nothing i can do about it.

it does not matter what they are selling, doesn't even matter if they are
cold calls or not, it just matters you get some experience under your belt
with some one around who can help TO and you can listen and see
what others in the room are doing to be successful.

Nobody in this forum wants to work for anyone else, however...
A month or so inside a real phone room, is some of the best experience
anyone can get, it can and will super fast track your sales ability.

Legit is probably not the best way to put it because it implies bad things, but it's just that I never got an interview to a private sector job before so I don't really know what to expect. All I know of call centres is what I know by reputation through friends and relatives and it's not a great one tbh.

If I walk in a huge room then I guess that speaks for itself, but should I still apply to smaller places?

Hope John D will pop in as well.

Okay there is a reason why sitting in a call center for a week as Kens suggests would work.

Because of two things

A: Pressure
B: Validation that it works, as you watch others doing it.

I could give you the same script I used to make 40k per day in a call center with my tsr's and you may still struggle with it, even though it works like a charm... because you dont have "pressure", and you dont have people around you showing you up...lol

When there are ten people around you popping a sale every five minutes, then you stop looking to the script as the problem, and you stop looking at the leads as a problem and you start thinking "Man I better get determined and do what these guys are doing, or else they might fire me".

So you have all this pressure... and something about it makes you sell.

Its almost undefinable. When it started clicking for me, I had used the same script for a month almost and hardly got ANYTHING...yet I saw others around me KILLING IT!

The fact was this: They were more determined to make a sale because they would get in trouble if they didnt, and I being a newby had a manager who was patient with me and just said "Keep trying it will click"... again, because I was new... he didnt treat them with the same kids glove.

I didnt want to be there, but I didnt want to quit either, so on a subconscious level I was trying to prove to him that it didnt work for me, so he would just put me out of my misery... but he didnt...lol... he kept telling me to try and it would "CLICK" , Im like "What the hell is CLICK suppose to mean...?"

He even told me that people werent answering the phone because I didnt WANT them to... I was pushing people away with my energy...and I didnt WANT to pitch them.

He told me that when I really WANTED to get someone on the phone and pitch them, then people would start answering...

I didnt "get" any of this...

Then one day something happened that motivated me, and my words didnt change, and the pitch didnt change, and the leads didnt change... my "energy" changed, and suddenly instead of secretly hoping no one would answer the phone, I REALLY started wanting to pitch everyone I could...and I REALLY wanted to hurry up and get someone on the phone, and I REALLY wanted that number up on the board...

Nothing else changed, just my energy.

It can be a week or a day or two weeks....in any event, as much as your inward thoughts may argue with what Im saying here- You will start closing when you REALLY want to close someone.

Keep your eyes on that alone.

I dont know how it affects things, but it does. I dont make the rules, but I know them pretty well.

In a call center its easy to want to- because you will get fired if you dont.

Again, the same script that is successful for twenty years in a call center wont be successful to you until you act like you have a point to prove, and that point is not "See I told you, I tried and it didnt work".

When you have a DIFFERENT point to prove, your whole energy will shift and it will affect EVERYTHING!

Allen Says wrote once that whatever you feel when you are writing a white paper will go into it whether you want it to or not, and affect your conversions... and he is right.

On the phone you dont have to feel like walking thro0ugh the daisies or anything, but you DO have to feel like you have a point to prove and get that closing energy, otherwise you are just going through the motions to see if something works instead of saying "Im going to make this happen by God!"

There is a fine line, one degree of separation, and when I recognized that line, as Medford Caudill told me "It clicked" almost magically.


Now to close this - It may seem like "John, you are telling me that to be successful at this I have to follow some vague formula..."

No Im just telling you that the formula is "Dial till it clicks", and I promise it will "IF" you really want to close someone.

I have been criticized for this advice before, but its the classic advice of every great telemarketing manager on the planet. Nothing could be so simple yet so complicated, but once it CLICKS- you own it, and the ceiling is only where you SAY it is!

Once it clicked for me, I was free from ever being a slave again, and I helped it click for alot of others and they are the same.

I wish I could tell you that a piece of paper or a report or a script could take care of EVERYTHING...but a race car driver knows how the road "feels"... and you have to get in there to compete with champions and spend enough time in your cock pit to where you know how the road feels.

You dont have to be a master to get sales, you only have to keep dialing till it clicks...but along the way you will become like that race car driver.

Hope this helps.

Sadly, in a telemarketing room I would sum this up in two lines, because we dont have time to play "Less whining. More dialing".

You are probably saying like I did to Medford "What the hell is that supposed to mean...?"

And I would just have to say "He will figure it out if he sits in that seat for another 8 hours or so".

Guess what, whenever someone says "Im not making sales" and I say "Keep dialing", they always make one, even if they cuss me under their breath for such simple, vague advice!

"So, Ms. Prospect: we'll meet next Tuesday at your office at 11:00. And you have an hour of uninterrupted time set aside for this, right? OK, and at the meeting we'll go over your situation, and find out if there's anything I can do for you. Now..before I go...is there anything that could come up which would cause you to have to change the appointment?"

Ask the question. Leave nothing to chance.

Ok I went to the place, it was not as bad as I taught (all I could think about when the receptionist told me it was an "information session" was Ben Affleck in Boiler room and I was just hoping that there was not going to be a repeat performance or parody. Buddies told me that call centres took anybody so I was kind of afraid to find myself next to a high school kid with pink hairs and nosering). I don't know anything bout art but they must have had at least some money. I wouldn't be surprised if the recruiter came from a tough background, but at least everyone was in a suit.

There's a commission and base,I'm not sure yet if its one call close, the script wasn't too clear about it. They say they call CEOs,politicos from different countries so the leads aren't infinite and as such, they told me the selection was rough and that there was a lot of roleplaying. I did well on the first interview/information session and I've been invited for a second one.

Wtv,I'll just keep calling on my own and whatever happens happens.

I used to hate having to confirm my appointments.

I thought I hated them because I felt that it was giving the customer a chance to back out.

But the truth was, I was scared to talk to the customer because I knew deep down that I didn't do a good enough job during the sales process. I didnt really ask them much questions about them and their goals, I didn't really try and get rapport, I rushed my pitch, and basically used pressure to set the appointment.

My boss tole me that because I was wishy-washy about the commitment for the appointment my prospects were going to be just as wishy-washy.

He told me to be more assertive in the initial call, take the time to get rapport, ask good questions and gather information, build excitement and then make the appointment.

then do a confirmation call, because the confirmation call shows confidence in yourself and your product and that the person is making the right choice to meet with you, and it has that assertiveness to it.

whoops, I hit send before I finished.

My point is as you get better you will find that less and less people will stand you up.

it's good that you want to learn one call closes because that is a good skill to have in your tool chest.

Some people you might be able to close in one call and others you might not. for the ones you don't you can either setup an appoinment or do a followup call later on.

Finally test out what Ken said, that is such good advice.

Here it is Ken, take a gander down this one...lol Paul or one of the mods got him quick , he only made 3 posts.

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ml#post6794340

A stroll down this one will further enlighten you:

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ml#post6793733