Cold Calling - What Would You advise?

Why would they change their mind?

Dump the names. These are just different ways of saying "No" to you. And you'l get these same responses every day, as long as you are selling. So you may as well find the perfect answers to use their objection as a stepping stone to a sale.

What you should be doing, is finding ways to make what they say..part of your sales talk.

Or you can just call as quickly as you can, to find the business person who, at the moment is looking for someone to do, what you do.

Or, you could read a great book on Sales Prospecting that tells you how to do all of that.

Go absorb this

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...t-selling.html

The only time you will hear those is when the pitch / script doesn't work.

Like Claude said, they are just fancy ways of saying no. The only reason your
going to hear no's like that is because you never addressed the real questions
ahead of time.

Depends if you are trying to sell off the phone which is a lot harder. The trick should be to qualify them in or out and try and book an appointment with them.

I read in other threads that by sending them a mach up increases your chances.

Any tips or training in this area i would ask Jason Kanigan.

Thank you all for your help.

I guess you have confirmed what I thought - I have a lot to learn.

Suzanne, you have received a lot of good feedback here. If I can add anything it will be the following:

Your phone script will be different if you are trying to close on the phone, or if your goal is to set an appointment. In either case you may meet objections, but you are obviously aware of some of the already, so you also know what you can prepare for. In my experience the best scripts I have created came from listening to the objections, figuring out where my 'opening' was that led them to state the objection, and then change my script to remove that 'opening'.

I'll also add that if you are just seeking to get an appointment, make the call as short as possible. You don't want to waste your or theirs time on the phone, especially since the longer you time you spend with them on the line, the more chances they have to tell you 'no'. I know, because I have talked my way out of getting appointments.

Sometimes you can find a 'magic phrase' that does the job for you in just a few seconds. I'll give you my 'secret' that has been the best working line for me in all my different sales positions (I'm no longer in that industry, so I'm not worried about sharing). I used to work for a company that sold printers, and my job was to set appointments with medium to large enterprises. After a lot of testing, I came up with the following: I would ask to speak with their IT manager (I had found that he or she would usually be the one managing their print park). Once I got him on the line I would ask "Would you like to save money on your printing?" Nobody in their right mind would say no to that, so I quickly followed up with "Great! When can we meet?". Anything more than that and I risked loosing their interest. This tiny script allowed me to book twice as many appointments as anybody had done previous to me, and I got in the doors of companies they had tried to get a meeting with for years. Moreover, in the three years I worked there I only recall 1 'no', and the reason I recall it is because I had not heard a 'no' in such a long time that it baffled me.

You could try to see creating something similar will work for you. As an example, although I haven't put much time into creating it or testing it, you may say something like: 'Would you like to give your customers a great experience when they search your company through their mobile devices? Great! When would be the best time for me to come and show how you can accomplish that?" (I might even try this one myself, but again, there's a huge market so I'm not afraid of sharing).

Hope this is helpful!

Hello SuzanneRe,

Good on you for taking action. This is your first step to success. If you stick with it long enough success will come knocking on your door.

Ok let me tell you what works for me. I have tried selling mobile websites in the past and people usually say that they will speak to their web designer about it. So I currently sell websites to people.

You will want to target people that already have a website, but may be an old out dated one that looks like crap. Remember at your first contact with them you are not trying to sell them anything. Your job is to filter out the interested people from that list of 100 or so numbers. Another thing is, you will only speak to about 35-40 people from every 100 dials that you make.

I suggest that you use an auto dialer with skype. Escow dialler has worked very well for me and I still use it. You can finish 100 dials within 2 hours.

So you just call up these people & say " Hey I just found you on the yellow pages and I tried looking at your website www.example .com . The reason I called you is, your website was'nt working, (or) looks like you had your website built some time ago, so I thought I can give you a call to see if you ever thought about redesigning or upgrading it as I am a web designer ."

That is all you got to say. I guarantee you that if you make a list as i said and if you repeat these same words to people. You will atleast get 2-5 interested people.

Now First do this and let me know how it goes!

While I recommend anything Jason Kanigan, I have also had some success with a similar approach to Ron20's suggestion. It is much more streamlined and probably best if you are interested in getting thru a lot of dials in a calling session, rather than a more consultative and long or drawn-out method where you'd be asking lots of questions. It goes something like:

"Hi <prospect name>, my name is Suszanne and the reason for my call is because my business <your businesses name> has had a lot of success helping <plumbers, bakeries, whatever niche you are calling> bring their web-presence current and relevant in today's marketplace of informed customers.

I wanted to stop by and show you some ideas and how my current customers are positioned.

Or for a web meeting...

I wanted to schedule a GoToMeeting session to run thru some ideas and show how my current customers are positioned."

This would get you through lots of dials, but I am not so sure it's a better approach than Jason's consultative type conversations go. Maybe try both if you are up to it? Anyway, just another idea.

You are getting lots of good feedback....

My 2 cents:

Continue with your calls

Don't wait 3 months to call back...here's why:

It has been my experience that local business owners know so little about mobile websites, social media marketing and video marketing,etc., that you need to be in front of them frequently to educate them.

The best way to do that is have something of value to leave behind (not a brochure)so you can follow up and continue to provide solid information on how they can thrive in 2014 and beyond.

So while you are developing your technique, experiencing the polite "no's" and learning how to prevent them, you can end the call on a pleasant note by sending them via email a case study/free report/video link, etc. or all of them to establish yourself as someone that wants to educate them so they can make an informed decision.

When you do that....they will want to trust you because even at "no", you still offered some very valuable information that can help them.

This type of information is so easy to find on the internet. Simply put in keywords and search until you find something that you know the owner will benefit from.

Don't worry about the competition as the majority of them won't do this!

By doing the search and reading to choose the best material, you will increase your business acumen and knowledge about their industry which will once again, put you head and shoulders above the competition.

When you make your follow up calls......they will take your call and want to talk with you to see what valuable insights you have. The web guy, the graphic artist and whomever will not take the time to do this and here is what's really cool about that.....it exposes their lack of knowledge and puts you" top of mind".