The one mistake in sales that isn't talked about, that you are guilty of commiting right now.

But is there not a danger that you come across too forceful? Also, did you ever record those calls you were making to show how you were calling potential clients? If so, would be very interested.

So true and I like how Oren Klaff describes this as your prospects using the primal part of the brain to process your message.

Yeah, I talked a bit about this some time ago when I mentioned that whatever the prospect says first to you is probably a lie.

They're trying to protect themselves (this Croc Brain thing).

If their response is highly enthusiastic, they're probably lying--wanting a free education or a quote out of you to use against other providers...and you

If they are negative in response, they probably badly need what you offer--but are lying to protect themselves from being ripped off.

As Matthew says, keep asking questions so you and they can get through The Uncomfortable. Some will not, but others will; and when they do, you'll be the ONLY person to have a conversation with them about your topic, because every other salesperson will have given up before.

This is a fact. I actually changed the way I used to approach people and began to send emails after initial contacts with prospects whether they bought or let me give a short presentation or not. Dumb!

Almost ALL of the people I followed up with said that they never even took the time to look at the information. The farther it got buried in their inbox, the less important it became.

The end result? I exposed myself as a sales person. Some of those individuals now have my info and "will call me if they need something" or "send us an email if you've got something on sale".

Yeah. I'll get right on that - NOT!

What I'm doing now is saying "if you can spare me just 2-3 minutes of your time, I can almost guarantee that I can save you money. If you don't like what I have to say, we can simply part friends. Fair enough?"

98% of the time they'll say yes because of fear of loss. About 1% will want an email or a mailer (NO!) and another 1% will have a different objection, of which, I'll handle accordingly.

Bottom line - you're absolutely right, Matthew. Get them on the phone and start pitching them then or you may never get another chance.

Great read, I sometimes get discouraged myself when hearing those things.
A reminder to keep moving forward!

Just a heads up to people starting businesses and reading through methods of trying to generate new business. Since it pisses me off seeing how impregnable the orthodoxy here is in that you absolute have to become the most despised form of telemarketer that people loathe with a passion in the great majority of cases to get anywhere, and how this is the mindset most taught to people here. Anything to make the sale.

Do not believe you have to become some cyborg who sits there all day long phoning people, pissing them off, and then pressurizing them until you find the few that will roll over and engage in a sales conversation.

You can if that suits you. Just dial numbers all day with a single-minded determination to get a sale or two.

But there are better ways to use the phone to fill your funnel and make sales in far less time, so you can get on with other things in your business. These are taught by people getting far better success then those using the call-centre methodology of phoning. The success of their methods is what causes the success in any field.

How in Forex, 95% of the money is made by 5% who simply trade against the 95% who loss money or never make consistent profits. It's to counteract those who do it wrong.

In this case, the typical call out of the blue from someone wanting to sell them something.

Starting with an opener like Joe's is a good start. The proposition is they'll know how to save money, and then curiosity and fear of loss come into play.

From there you can go into being douche and blow it so you're on the phone all day, or tell/teach them something very compelling about how they could easily save money doing one thing or making one change that you've already identified pre-call, and then giving them a very easy way/proposition to either say yes or no to and move on. Make it so only a fool wouldn't want to move on to the next stage.

Do not go into ''Great. I aprreciate that. Well my company does this and this and this, and I was wondering if you guys have been issues in doing that, or if your website is bringing in the sales it should be, blah, blah, blah'', and then hounding them when they flake out because what you are saying is not relevant to them or as interesting as what they presumed it would be when they gave you the time of day.

You can get through to far more people and get a yes/no far quicker, and if sales is a numbers game then that should be a good thing.