Making Sure Each Call has a Purpose
Sales
professionals don’t live in a vacuum… while we make our living
out of selling products and services to potential customers, we
are also customers. Throughout the course of our day or week, we
also come across sales
professionals. Some are amazing while others are dreadful. Chances
are, we’ve dealt with those sales reps who call upon us without
much of a purpose or direction. Those sales reps are doing their
potential
customers a disservice as they’re calling without a purpose.
In order to make each and every call count, you have to make sure
you have a purpose for your call.
What should
the purpose of a sales
call, be it in person or face-to-face? First and foremost, it
needs to get you one step closer to closing
the sale. You don’t have to close
a sale every time you speak to a client… but you should be able
to move it along so that your objective is closer to reality. Otherwise,
if you call
without a purpose, you’re not only wasting your customer’s time,
you’re wasting your time. That’s a double-whammy!
If your product
has a long and protracted sales
cycle, you may have to make more calls than other
industries. Some professionals deal with high volume, low ticket
sales that can be closed in just one call. For the great majority
of us that have to keep building and cultivating
our opportunities, there are several possible reasons to make
a call.
Fourteen
Call Objectives
1.
Cold call
2.
Qualify a lead
3.
Set up an appointment or
conference call
4.
Build the customer
relationship
5.
Review customer requirements
6.
Discuss a proposal
7.
Discuss possible
options
8.
Demonstrate a product or
service
9.
Discuss a product or service
trial
10. Recommend
a solution
11. Close
the sale
12. Follow up on a sale in order
to earn more business
13. Uncover new opportunities
14. Discuss a new product or
service offering
When you know
your products and services well and have a good grasp of your sales
cycle, you’ll understand which of these fourteen objectives
make sense for what you do. You may have other objectives that are
not on this list. That is fine… just make sure that you do have
a purpose so that your time is well spent.
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