Article 101

What are the 6 "most helpful", "wish I had thought of that sooner", "this one sentence was worth the cost of your materials/presentation" strategies... trainees have related to me most recently?

Word count: 520
Time to read: 2 minutes
Benefit to you: Make you aware of strategies that made a difference
for salespeople setting appointments.

Do you ever ask your clients what you did for them that was most helpful?

I do. Here are some of the answers given me recently.

1. Canadian inside sales manager tells me that one sentence relating an absolute "must do" before you leave a record and move on to the next call, drastically increased call volume and performance. The problem he found was that callers were wasting inordinate amounts of time scrolling through records searching for the next good dial. This simple tip solved that problem.

2. Rep selling employee benefits to companies said the script samples and explanations really helped to communicate her value very quickly. She was saying things up front that really weren't contributing to helping the prospect see how they would benefit by meeting her. She put those points other places and front loaded her pitch with words that made the difference.

3. Financial services provider seeking high net-worth clients related that my counter-intuitive voicemail strategy has drastically increased his callbacks from voicemail --- including a call back from a multi-million dollar account that he had been unable to generate a response from for 2 years.

4. Professional services firm related that the list of customized fields to setup in your contact manager BEFORE you start calling, was instrumental in enabling them to cost-effectively implement targeted niche marketing programs to list segments. Previously this knowledge was buried... not accessible.. and even though this firm
was spending the money to call and collecting important marketing data... it was not accessible to them... it was buried in the records... and they could not leverage that knowledge for account development. Now... a couple of clicks... and they are on their way.

You spend most of your prospecting money up front making your first round of calls. You can get a very significant lift to results if you plan in advance how you will access and use information you discover about your prospects buying volumes and plans.

Major gains can be achieved simply by leveraging info you discover and using other marketing tools to touch very targeted niches.

If you are making the calls yet not doing this, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

5. Small business owner related that the model scripts and responses, particularly to "send some info" and "call me back" have been instrumental in reducing her frustration and stress levels as she no longer calls, calls and calls back people who are only going to say "no." Using the model comebacks to these forms of resistance, she is immediately able to determine who is a serious prospect.

6. Consulting company related that my simple... took us two hours... profiling tips used to determine the best targets to call... helped them to eliminate thousands of low probability calls they were making. They, of course, replaced them all with high probability calls. The tips were so simple the partner said he was embarrassed they hadn't thought of it... they would have had a lot more new business if they had stopped making those low low probability calls sooner.

What is it costing you to work hard without the benefit of these strategies and many more?

Would you like to learn these 6 strategies and dozens more?

Best wishes with your selling,
Scott Channell

Copyright 2007-2009 scott channell

Article 132	6 Most Helpful Set Appointment Strategies
	by Scott Channell