Maybe part of the success of the holiday was due to the fact that every time I walked into the hotel, Aston Lakeland Village Inn,  a gentleman called Scott raced out with flair from behind reception to grab my skis off me, put them away and then he offered to help me take off those heavy ski boots. Wow, now that was service!  Not only that, every time I went in and out past reception, he had something to chat about and engage me.  When I think about it, he really made me feel at home in this accommodation.  Nothing was too much trouble. What he did was not his brief.  He just did it for love of his job. His reception would be the reason I would go back to that hotel again and again. He made me feel valued, he made me feel special and I will never forget that.

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SO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE SURE YOUR CLIENTS FEEL VALUED AND SPECIAL? IT WILL MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE TO WHETHER THEY COME BACK TO YOU FOR REPEAT BUSINESS OR NOT.  PLEASE MAKE YOUR INTERACTIONS WITH THEM MEMORABLE IN A GOOD WAY LIKE SCOTT.

United Airlines, however, did everything but make me feel special. When I got to San Francisco, they announced they had cancelled my plane to Reno due to bad weather.  We were asked over the loudspeaker to go to United customer service.  I looked to that area in despair.  The queue was enormous, I had just come off a 13 hour flight overnight and I had to stand in that queue.  I pushed forward to see if international passengers had priority.  I was told  ”No ma’am, international passengers do not have priority. Go to the back of the line.  We give priority to VIP customers, Mile High customers, then Gold and Silver and Premier members and then Families with Children.”  ( I was already feeling like an inferior citizen!). I was none of those because I was on an economy ticket.  Trust me, I had no idea of these STATUS differences before I travelled.

My preferred airline in Australia, Virgin, have never made me feel like that. In fact,  Virgin wrote to me recently to tell me I had been such a loyal customer, they wanted to give me Silver status for FREE out of the blue.That means you can check in at Priority Seating and you get free 23 kgs of luggage every time you book plus you can sample their VIP lounge for free. What a pleasant surprise that was! Virgin really do know how to treat customers.

To add insult to injury, United made me wait 9 hours for the next flight after a 13 hour international flight with no guarantee the flight would fly anyway. It did fly but when I got to Reno the skis were missing.  Oh boy, the joys of travel. Last time I travelled to Vail with United , they lost our luggage too. I must have a short memory!

So whether you only deal with people on the phone or face to face, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE SURE YOUR CLIENTS FEEL VALUED AND SPECIAL? IT WILL MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE TO WHETHER THEY COME BACK TO YOU FOR REPEAT BUSINESS OR NOT.  PLEASE MAKE YOUR INTERACTIONS WITH THEM MEMORABLE IN A GOOD WAY LIKE SCOTT.

i WOULD LOVE YOU TO LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU DO TO MAKE YOUR CLIENTS FEEL SPECIAL. I will collate it into my next book and give you credit.

1.  You avoid doing the calls because you  find a lot of things to do like the filing from last year, the email inbox to sort out, the paperwork to prepare for 2012, meetings to attend., the diary to plan

2.  You fear you won’t be well received because people are only just back at work.

3.  You believe the prospects on your list will never buy from you so what is the point in calling them?

4. You think the calls can wait till next week.

5. You have no goals/motivation so you have nothing to aim for yet

6. You don’t feel good about yourself and have a negative self image at the moment

7.  You need to learn more about your new products you are selling before you feel confident to talk about them. Product knowledge is vital.

All of these avoidance behaviours are not going to serve you if you want to have your best year ever. Think about it this way, one hour of procrastination per day equals 225 selling hours wasted a year (based on working 45 weeks a year). There is a way to get round all of them.

Write down the behaviours you personally act out to avoid the calling? Being aware of those is the first step.

7 Ideas To Kickstart Your Telephone Sales

1.  To achieve what you really want this year, set goals of how many sales or appointments you want.  How many calls a day does that require and how many hours?

2. Start your day with those calls and do not do anything else until they are done. The rest will easily get done anyway, once the important task of calling is completed. The calls are what makes you the money, not the filing. Doing the calls also keeps you in a job.

3. If your product knowledge is not good enough to feel confident, go the extra mile and take brochures home with you to read and learn from in your own time.  Don’t waste productive work time doing it then.

4. If fear of rejection is your issue, then just remember that prospects are not rejecting you personally.  It is just an opportunity for you to try again with a better reason for the person to buy. That is why sales is never boring. Getting the word “No” is getting you closer to the first “Yes” so learn to love the word “No”

5. Every time you catch yourself saying or thinking to yourself something negative that stops you from doing the calls (i.e. non goal supporting) pinch yourself , write it down and change it to a goal supporting statement.  For example, you might say to yourself “Oh, there is no point calling him now, he will be at lunch” .  Say to yourself  “I will call him now because he might just be there. ”

6.  If not feeling good enough is your issue, write a list of your positive attributes and then create a mantra to start your day like this one.  It will ensure your attitude is right.  “I am a positive, caring, enthusiastic person who enjoys helping people to own our product.  I am focusing on getting 10 appointments today in the 3 hours I have available to call customers.”

7.  Start the year by calling the prospects who did not end up buying from you last year.
They may be in a different situation now and you might be able to revive their interest.
Even if they still reject your offer, you showed you care about them doing business with you and revived the connection.

I  would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy Christmas and New Year. Relax, enjoy, so you are ready with renewed energy to help others to invest in your services next year. Remember, people will buy your energy, much more than what you say so you need to re-energise and take a proper break.

A good colleague of mine, David Penglase invited me to do a webinar with him recently. He managed to extract some great tips out of me so he has invited me to share this webinar recording with my subscribers.

You can listen to it at your leisure on this link.

http://salescoachcentral.com/webinars_november_2011_public.html

You might want to look at the coaching programme on Sales Coach Central’s website over the break.  For your own regular training and motivation, there are some awesome materials in there and if you would like to join for less than $1 a day,  I can offer you a 20% discount.  Just let me know and I will organise a special link for you to get the discount for this coaching programme. Check it out first at

http://salescoachcentral.com/index_freetour.

I will be working in January and am taking the last week of January off to ski in Heavenly Valley, USA.  I have speaking engagements in Iran and Malawi before the end of March so looks like there will be some nice travel for me next year. (It was always my intention to work globally at this stage of my career).

What do you want to have happen next year?  Write it down and if your intention has clarity and focus, it will happen, I promise. It is the same technique you use for cold calling success. Be clear what you want from the call, focus and your call will be much more successful.

Jenny Cartwright meets Sir Richard Branson

What an awesome human being I met in Sir Richard Branson when speaking at the same event as him in Melbourne last weekend.

First of all he is humble.  He does not brag about his achievements but tells you about them in a way that inspires you to play a bigger game too. He advises not to put limitations on yourselves when you come up with an idea of something you would like to do. He says the biggest challenge in life is you holding yourself back (the personal challenge).

Here are the 5 major  tips I took away from his talk we can all  benefit from when doing  sales:-

 1.  Records are made to be broken so aim for an extra sale each week. It can be done. Challenge yourself.

 2. Never dwell on your failures, move on to the next call. The more your fail, the more you learn. (That’s why cold calling takes courage – each time you are rejected, pick yourself up and move on. It’s an opportunity to try a different way next time)

3. If you are a  leader, really listen to your staff with no judgement.  Even the young 19 year old may have a good idea for increasing business. Reward them with praise and attention often.

4.  Look after your customers.  Find out what they are looking for and howspecifically you can best help them.  Ask them the question “What do you need in your business right now?”.  So let me know what you need right now and if I can’t help you, I am sure I can refer you to soemone who can.  that is what I do best.

5.  Constantly be on the cutting edge of knowing what is happening in your industry so you can jimp on opportunities that present themselves every day when you stay aware.

1. Change “Why” questions to “How” questions whenever you can

Sometimes “why” makes prospects feel defensive and it can sound interrogating or demanding when you don’t have the right tone in your voice. You can also increase the amount of information you get from your customer if you begin your questions with “how”. “How” sounds less challenging too.

For example:

Salesperson: “Why did you buy from Pilkingtons?”

Could be changed to:

Salesperson: “How did you make a decision to purchase from Pilkingtons?”

Salesperson: “Why aren’t you interested?”

Could be changed to:

Salesperson: “How specifically could we make this of more interest to you?”

2. Avoid using the word “BUT” to counter an objection

This one little word, “but” is often used when responding to an objection and it can spoil everything else you say. “But” negates everything yo say before it, therefore disagreement is all the customer hears.

If a customer raises an objection, acknowledge it and follow with the word “and”, as opposed to “but”.

An example would be:

Customer: “This software sounds like it would take a long time to install”.

Salesperson: “Yes, it does take a long time to install and that challenge is taken care of by our own consultants who set the whole thing up for you as part of the service.”

Customer: “It’s very expensive”.

Salesperson: “I understand that you think that and that’s why I would like to include a service contract in the price for you for three years at no cost. How does that sound?

3. Avoid “I’m just calling about ….”

“Just” belittles what you are about to say in this context and makes your message less important. It is almost like you are apologising for calling ,when what you have to talk about is very important.

Simply say “The reason for my call is ………”. It sounds more professional and confident.

When you ask logic questions, the emphasis is focusing on talking about price, getting the appointment, the types of programmes and services you have, the technical information. When you ask questions that evoke the emotion, you are getting out of the customer why they would want what you have. You talk about the effects and outcomes of using your service, the peace of mind, the relief, ease, fun and excitement.

Here are some ideas of questions you could ask that evoke the emotion

What would be the main outcome you would want to achieve from using our product/services?

Why that one?

What is most important to you when choosing a ____ provider?

Why is that?

How would you feel when you achieved that?

How does it affect you (or how do you feel) not experiencing  that now?

How would you feel if you did not achieve that outcome by this time next year?

What happens when your current provider cannot provide what you want immediately?

How long has this been going on? or How often does this happen?

What impact does that have on you and how you are perceived by your customer?

What are 2 or 3 reasons why you want to change from your current provider?

In an ideal world, what could your current provider do better?

How do you feel when they consistently do this?

Another way of looking at this is people buy to avoid pain and gain pleasure.  Many of the questions above evoke pain and a feeling of pain. Remember people buy on emotion and then justify with logic depending how much time they have to think about it.

And the more instant the gratification is for buying now, the quicker the customer will buy.  Something to think about.

Now check your own sales pitch and check you have at least some emotion questions as well as the logic ones. Then watch how your results change.

Nowadays telephone sales is far more than selling on the phone. It is also about how you write the written copy that follows up your call and appointment.

We are all so busy, we think we can write in short, curt sentences on emails as if we were sending a text message. Oh no, not so, We must still be in sales mode when we are following up with an email.

I have picked up on a common issue with more than one or two of my coaching clients at the moment and it is this ….They are fine on the phone about interesting the prospect in what they have and then they get asked to email everything they are proposing in writing before the client will decide.

Do you know that what you send them could kill any interest you have just generated?

Are you guilty of this?

1. Do you Say “Dear ___ I have attached a document which will explain all our details and capabilities.” (Oh, yes, and I should be interested in that?)

2. The attachment is all about you, the seller and not what you do for the customer.

3. It is written by the legal people or the accountants in your office in long paragraphs – massive chunks to read – so the customer clicks out of it – it was too boring to read. It is definitely not a sales piece.

4. The attachment has no headings, sub-headings, no bullet points to make things stand out, and no guarantee nor call to action.

5. Your follow-up email mentions about 5 different services and products and totally confuses the customer. Promote one thing on one email.

Yes, I have seen all of these mistakes in the last week So here is what to do about it:-

Learn to become copywriters – This skill will give you the edge in a selling role. I did my studies a few years ago with a guy called Pete Godfrey whose material is just great.

Your follow-up email when sending information should not read “Please find attached details on what we discussed”.

Here is a suggestion of the points to include in a follow-up email.

1. Bold Subject underlined plus sub-heading if you can.

2. Repeat the customers needs as discussed on the phone (preferably his pain), e.g. “in our phone conversation, you mentioned ________”

3 Your solution personalised to them (not the solution you have for everyone which is probably in an attachment)

4. Include a powerful testimonial surrounded by inverted commas followed by the full name and company of the person that said it.

5. Add any “before” and “after” photos if you have something visual as a testimonial which will add interest.

6. Mention a strong guarantee on your work to make the customer comfortable to work with you.

7. Create scarcity and urgency in a call to action at the end, e.g.” I will give you a call in a couple of days to make sure we get you started before our special offer ends.”

You may think this is too much, but remember, the customer may not even get to opening your attachment. He will, however, read the email when it is in a nice conversational style. This will also avoid getting “Oh, I have not read it yet” when you call back.

In the first example, the customer could be saying he did not get it, just to get rid of you and he succeeds. What you could do is answer with “That’s okay, if you are online now, we could run through the information together on the website” or “That’s okay, are you sure it is not sitting in your in-tray? If it is, we could run through it together over the phone and I can answer any questions you might have.”
In the second example, the salesperson could have used an objection handling technique like an open-ended question “I’m curious, what would we have to change to make it of interest to you?” By doing that you may get the customer into a conversation about what he is looking for.
THE 2 BIGGEST MISTAKES
The biggest mistake in both examples is that the salesperson starts the call with a closed question which can only get a “yes” or “no” answer so the conversation can never get started.
Another mistake is when the sales person starts the call with “I’m just following up on the information I sent you”. “Just” belittles what you are about to say and you never want to say “follow-up”. Simply say, “I’m calling to get your feedback on the information I sent. What specifically was of interest to you?”
THE FORMULA FOR A PROFESSIONAL FOLLOW-UP CALL.
1. Always introduce yourself with your name and company name. Do not assume they will remember you.
2. Clients are busy and distracted when your call comes in so refer to the problem, opportunity or concern that they might have had and then ask an open-ended question.

” Good Morning Jim, this is John French from All Storage Systems. Last time we spoke you were concerned about whether your current supplier was charging you too much for _______ I am wondering how you found our prices compared with theirs on the quote I sent you? ” (Assume they got it, never ask if they got the quote)
“Good Morning Jim, this is John French from All Storage Systems. Last time we spoke, you were concerned about the lack of space in your office and you wanted a better way to display your products that would make your office less cluttered. Which of our shelving displays did you like the best in the catalogue I sent you?” (Assume they got the mail-out) Then get them to talk more about that with “Why that one?”
3. Instead of an open-ended question at the end of the last 2 examples, you could say “Let’s take a minute to go through what I sent you to see if it makes sense for us to proceed further.”
4. Find a talking point to reinforce them going with you by giving an example of another customer who had the same situation or problem as they have.” I was thinking about another customer we have in a similar situation to yours and thought you might be interested in hearing about how we were able to eliminate the issues they had.” (Continue with how you did that)
5. Do a trial close to test the ground before you ask for the order like “How do you see your company benefiting from our offer?” “How much do you think you could save by using us?” Imagine if this could attract 20% more business, it might be worth considering, mightn’t it? (i.e. an open-ended question or a tie down question).