Sales Tips on Cold Calling

Cold calling sales tips is something I decided to write about after reading an article in Inc. Magazine. The article was about David Rosen. He sells $500,000 worth of wine a year to private individuals across the country. This guy loves and lives on making cold calls.

David is extremely enthusiastic about his work and about the wine he sells. Aside from his enthusiasm I really like the simplicity of his approach and that’s what I want to share with you.

Now get this, his first question to his sales prospect is, “Do you like wine?” It’s elegant simplicity – isn’t it?

Look, I realize unless you sell wine, you can’t use this question. What you can do is create a question that works like David’s question in your business.

Among other things, I sell sales training programs emphasizing No-brainer selling skills. If I am talking with the sales prospect I certainly wouldn’t ask a question, “Do you like wine?”

However, I could ask, “Are you a salespeople overtrained?” Another way to ask this question is, “How many of your salespeople are overtrained?”

It took me five minutes to create these questions. I’m sure I can think of even better questions to ask and the point is so can you. Where do you find your leads in your business? You should give this serious thought and maybe even take a page from David Rosen’s book.

Rosen reads the letters columns of wine magazines, searches wine blogs, and does creative Google searches for new leads. He’s good at doing his homework which the Internet makes a lot easier.

Another cold calling sales tip from David Rosen involves gatekeepers. He says, “Don’t feel the need to get past the gatekeeper the first time.”

He uses this first call to collect information. After several attempts to reach a person you might leave a voicemail message introducing himself as that “persistently optimistic wine guide before leaving his elevator speech and his telephone number.

I believe this next sales tip is extremely important. Rosen says “You should learn your script then ditch it.” Impossible to sound professional when you’re rambling.

Here’s something else Rosen does not you might the able to adapt to your business. He promises to send an e-mail follow-up restating his services. He also tells the prospect it will come from “David your wine guy!” That’s a clever way to brand yourself during the first phone call.

He also knows how to get referrals from his customers. He must because 81% of his sales in 2009 came from referrals.

He knows exactly how to ask for referrals. He simply says, “Now that you’ve got a feel for what I do and my style, who else do you think might be interested in The Wine Guy?”

Here are a few more cold calling sales tips for you.

Imagine just before your next cold call you turned on the switch.

- You turned on the switch to smiling.

- You turned on the switch to positive thinking.

- You turned on the switch to positive expectations.

- You turned on the switch to solving your customer’s problems.

- You turned on the switch to high energy and lots of enthusiasm.

You see it’s because very few people are always smiling, always thinking positively, always have positive expectations, always focused on solving problems, and always have high energy and lots of enthusiasm – that you have to turn it on, you have to turn the switch on.

This switch is not automatic – it’s manual and you have to turn it on. Using this switch turns cold calling into warm calling.

The secret to attracting more business is as easy as A, B, C!

The next time you’re cold calling, try saying “SHOW TIME” before you pick up the phone and see what a difference it makes.

It’s “SHOW TIME!”

You’ll have success written all over your face – as soon as you say “SHOW TIME.”

Do this and you’ll discover how cold calling can be fun and profitable for you.

Remember – you gotta look good and you gotta sound good too!

Jim Meisenheimer is the creator of the No-brainer Selling Skills Boot Camps.
Learn more here: http://meisenheimer.com/info/bootcamp.htm

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