Authentic Persuasion Show

[E54] Q&A Week: How to prepare for a sales call

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In this episode I answer:

  • What is the best way to prepare for a sales call?

If you have any sales or mindset related questions, send

me a message through the contact page
or via LinkedIn.

Episode 54 – Transcript

[Coming Soon]

Hello

and welcome to Episode 54 of The Sales Experience Podcast. My name again is
Jason Cutter. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this wherever you
download it from wherever you find podcast.

It’s

on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Play podcast. It’s on the CutterConsultingGroup.com website.
It’s on Castillo’s, it’s everywhere I could possibly put it.

If

you can’t find it, you’re not sure where it is, or it’s not where you normally
download it, send me a message through the CutterConsultingGroup.com
website or through LinkedIn. Let me know where you’d like to find it, what
would be easiest for you, I’ll make sure to get it on there as soon as
possible.

When

you’re subscribing if possible, rate it, leave a comment, all of that helps so
much. I love that and I appreciate it very much. It helps other people see what
the show is about what the value they could get and helps me with my focus and
mission to change the landscape for sales and how sales is done.

The

reason why if you’re new to the show, or if it’s been a while since you
listened the beginning one, the reason why I call this the sales experience
podcast is that my goal is to change the sales experience from the customer
side, as well as how sales people do it.

So,

what sales people are focused on in order to close sales, doing things in the
right way for themselves so that they can sleep at night, as well as to help
customers help prospects help those leads, convert from a prospect into a
paying customer, a client. And not just that, not just being a customer, but
becoming an advocate, a raving fan.

Somebody

who is so happy that they could and might shout from the mountains and tell
everybody they know about the kind of experience they had with you, which was
totally different than what they were worried about. It’s totally different
than what they feared what happened when interacting with a salesperson and
what they were going to get and what they’ve always heard stories about or what
other salespeople have done to them in the past that they regretted.

Because

we’ve all had that experience where we come across somebody who has their
intentions in mind, that salespersons using manipulation, trying to get their
way trying to close the sale so they could get paid or keep their job or
whatever it is, and the person walks away. I’ve walked away thinking, “Oh my gosh,
what did I just do? That was a mistake, either. How do I undo this? Or how do I
make sure nobody finds out that I made this mistake? I don’t want anyone to
know I bought this and I screwed up.”

So

that’s my focus, that’s my mission. I just want to recap that because it’s been
a while since I talked about you may be wondering, who’s this crazy guy? Why
does he call this a sales experience podcast? And why is he answering sales
related questions?

And

that’s the reason, that’s my mission and focus is to change the landscape of
everyone who’s in sales, get more people to see themselves as a sales
professional. So, stop doing what maybe they’re taught, or they learn or they
see in movies, or they understand to be what is sales, but it’s not really a sales
professional way of being.

And

that’s why I’m answering these questions. Well, because this kind of covers
lots of different things. And at some point, I’m going to get back to some
theme weeks, where I go hard on a specific topic and dissect it for five days
in a row.

For

now we’re going through questions. So hopefully, that helps get you caught up.
Let me get into some questions here with time I have left.

So

the first one is what’s the best way to prepare for a sales call?

Now,

of course, this depends just like any of these questions that I have, where it
depends on what you sell, and what that process looks like. If you’re a sales
person who’s let’s say on a dialer, your telemarketing, you’re cold calling, or
you’re taking inbound calls, and you have a shorter sales cycle.

So,

you’re dealing business to consumer, directly with consumers, then preparing
for that sales call is about having your script in front of you. Knowing your
script and understanding it what you’re going to say whether it’s a written
script, or whether it’s in your head, you want to make sure you sound smooth.

Now,

you don’t want to sound salesy, and you don’t want to sound inappropriate with
it. Right, you don’t necessarily have to be perfectly polished and perfectly
smooth. But if you have a script that’s written and you’re supposed to be
reading it and all you’re doing is stumbling, people are going to hang up on
you before giving you a chance, because you’re just going to sound bad.

You’re

going to sound unprofessional and it’s going to freak them out, it’s going to
worry them about wanting to give you money for your product or service, if you
can’t even get through your intro or through your script.

So,

if that means before you take a single phone call or make a single phone call,
if you’ve got to take that script, if possible, take it home and roll your
significant other, call your parents and sell it to them, enroll your dog.
Whatever it is, go through it as many times as it takes for it to sound more
natural.

Again,

you don’t have to be perfectly perfect. Being too perfect will also trigger
people to freak out. Your prospects that are going to worry that maybe you’re
just a slick salesperson that’s out to get them. But you also don’t want to sound
like a complete bumbling idiot.

Like,

honestly, that’s just the way it is. So, have that available, have it in your
head, have it smooth. Even if you’re reading it, I’m totally okay and
supportive. And I’ve even done this in the past where I’ve written a script,
and then I read it word for word just to stay on track.

There’s

nothing wrong with reading the script, as long as you can still make it sound
natural. Okay. So, that’s one thing to prepare. Another one is obviously
knowing enough about your product, your service, what it is that you’re
offering, and the solution that it provides.

What

problem is it solving? What can it do for your prospects, and what type of
prospects benefit the most from that? So depending on what you’re selling, and
this is a whole host of things, it’s tough to say in a general sense.

But

based on what you’re selling, how does it solve their problem? What problem
does it solve? How is it better for them than any other solution out there,
including doing nothing? And then what’s the pain points, and then where’s the
urgency? Where’s the urgency in creating that?

And

I covered that early on the week that I had recovered about respect and
empathy, trust, hope and urgency. So make sure you cover all of that, make sure
you listen to those episodes because that will set up the framework of the fundamentals
of what you want to make sure is included in your conversations in sales.

So

that’s how to prepare. Also understand the lead sources. So, whether you’re
making outbound calls or receiving inbound calls, where are those leads coming
from? What are those people know about you before speaking with you?

Whether

they saw an ad, or they filled out a form, or they got a call from some other
person and it’s being transferred to you, you’ve got to understand that message
because your single job, especially in the beginning of that conversation, is
to be a continuation of whatever they saw, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s
somebody else, whether it’s person that set an appointment for you, and now
you’re doing a follow up call; your conversation has to be a continuation of
whatever was said or expectations that were said.

Whether

it was again, you in an ad or over the phone or by somebody or by an email, it
needs to be contiguous because if not, it will set off alarms to the prospect
as well. They need to see you as an extension of whatever they heard or seen or
read about the company before then. And you have to know that for any lead
sources that are generating calls for you are leads for you to call out on. So,
that’s super important.

Now,

if you’re on a more of a business to business or a long sales cycle kind of
role, then you have to take all of that which I just covered. And then there’s
also preparing for the sales call by doing a lot of research or the necessary
research to understand who it is that you’re calling.

So,

if it’s a business to business calling your calling a business owner, or VP of
Marketing or whoever that is, you need to know who you’re calling, why you’re
calling what their specific issues might be that you’re trying to solve, and
where their pain points might be. And then how you’re going to have the
conversation go when you get them on the phone.

Now

keep in mind, a lot of people use a lot of rapport building that may or may not
work for you. So, you may or may not need to research, okay, they like fishing
or they like sports, this is their favorite city they go to, this is their
favorite kind of food, whatever that is. You may or may not need to go into
that detail which a lot of sales people think they do. But just do all of that
research before getting into.

Now,

over time, when you’ve done a sales job enough, or you’ve been in the role long
enough, you’ll find that your prep time before a sales call goes down, and goes
down and down and down over time. Such that sometimes you can just get on the
phone without any prep because you know how to handle any situation that comes
up and you can go on the fly.

So,

just keep that in mind. When you’re new, it’s going to be more prep. But be
careful because I see a lot of people, especially new salespeople, and I
covered about this in the behavior weeks as well. Especially the analysts is
you’ll get stuck in analysis paralysis, trying to prepare for every situation
that could happen on a call, every option, every direction could go, writing
out your intro, writing out your questions, writing out all the information
about a prospect of the marketing, having your objections ready, having
everything good to go and you’re preparing so much.

It’s

like when somebody goes to the shooting range, and it’s like ready, aim, aim,
aim, aim, aim, aim. Ready, aim. Ready. Okay. Now let’s go to lunch. Okay,
Ready, aim, aim. And it’s just that and there’s never fire. So, you got to keep
that in mind and be careful.

I’ve

seen that before. I’ve even got stuck in that loop before where you’re just
thinking of every single scenario so much that you don’t actually pull the
trigger and either make that call or make yourself available for the call, or
go knock on that door or go walk into that business, whatever it is. And so you’ve
got to make sure you just do enough prep to get it going and then see how it
goes.

And

also keep in mind, in the beginning, especially if you’re new to sales in that
role with that company, in the beginning, it’s going to suck. In the beginning,
it’s going to be rough. You’re going to have marbles in your mouth, you’re not
going to be prepared for every single option.

All

of that comes only with experience. So, you’ve got to give yourself the
latitude to go out there, give it a shot, fall on your face, sometimes, mess
up, learn some lessons, take some mental and physical notes afterwards. Watch
the game tape which I covered early on in the podcast episodes. Watch that
footage, listen to the recording, listen to your calls, make some adjustments and
keep doing it.

Just

understand that over time you keep doing it and keep trying to get better, you
will get better. Hopefully, that helps and preparing for your sales calls,
whatever you’re selling, whether it’s business to consumer business to business.

And

that’s it for another episode. Again, make sure to subscribe, rate, share, send
me comments. Spread this to everyone that you know as much as possible. And as
always remember that everything in life is sales and people will remember the
experience you gave them.

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