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[E66] Telesales Week: Get on the phone
I finally did it on the show…made a
whole week about telesales = telephone sales.
Most of my sales career has been using
the telephone as the primary (sending emails and texts don’t count, those can’t
close actual deals) tool.
If you have been listening to the show
for a while you hear me talk about phone related sales principals.
Here is a full week of episodes about
telesales/inside sales.
The first topic to cover? Might seem
like a ‘no duh’ subject, but it’s missed by most inside salespeople – being on
the phone most of the work day.
If you are not winning in your telesales
career, the first place to look is the % of your day that you are actually on
the phone.
Episode 66 – Transcript
Hello and welcome to another
week of the sales experience podcast. This is telesales week.
Welcome to episode 66 what is
telesales? It means you’re doing sales over the phone, also referred to as
inside sales. This would be compared to outside sales or retail where you’re
meeting people face to face, you’re interacting with them either going directly
to them or they’re coming to you in some kind of dealership or retail store
location, office.
This is inside sales, meaning
you’re inside reaching out to people in particular over the telephone. Now why
would I spend a whole week on this? Because there’s a lot of things that apply
to just telephone sales. In my experience and my focus where I’ve been a lot of
my career, which has been in call centres, working with sales teams both in
past careers as well as now with consulting and working with clients.
And keep in mind if you’re
not in telephone sales, so you’re in retail, you’re in some kind of face to
face meetings, let’s say mortgage or real estate, or you’re more on the consultative
side where maybe you do some telephone calls with clients, but not at a high
rate of volume.
These principles could still
apply to you. My goal is to have all of these kind of gems in the conversations
be applicable to anybody who’s in sales. You can take them out and apply them
to you, so keep that in mind as you listen to these episodes. Even if you’re
not working in a call centre, this still could help you out.
That’s my goal. Now, what do
I want to talk about on the first episode of Telesales Week? Just get into it.
It’s going to sound really basic. It’s going to sound silly. When I talk about
this to trainees and new groups or even sales reps who are struggling, they all
kind of laugh because they think I’ve lost it.
It’s too basic thing is, keep
in mind if you’re in a call centre, if you’re an inside sales, the phone is
your tool to closing deals and so it’s a phone job and your job is to be on the
phone. That’s basically it. We could end the episode right now.
That’s the main part. If
you’re in a sales role that requires the phone use the phone the majority of
the time. Now what do I mean? Here’s what I see a lot. I see a lot of sales
people in call centres or in cubicles or in offices where their phone is their
primary tool and they don’t spend a lot of time of their day on the phone.
They’re doing other things.
They have meetings, they’re
preparing, they’re sending emails, they’re sending texts to clients, they’re
preparing to make phone calls, and they’re preparing to send emails. They’re
following up after phone calls and doing a lot of admin stuff.
They’re spending a lot of
their time doing everything but being on the phone. If your job is to close
deals over the phone, you should be on the phone the majority of the time.
Now, keep in mind, and I’m
going to go to the other end of the spectrum, is if you have an eight hour day,
so nine hours minus lunch breaks, whatever that is, let’s say out of an eight
hour productive time on the floor at your desk where you should be working out
of those eight hours, it’s not reasonable or even responsible to expect eight
hours of phone time.
If you’re on the phone eight
hours a day out of eight hours, at some point you’ll burn out. You’ll melt your
brain. You will lose your voice, which I’ve seen people do as well since you
can’t sustain that. Now, some days you’ll have that where it’s literally
nonstop back to back.
Lots of phone calls. Maybe
it’s eight hours out of eight hours that you’re on the phone and just on fire
and you’ll find that that works really well. It feels great, but you can’t
sustain it. I’m going to guess the next day you’re going to come in tired,
burnt out. You can do that a few days a week, but you can’t do that five days a
week.
It’s just a high level.
That’s just impossible, right? If we talk about athletes, athletes can perform
at a very high level for those 48 minutes of the basketball game and then
downtime and even in addition to that, they also have an off season where
literally they’re recuperating for three months doing some practice, keeping in
shape, working on some skills, but not playing games all the time.
So they have an off season,
which most salespeople don’t have an off season. Most professionals don’t have
an off season, so keep that in mind.
So I’m not saying out of an
eight hour day should be on the phone eight hours. What I’m saying is based on
my experience for most people out of an eight hour day, if you want to be
successful, if you want to hit your numbers, if you want to make money, if you
want to achieve the goals that you have on your vision board and why you come
to work every day and what’s driving you, then you should be on the phone at
least five hours a day.
Talk time of five hours a day
on average. Now, of course, you’ll have your good days where everybody answers,
all of your appointments show up or you get lots of phone calls coming in and
they’re all successful. It’s easy to hit that five hours. Then you have other
days where it’s just a rough contact day. You’re making 150 outbound calls and
nobody’s answering.
You’re leaving 150 messages
for 150 minutes of talk time, so you’re on the phone for two and a half hours.
That happens. As long as you’re putting in the effort and you’re keep trying
for those eight hours. It’s all about the long term.
How are you averaging for the
week and what are you doing each day? Again, this may seem like a silly topic
for me to literally spend this first episode of telesales week telling you that
if you have a phone job that you should be on the phone.
Most of the time might sound
silly, but again, I’m saying this based on my experience of seeing so many reps
in so many different offices and call centres where they just aren’t on the
phone. If you’re managing a sales team, you know this, it’s a constant battle
to get people to be on the phone and the solution for this is if you’re
struggling with being on the phone, majority of the time you need to do some
self-assessment and figure out exactly why you’re procrastinating.
Why are you struggling? There’s
something that’s keeping you from being on the phone, and I talked about a lot
of stuff last week in mind set. I’ve talked about it before with having a y,
the vision board that I mentioned.
He has a lot of things that
go into it, but what is it that you’re afraid of? Why are you procrastinating?
Are you unhappier in your position? Do you not have the right tools? There’s
something that’s keeping you from being on the phone and that’s really what you
want to address.
It’s not about management
telling you to be on the phone. It’s about you wanting to be on the phone
because you understand that’s the greatest tool that you have to be successful.
One thing see people do is they try to take the easy way out. They want to send
emails. They want to send text messages or chats to prospects and turn them
into clients.
That doesn’t work. You can’t
enrol anybody into something whenever you’re trying to sell via email. SMS Chat
doesn’t work. Now you could sell somebody into something that’s a commodity if
you’re just an order taker and people will just buy it that way, but if you’re
trying to enrol somebody into something that takes some kind of conversation,
you can’t do it via those methods. You have to do it over the phone or face to
face.
It just doesn’t work. It’s
like a relationship in any other way. Let’s say a personal relationship where
you’re trying to get somebody to agree to a date. You might get the date via
email or SMS or chat, whatever that might be. However, there’s still got to be
a date, there’s got to be a conversation, and there’s got to be something in
order to see if it’s a good fit and maybe move that forward.
Same thing with telephone
sales. It’s all about the phone, so make sure you’re spending the majority of
your time on the phone. I can’t stress that enough. If you’re not finding the
success that you need, look at how much talk time you have, how much effort
you’re really putting in, and if you’re not doing that effort and that level of
work that’s needed, why not? So keep that in mind.
All right, hope that helps.
Please make sure to subscribe wherever you’re downloading these podcasts from
iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Spotify, Google, play music, the cutter
consulting group.com website. And if you’re a sales manager or team leader and owner
who has a sales team and you are seeing that your sales reps are struggling
with being on the phone the majority of the time to get the efforts that they
need and they’re struggling with that, please let me know.
Please chat with me through
the cutter consultant group.com website or go to LinkedIn and find me on there.
Send me a message. Let’s get on a phone call. There’s lots of different ways I
can help figure out why that’s happening and then how we get everyone excited
to use the phone as the wonderful, amazing tool that it is and still is.
A lot of people think phone
calls are dead and nobody wants to talk on the phone, but that’s just
fundamentally not true. Still. A lot of people, even millennials, still want to
do some stuff over the phone, want to have that human connection and it’s so
important. So let me help your team. That’s it for another episode of the sales
experience podcast.
Always, remember that
everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.
View all episodes
By Jason Cutter
4.9
3535 ratings
I finally did it on the show…made a
whole week about telesales = telephone sales.
Most of my sales career has been using
the telephone as the primary (sending emails and texts don’t count, those can’t
close actual deals) tool.
If you have been listening to the show
for a while you hear me talk about phone related sales principals.
Here is a full week of episodes about
telesales/inside sales.
The first topic to cover? Might seem
like a ‘no duh’ subject, but it’s missed by most inside salespeople – being on
the phone most of the work day.
If you are not winning in your telesales
career, the first place to look is the % of your day that you are actually on
the phone.
Episode 66 – Transcript
Hello and welcome to another
week of the sales experience podcast. This is telesales week.
Welcome to episode 66 what is
telesales? It means you’re doing sales over the phone, also referred to as
inside sales. This would be compared to outside sales or retail where you’re
meeting people face to face, you’re interacting with them either going directly
to them or they’re coming to you in some kind of dealership or retail store
location, office.
This is inside sales, meaning
you’re inside reaching out to people in particular over the telephone. Now why
would I spend a whole week on this? Because there’s a lot of things that apply
to just telephone sales. In my experience and my focus where I’ve been a lot of
my career, which has been in call centres, working with sales teams both in
past careers as well as now with consulting and working with clients.
And keep in mind if you’re
not in telephone sales, so you’re in retail, you’re in some kind of face to
face meetings, let’s say mortgage or real estate, or you’re more on the consultative
side where maybe you do some telephone calls with clients, but not at a high
rate of volume.
These principles could still
apply to you. My goal is to have all of these kind of gems in the conversations
be applicable to anybody who’s in sales. You can take them out and apply them
to you, so keep that in mind as you listen to these episodes. Even if you’re
not working in a call centre, this still could help you out.
That’s my goal. Now, what do
I want to talk about on the first episode of Telesales Week? Just get into it.
It’s going to sound really basic. It’s going to sound silly. When I talk about
this to trainees and new groups or even sales reps who are struggling, they all
kind of laugh because they think I’ve lost it.
It’s too basic thing is, keep
in mind if you’re in a call centre, if you’re an inside sales, the phone is
your tool to closing deals and so it’s a phone job and your job is to be on the
phone. That’s basically it. We could end the episode right now.
That’s the main part. If
you’re in a sales role that requires the phone use the phone the majority of
the time. Now what do I mean? Here’s what I see a lot. I see a lot of sales
people in call centres or in cubicles or in offices where their phone is their
primary tool and they don’t spend a lot of time of their day on the phone.
They’re doing other things.
They have meetings, they’re
preparing, they’re sending emails, they’re sending texts to clients, they’re
preparing to make phone calls, and they’re preparing to send emails. They’re
following up after phone calls and doing a lot of admin stuff.
They’re spending a lot of
their time doing everything but being on the phone. If your job is to close
deals over the phone, you should be on the phone the majority of the time.
Now, keep in mind, and I’m
going to go to the other end of the spectrum, is if you have an eight hour day,
so nine hours minus lunch breaks, whatever that is, let’s say out of an eight
hour productive time on the floor at your desk where you should be working out
of those eight hours, it’s not reasonable or even responsible to expect eight
hours of phone time.
If you’re on the phone eight
hours a day out of eight hours, at some point you’ll burn out. You’ll melt your
brain. You will lose your voice, which I’ve seen people do as well since you
can’t sustain that. Now, some days you’ll have that where it’s literally
nonstop back to back.
Lots of phone calls. Maybe
it’s eight hours out of eight hours that you’re on the phone and just on fire
and you’ll find that that works really well. It feels great, but you can’t
sustain it. I’m going to guess the next day you’re going to come in tired,
burnt out. You can do that a few days a week, but you can’t do that five days a
week.
It’s just a high level.
That’s just impossible, right? If we talk about athletes, athletes can perform
at a very high level for those 48 minutes of the basketball game and then
downtime and even in addition to that, they also have an off season where
literally they’re recuperating for three months doing some practice, keeping in
shape, working on some skills, but not playing games all the time.
So they have an off season,
which most salespeople don’t have an off season. Most professionals don’t have
an off season, so keep that in mind.
So I’m not saying out of an
eight hour day should be on the phone eight hours. What I’m saying is based on
my experience for most people out of an eight hour day, if you want to be
successful, if you want to hit your numbers, if you want to make money, if you
want to achieve the goals that you have on your vision board and why you come
to work every day and what’s driving you, then you should be on the phone at
least five hours a day.
Talk time of five hours a day
on average. Now, of course, you’ll have your good days where everybody answers,
all of your appointments show up or you get lots of phone calls coming in and
they’re all successful. It’s easy to hit that five hours. Then you have other
days where it’s just a rough contact day. You’re making 150 outbound calls and
nobody’s answering.
You’re leaving 150 messages
for 150 minutes of talk time, so you’re on the phone for two and a half hours.
That happens. As long as you’re putting in the effort and you’re keep trying
for those eight hours. It’s all about the long term.
How are you averaging for the
week and what are you doing each day? Again, this may seem like a silly topic
for me to literally spend this first episode of telesales week telling you that
if you have a phone job that you should be on the phone.
Most of the time might sound
silly, but again, I’m saying this based on my experience of seeing so many reps
in so many different offices and call centres where they just aren’t on the
phone. If you’re managing a sales team, you know this, it’s a constant battle
to get people to be on the phone and the solution for this is if you’re
struggling with being on the phone, majority of the time you need to do some
self-assessment and figure out exactly why you’re procrastinating.
Why are you struggling? There’s
something that’s keeping you from being on the phone, and I talked about a lot
of stuff last week in mind set. I’ve talked about it before with having a y,
the vision board that I mentioned.
He has a lot of things that
go into it, but what is it that you’re afraid of? Why are you procrastinating?
Are you unhappier in your position? Do you not have the right tools? There’s
something that’s keeping you from being on the phone and that’s really what you
want to address.
It’s not about management
telling you to be on the phone. It’s about you wanting to be on the phone
because you understand that’s the greatest tool that you have to be successful.
One thing see people do is they try to take the easy way out. They want to send
emails. They want to send text messages or chats to prospects and turn them
into clients.
That doesn’t work. You can’t
enrol anybody into something whenever you’re trying to sell via email. SMS Chat
doesn’t work. Now you could sell somebody into something that’s a commodity if
you’re just an order taker and people will just buy it that way, but if you’re
trying to enrol somebody into something that takes some kind of conversation,
you can’t do it via those methods. You have to do it over the phone or face to
face.
It just doesn’t work. It’s
like a relationship in any other way. Let’s say a personal relationship where
you’re trying to get somebody to agree to a date. You might get the date via
email or SMS or chat, whatever that might be. However, there’s still got to be
a date, there’s got to be a conversation, and there’s got to be something in
order to see if it’s a good fit and maybe move that forward.
Same thing with telephone
sales. It’s all about the phone, so make sure you’re spending the majority of
your time on the phone. I can’t stress that enough. If you’re not finding the
success that you need, look at how much talk time you have, how much effort
you’re really putting in, and if you’re not doing that effort and that level of
work that’s needed, why not? So keep that in mind.
All right, hope that helps.
Please make sure to subscribe wherever you’re downloading these podcasts from
iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Spotify, Google, play music, the cutter
consulting group.com website. And if you’re a sales manager or team leader and owner
who has a sales team and you are seeing that your sales reps are struggling
with being on the phone the majority of the time to get the efforts that they
need and they’re struggling with that, please let me know.
Please chat with me through
the cutter consultant group.com website or go to LinkedIn and find me on there.
Send me a message. Let’s get on a phone call. There’s lots of different ways I
can help figure out why that’s happening and then how we get everyone excited
to use the phone as the wonderful, amazing tool that it is and still is.
A lot of people think phone
calls are dead and nobody wants to talk on the phone, but that’s just
fundamentally not true. Still. A lot of people, even millennials, still want to
do some stuff over the phone, want to have that human connection and it’s so
important. So let me help your team. That’s it for another episode of the sales
experience podcast.
Always, remember that
everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.