cold calling
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Top 3 Keys to Convert Phone Calls to Meetings
- April 6, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I had just finished speaking in Bozeman, Montana and was sitting in a delicious little breakfast cafe (think cowboy truck stop). That’s when I was asked to explain how to maintain control of a cold call. Well, the environment screamed rodeo, my inner voice yelled riding and taming a bull, but my voice of reason began talking about the concept of flow, patience, listening and staying in the moment.
There are really only three primary things required to keep a call going long enough to get a disinterested prospect engaged:
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Case History – Another Pitiful Sales Cold Call Exposed
- March 2, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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Top 10 Mistakes Salespeople Make on the Phone (Funny Read)
- August 13, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Earlier this week, I wrote the “Get Your Butt Out of Your Head” article. At that same tournament, I heard an even funnier story from its director. He told us about a team who went 0-7, losing each game by the mercy rule. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, if a team is losing by 12 runs or more after 4 full innings, the game is stopped, showing mercy to the team who was getting slaughtered.
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Inc Magazine Gets it Wrong on Sales Prospecting
- May 31, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In his article, he shares a systematic approach for prospecting “loosely based upon a conversation with Thomas Ray Crowel.” My interpretation of his use of the word “loosely” is that he contributed his own opinions to this systematic approach. That makes the article all the more disappointing.
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Top 5 Reasons Why Sales Cold Calls Are So Awful
- November 12, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I listened to voicemails from three salespeople who cold called me.
The good news is that three people actually made cold calls! The bad news is that not much has changed. Despite the tools, training, coaching, video, audio and reading that are available, all three calls were as bad as I’ve ever heard.
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Are Your Salespeople Still Cold Calling? The Ugly Truth
- January 25, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One thing that will never change is word of mouth. Referrals and introductions from happy customers and clients will always be the finest method for generating new business.
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10 Steps to More Sales Opportunities
- May 23, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, no fewer than 8 salespeople sent emails to me explaining that they committed to the 8 attempts rule and, as a result, had scheduled meetings with prospects they had been chasing for a long time. The key is not to only make 8 attempts, but make 8 attempts Halloween style – haunt them – 8 attempts in 8 days.
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Sales 2.0 Tools Have Their Place, But Where is It?
- November 23, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales 2.0 – I love the tools, but they don’t replace the basics.
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Overcome Call Reluctance – Get Your Salespeople to Prospect!
- June 21, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
As of yesterday, you asked your salespeople to make calls for a certain amount of time, or until they reached a certain number of attempts, conversations and appointments. Your salespeople that don’t experience anxiety over this had no problem and your call reluctant salespeople either found some other important thing to do, started but stopped, or lied.
If I apply this research to Prospecting, your reluctant salespeople are resisting as many as 4 things:
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Call Reluctance in Salespeople – Causes, Factors, and Predictors
- April 15, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Objective Management Group (OMG) has always been able to accurately (to 95%) predict whether a salesperson would succeed and provide conditions for employment. Over the years, we’ve been able to fine tune our accuracy even more as we incorporated some additional non-sales factors that made strong salespeople poor candidates for a particular role or company. Three of the most important, recent factors were: