How to make effective sales calls?

What is an effective sales call?

An effective sales call is one that takes the customer from introduction to purchasing your product or service. This isn’t about bashing the customer over the head with your pitch until they submit. Professional selling is about helping the customer to fulfil their want or need. The reality is the not every prospect you speak to is going to want or need your offering, and this is why we qualify leads.

Effective Sales Process

As I have written about before the sales cycle is a four step process. You start with the introduction which is where you introduce yourself, your company and product/service. If you are having a problem here, you need to work out if you are targeting the right prospects or if your hook is strong enough to pique their interest.

The next step is to move to the need or want find, this is to find out the motivation of the customer. Now a lot of products fit into either a pain product like insurance or a want product like cars, so you will focus your questions around those motivations. You should be curious about the prospects business, ask open questions and genuinely want to help them. Make sure you ask the right questions as no one wants someone who wastes their time, they want a constructive conversation.

The next step is to then provide answers or solutions to any pain points for the customer through the use of features and benefits. Always remember that any feature of your product should followed up with a benefit which suits them. People do not buy features, they buy how it benefits them, so make sure you make a list of useful benefits of your product or service.

Last, but by no means least is the close. Ask for the business, you will be looking for indicators that they want to buy, such as how they pay, what colour it comes in, do they receive their documents by email or post etc. If they want to proceed they will indicator it in the sales calls.

Why are sales calls effective?

Sales calls are effective as prospects still want to speak to people over the phone. There are so many different ways to communicate with potential prospects and with todays methods it is easier to qualify them. Which means that you have more selling time than ever before.

Once upon a time, sales people would have to find their own leads and qualify them. What an ineffective use of time this was, now using various verticals customers will get in contact about your company. The emphasis now is more focussed on the skills of the sales person, never fear, as everyone can learn sales skills and master them.

Through making more calls and learning from each one, you will learn to make effective sales calls. Find out where you got to in your pitch, and what you can change on the next call, this is all part of purposeful practice. We can always progress and get better at our role, growth is key.

Want to get better at sales calls?

If you want to get better at sales calls, the key to it is to keep making them and learning from each one. If you keep doing the same thing, you are likely to get the same result, so change it up if it not as effective as you want it to be. Using purposeful practice and knowledge of the sales process and your product you will be on the road to success.

If you are interested in coaching on effective sales calls, writing scripts for your product or service, then please get in contact and we can see how we can help you.