Making Sales Calls and the Modern Phone

For the last thirty years, technology has continuously heralded the "death of the sales call".  With the invention of the answering machines, caller ID, and modern cell phones people have thought that making sales calls would become a thing of the past. Red addresses this and talks about how you survive in the modern age. 

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Transcript

Hey, broken salespeople. So today we want to talk about making sales calls. That's on this episode of the broken salespeople podcast.
Hey, broken sales people. Welcome to the workshop. My name is Red Stafstrom. And we are here to help you fix your broken sales skills. So today I'm going to talk about something that's probably a little controversial, huh? Not really, in the sales field. And I'm going to say something upfront, that's not going to make me a lot of friends, especially with management. So let me get it out very quickly. Phone calls are not dead. But that doesn't mean they're not dying. I'll let you sit with that one for a moment. Phone calls are not dead, but they are dying. Now let me explain. First, people have been calling for the death of phone calls as a sales tactic for probably 30 years now, since the invention of voicemail caller ID answering machines. All of that people have been screaming, the sky is falling. We screamed about the wolves coming in the wolves have finally come. It's we cannot ignore the situation we are in home phone call lines are pretty much non existent. Most people who I know who have a home phone line, do so to find their cell phone. They aren't really using the home phone very often anymore. In terms of answering the phone answering the phone has been lower. Even though we have one in our pocket all hours of the day. The answering and returning of calls has gotten to be quite frankly abysmal. In terms of the reply rate. Anybody who works in sales, particularly in collections, you know this, you know how often you are leaving voicemails, as opposed to actually talking to customers. But we need to first discuss what the real goal of sales is. The objective of any sale revolves around talking to a person it revolves around, getting in front of somebody talking about their problems, talking about their needs, and solving them for that person. That is sales. And if you can get people on the phone, you have an opportunity to do that very thing. You have the opportunity to talk about their needs, their problems, their wants, their desires, their deepest, most insecurities, and how they still hold their favorite stuffed animal at night. But you can't do that without a conversation. So the phone is not dead, it is still a way to get a conversation. The question is, does it allow the best conversation anymore? And what is the rate of getting that conversation to actually happen? You can easily argue that those have been going down for years and years. I mentioned voicemails answering machines caller IDs. What I didn't mention is iOS update 13. iOS 13 came out in September of 2019. And it allowed and frustrated many of us in the sales field, particularly if you work in say like a collections industry or a telemarketing industry. If you go into the settings of any iPhone app with a the iOS 13 or newer, you'll find a checkmark that you could select. And in that check mark, it says that any phone calls that come in and it's an unknown number, meaning it's not already in their contacts list. It will go directly to voicemail. Any number any phone call that comes into an iPhone with iOS 13 or newer, if selected, will go direct to voicemail, they do not even have the opportunity to answer the phone. Now the Google Pixel has something similar as well. And I believe Samsung has that option since September 2019. Both Google and Samsung have added that into their software. This is a severe issue for those of us who want to have phone calls and make cold calls. We can't do that the way we used to the frequency of actually getting hold of that person has dropped down considerably because now you're left with needing to get that voicemail needing to have them respond to that voicemail. So now I've been the negative Nancy for the last X number of minutes and we have to talk about how we make what we have worked Because phone calls still do work, you're still able to have that conversation, and you still need to sell. So how do you do that? How do you do that with
the new restrictions? Like? caller ID like the iOS updates? How do you figure out how to have that conversation and move the conversation forward? One is you have to get very good at getting them to return the voicemails. In a previous episode I discussed fujis not like more in hell on them. FUG i e s, fear of loss, urgency, greed, indifference, effective Jones, and suggestion of power. If all you do is give them Hey, my name is blank with blank, I want to talk to you about x, give me a call back, you're not going to get any response because you haven't created any impulse you haven't created any need. So you need to leverage the fujis fear of loss, urgency, greed, indifference, effective Jones and suggestion of power. In order to get them to call back. One of my favorites that works for almost everybody is urgency. Talk to them about if they don't take care of things. Now, if they do not call you back in a select area, they will not be able to talk to you. Now if they call you a little afterwards, you don't care, you're still answering the phone no matter what. But you want to give them the impression that the window is closing. A simple way to do this, hey, I'm going to be at bah bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, for the next 30 to 45 minutes, give me a call soon. They know if they do not call you now, they may not be able to get ahold of you again. Now, will this work? 100% of the time? Of course not. But it's going to up your percentage of getting that call back. Make sure you're using that. But also leverage those other things, the fear of loss, hey, we have to take care of this before the deal goes array urgency 30 to 45 minutes, greed, we may be able to save you money on blank. indifference, hey, I'm here to offer you this. If you don't want it, that's fine. Just want to make sure I check you off the list. If that's the case, effective Jones, Hey, I just spoke to a company very similar to yours about it worked out really well. I want to see if it can help you to suggestion of power. I am an expert in blank. And I am here to see if I could help you with blank. All of those are the different impulses that you can use on a voicemail to try to get a call back. Now let's say you get somebody on the phone up, you've done something less common than it was 10 years ago. How do you leverage things the right way? Well, the problem is too many people that I talked to too many salespeople in these cold calling arena, in sales in general, set the goal too far ahead. People who answer the phone tends not to do things, they tend not to just talk on the phone, they're probably doing multiple things at once. I know when I'm talking on the phone, there is a decent chance I'm also checking email that I may be scrolling Facebook, I may be holding a baby or cleaning the kitchen. There's a lot of different things that I may be doing while talking on the phone, driving, I know I shouldn't, but I do all of those things, you realize that you do not have their full attention. What the first sale is, is making sure that's what you have. It's not about getting their money. It's not about getting them to sign a contract or agree to look at your video or anything else. your very first sale is get their pure, undivided attention. Now, if you do that over the phone, it may not happen in a single phone call. You have to be comfortable with that. You have to know that sometimes you have to push things ahead. And you have to bargain with them to say hey, I know that you're probably busy. I know you're doing a million things at once and I interrupted your busy schedule show that deference. I want to set up a time where we can talk for 10 minutes. That's it. If I can help great If not, we'll talk about how that's what you want to set up. You want to take away scoring the touchdown. What you want to do with score first down you just want to move the conversation forward with the phone. Now you can set up a time where you have their undivided attention, whether it's on a zoom call, whether it's another phone call, where they won't be distracted. Or whether it's you going to their office in person, all of those things are great to do. But your first sale is always going to be
for their undivided attention. And you need to know that you're you cannot start and jump directly into your pitch. You need to offer them enough to get them to stop what they're doing. And flat out ask them, Hey, can we do something where I know you're not distracted by 15 other things, because that's part of the human condition in 2021, you need to make sure your first sale is for their undivided attention. So is this phone dead? Not at all. It's just different. The same way you can no longer post ads in a magazine anymore. Now you post that same ad, but it's on Facebook. Now it's on Instagram, the idea that concept is the exact same. You just have to do it a little bit differently. Know what you're doing, talk in a different way, sell their undivided attention. That's what you really want from them. It's not money yet. Make sure you set up a time where you can make sure they're not distracted by all the things their life and their business has to offer. And you can talk and be very blunt and very honest about whether or not you can help. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. Hopefully it's a little bit different than you here with a lot of other sales trainers. Please take the time to review. If you're on YouTube to subscribe. I know Apple has taken away Subscribe for the moment. But following all of those different things, all of them help the channel quite a bit. And until next time, go fix yourself