Lackadaisical selling by phone doesn’t work: Be prepared

Do you know what the characteristics of a lackadaisical selling effort are?

We all want to believe that we are the best at what we do.

Unfortunately you don’t get to decide that, your sales prospects and customers do!

Having a lackadaisical selling effort is nothing to be proud of.

Being lackadaisical simply means you show a lack of interest or spirit. If you have a bad case of it, you might appear to be indifferent, listless, and even languid.

Salespeople who have a lackadaisical selling effort every day usually have one or more of these characteristics:

1. No written “To do” list. In sales, nothing will get you into more trouble than wandering around aimlessly throughout your selling day.

To be organized you have to get organized which means having a prioritized and written list of things you want to do every day. Plain and simple.

2. No written script for making cold calls. Look, making cold calls to new sales prospects isn’t easy and it usually isn’t much fun. But if you’re in sales, you have to get over it. Your primary responsibilities as a sales representative is to secure new business.

The reason most salespeople hate making cold calls is because they don’t know how to do it the right way. The wrong way is to mumble and stumble throughout your telephone call. The right way is to prepare a script or buy a script that works like a charm for you.

3. No written sales call objectives for every sales call. This is a huge mistake. What makes it a huge mistake is that an overwhelming majority of all salespeople pick up the without any written sales call objectives.

It takes less than a minutes for a street wise sales prospect to recognize another aimless and meaningless sales call. Even worse is reading directly from a script and the cardinal sin is a bad script – think of it more as map – it shows yiu how to get their but you still need to drive it.

As soon as you start preparing written sales call objectives for every sales call you’ll immediately begin differentiating yourself from all the other salespeople who happen to call your sales prospects.

The best way to display a lackadaisical selling effort is to call up without written sales call objectives. It is 80% preparation,15% perspiration and 5% inspiration.

4. No written strategic account plans. And don’t let the word “strategic” scare you. There’s a reason why commercial airline pilots file flight plans before every flight. There’s also a reason why cruise ship captains, prepare in advance, navigational charts to guide them throughout the cruise.

It doesn’t matter where or how you write these plans. For all I care, you can write your plans on the back of an envelope. Just be sure you include what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and the timelines for everything.

Now what’s so complicated about that? RIGHT – nothing! Remember at the moment you pick up the phone you are the the brand captain, piloting your way product or service through the call.

5. No written and/or prepared sales questions. Nothing will help you to find out what keeps your customers up late at night than good open-ended sales questions.

Good sales questions will teach you everything you need to know about your sales prospects and customers.

Good sales questions will pinpoint and amplify specific customer problems. Knowing these problems makes the rest of the sales process a whole lot easier.

Good sales questions say a lot about you. Your questions show your interest and preparation. Your questions help build rapport and establish your credibility.

It’s been said you can tell the quality of the questions you’re asking by the quality of the answers you’re getting in response to your questions.

The person on the other end of the phone isn’t interested in you, the features of your product or service they are only interested in the benefits to them corporately or personally so phrase your questions with that in mind.

6. And finally – no hand written thank you notes. Don’t let a day go by that you don’t send hand written thank you notes. Most people live their lives in “e-mail.” When you send hand written note cards you’ll stand out from the crowd.

You can’t delete a personal note. In fact it’s been our experience, the people tend to hold on to the hand written note cards the get – because they get so few of them. This is also an opportunity to reinforce brand opportunities.

As you can see, there’s a common thread with all of these lackadaisical characteristics. And this common thread is a failure to put things in writing.

It’s such an easy thing to do and yet so many salespeople fail to do it.

Why is that?

Chalk it up to a lackadaisical selling effort.

Leave a Comment