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Training Tuesday:Tips for Better Sales Calling

Posted 5 years ago

Cold calling is a key part of the prospecting process for many salespeople, and it is also one of the most dreaded parts. Calling someone who has never heard of your company or thought about why they might need what you can offer will always be tricky. Below are some of our best tips to making your cold calling process less stressful and more successful.

  1. Plan, Prepare, Practice. Being prepared for each call will make the call smoother, increase your confidence and ensure that you aren’t wasting your or the prospect’s time. Research who the decision maker is, what their pain points are, who their competitors are, and what value you may be able to add that will convince them to give you a shot. Also, just as you have a prepared and practiced sales presentation for an in-person meeting, you should practice and prepare to run a smooth phone call that will ultimately encourage your prospect to meet with you in person or through further phone calls.
  2. Schedule your calls. It is important to schedule your calls for you schedule, but also around what will hopefully suit your prospects schedules. Try a variety of times – mid-morning, early afternoon, etc. – to see what gets you the greatest number of answered calls and best responses and interactions during the calls. If you notice that prospects are most receptive in the mid-afternoon, plan your day around being able to make calls at that time, don’t waste your time calling when people aren’t willing to answer.
  3. Perfect your talking-to-listening ratio. Start the call with a good opening, make sure you connect with the prospect and humanize yourself, but don’t waste too much time on small talk or introductions. Get started by getting the qualifying information you need and then listen to what the prospect is telling you. If you don’t listen, you can’t find places to add value and answer questions in a way best tailored to the prospect and their needs.
  4. Remember, the initial call is only selling them on additional calls – not on purchasing or using your services. The initial call is the time to gather information and start building the prospect’s trust. You want to make sure they feel comfortable with you and are willing to listen when you start an actual full sales pitch. Use the first call to get their attention, qualify them as a client, and prepare the information you need in order to really sell them the products or services they need.

Cold calling will never be the best part of the job, but with a little patience and practice, you’ll begin to develop an approach that works for you and your prospective client base. Having a plan for calls, and lots of practice through real calls and role-played situations, will increase your confidence and make your cold calling process much more successful.

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Training Tuesday:Controlling the Sales Call

Posted 5 years ago

Take control of the sales call, especially on the subject of price. If you can change the customer’s preconceived notions in the first five or ten minutes, then you’ve won the biggest sales battle of all. Right up front, make it clear to the prospect that the sale won’t come down to a wrestling match over price. Quickly and firmly set up an alternative framework for making the deal. If price isn’t going to be the issue, then what is? You must sell value-added. That can be selling your exceptional service and customer support, or even the strength of your personal commitment to your customers and the quality of service provided by your company.

Never concede that your company’s service and offerings are just like your competitors. Once you do, you give away your competitive edge and ability to differentiate your services. Your job is to know how and why your service is different, why that difference is important to the customer, and how to effectively communicate the importance of those differences. You can acknowledge that your competitors do something well, but never say that you do exactly the same thing. Always make sure you can prove that your services are better and will suit the needs of the customer more successfully. Once you’ve added that value, price diminishes in importance.

Of course, a customer will always tell you that they buy based on price, but they don’t. They may believe that they do, but they really buy based on the services and successes you and your company offer them. It is your job to illustrate the differences in the services you offer and why they are important. Any salesperson can offer the customer the lowest price, but it’s your job to convince them they need YOUR services, even if that comes at a higher price.

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Training Tuesday:Leads vs. Opportunities vs. Prospects

Posted 5 years ago

Keeping your “sales pipeline” full is essential to making sales and meeting your goals. It is always challenging to manage your time – between prospecting, selling, and maintaining existing relationships, it can be a lot to keep straight. One of the most important, and often overlooked, stages of the sales process is prospecting. It doesn’t matter how much you practice your sales presentation and refine your selling skills if you don’t have anyone new to meet with. If you’re not consistently seeking new potential clients, you are doing yourself a disservice.

The “prospecting” stage can be a bit daunting as there are a variety of categories that your contacts can fall into. How do you know if a contact has become a “lead” an “opportunity” or a “prospect” when in the early stages of interactions? This can be even more challenging when the terms are used differently by different companies and business units. Creating a consistent system for defining and categorizing each of the terms with your team (and hopefully your company as a whole) will be extremely helpful for increasing the efficiency of the prospecting process.

The biggest difference between the three is the nature of the interaction and if you have researched and qualified them as a viable client. As such, the following definitions can be helpful in categorizing and planning during the prospecting phase.

A “lead” is contact information for an individual that is related to a sales opportunity. The lead can be the eventual purchaser, an advisor, a friend, or a referral. Typically, a lead is not as fully qualified as a prospect, though this can vary by company or industry. A lead is usually categorized by primarily one-way communication, as in, the lead has contacted the company in some way – by a contact form on a website or some other message.

A “prospect” is typically a lead that has been qualified and is receptive to being sold what you offer. Generally, a prospect would be a “sales receptive” lead and you could convert the contact with a prospect into a sales opportunity. A prospect is generally categorized by two-way communication – that is, you or someone on your team has connected with the prospect and has sent them information as well as receiving an initial query.

A sales “opportunity” is then the time and space to take advantage of the receptive attitude of the prospect and meet with them to give your sales presentation. When you’ve reached the “sales opportunity” phase, that typically means the prospect has engaged with you multiple times and has been receptive to setting up a meeting or has actually scheduled a meeting with you.

It is important to remember that there are different categories in the sales prospecting process and that each level should be treated differently to be sure you have the most successful and efficient interactions.

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Training Tuesday:Sales and Closing Techniques

Posted 5 years ago

It doesn’t matter how good your selling skills are – if you can’t get a “Yes!” at the end of the sales call, you won’t find success as a salesperson. However, it’s no secret that closing a sale can be a challenge. The best “closes” are actually part of larger sales techniques that support the final push at the end of the meeting. With that in mind, below are some closing techniques that are helpful to have in your arsenal.

1. Emotional Appeal

Humans are emotional creatures. If we feel connected to a person, company, or cause, we are more likely to support them. Complementing the “facts and figures” of your sales presentation with some sort of “feeling” element can lead to a better connection, and therefore make a prospect more apt to say “yes” when you ask for their business. The emotional connection can be established through a variety of techniques, which even if they feel forced initially, can have an equally beneficial effect as organic connections. Things like mentioning shared interests or other commonalities, interjecting humor, or thoughtful things like sending an article appealing to their interests. All of these gradual connections can help increase the likeliness of a prospect doing business with you and your company.

2. Alternatives Close – “This or That”

Decision making can be frustrating, challenging, and even a little scary. A prospect that is talking to you is in the “hot seat” to make a decision and could already be feeling the pressure from others to make the right call about who to work with. If you give them some “alternatives” you can make their decision easier, and encourage them towards the decision you want, which is for them to work with you and your company. A “this or that” question can help ease some of the pressure of the seemingly unlimited choices available. These types of closes are best used over the course of an interaction with a prospective client. They are especially useful for setting up appointments and demos. You can offer two dates or times for a future call, visit, or demo of your products, services, or platforms. Simplifying the process can encourage the prospect to make the decision you ultimately want.

3. Similarity Close

If you can demonstrate that you’ve helped a customer in a similar situation and role, then you can inspire confidence in your prospect. Find out as many details about the prospect as possible and then compare their situation to those of your other clients. Then, in your sales meeting, you can showcase the benefits that those other clients got from working with you, and the prospect is better able to visualize how you could help them and their company. This close works well with the emotional appeal to create a connection with the other prospects that you have helped successfully.

You can pick and choose situations in which these closes may be helpful. They may be helpful as full processes, or you may want to apply elements of a variety of techniques to different sales interactions. Successful selling requires applying the right tool for the situation, at the right time.

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Training Tuesday:Consistency

Posted 5 years ago

There are a million sales tips and “tricks” out there designed to help you become a better salesperson, but you may find the biggest key to long term success is consistency. You must be consistent – create a routine of practicing your sales presentation, prospecting, maintaining relationships with existing clients, and pitching to potential customers. If you do not do these things regularly, you can’t guarantee that you will have reliable sales numbers.

If you can consistently practice your sales presentation, you can make the presentation itself more consistent based on what works in real sales situations and you can continue to fine tune it. If you don’t practice and instead rely on charisma and “winging it,” you cannot necessarily reproduce an effective sales pitch. Without a dependable sales presentation, the level of success you can expect from a prospect in a sales interaction varies widely.

Having a steady sales pipeline also relies on consistent prospecting and interactions with existing customers. If you don’t spend ample time each day or week prospecting, it doesn’t matter how stellar your sales presentation is, because you won’t have a potential customer to share it with. You must also maintain relationships with your existing customers, both to help prevent them from leaving for the competition and to increase your chances of successful referrals to their contacts who may need your services.

Consistency is key – that may be a cliché, but it certainly applies to sales. It is crucial that you put in reliable work and effort in order to create and maintain a steady rate of sales success.

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Training Tuesday:Motivational Questions

Posted 5 years ago

It can be challenging to maintain momentum in sales without being thoughtful about maintaining your motivation.

There are some questions that can make you (and your team) more successful salespeople. These questions can help you create more productive thoughts, habits, and attitudes.

  • If I try, can I be successful?
  • If I am successful, will there be a payoff?
  • Is the payoff worth it to me?

Beyond those questions, here are some other questions to ask yourself to increase your success:

  • What is your purpose for selling?
    • Who are you targeting and why?
    • What are you going to tell them or ask them? Why?
  • Are you selling what your customer needs? How can you convince them that you are?
  • What goals do you have for each sales situation or visit? For more on goals, check out our earlier blog post of setting SMART goals.

Taking time to focus on what motivates you, and on how to increase that motivation, is important to improving your success overall as a salesperson.

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Training Tuesday:Setting SMART Goals

Posted 5 years ago

Setting goals for each sales call is a crucial part of the sales process. A goal helps you prepare for the sales visit and gives structure to your entire presentation, but it is important to set “S.M.A.R.T.” goals. In order for a goal to be a useful tool in preparing for a sales call, it should follow the “S.M.A.R.T.” method.

This means that a goal should be:

Specific: The goal should not be too broad, but rather, it should be focused in on something. In sales, for example, it should be “I want the prospect to agree to another meeting” or “I want the prospect to agree to use our services for 3 months” rather than just “I want to earn this client’s business.”

Measurable: Similar to a goal being specific, it must be able to be measured in some quantitative or concrete sense. This goes hand in hand with the next component, which is achievability of the goal.

Achievable: It is important to make sure that your goal is realistically achievable in the parameters you set for it. If you goal is to make a specific number of sales to this client (thus making it both specific and measurable) you should also make sure that it is a reasonable, achievable goal, and not something like 1000 sales in 2 weeks. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up to fail, and that can be very disheartening.

Relevant: A goal is relevant if it is worthwhile to a larger plan and to your own personal job duties and planning. Additionally, it should be something that makes sense for you to be working towards. If you are supposed to work in an accounting capacity, then a goal for a number of sales calls will be less relevant to you. You should also consider if the timing is good for this particular goal in your overall business plan as well as in the current economic, social, and business climates.

Time-Bound: If you do not have a set of parameters in which your goal should be completed, you don’t really have a planned goal. It is easy to say “I want to be a successful sales person one day” but unless you start adding timelines, like 6 months, or 1 year, or even 5 years, you won’t actually have any frame to work towards achieving that goal. The time component of a goal is essential to finding the proper motivation to achieve it and also to keeping it in line with the other components of smart goals.

Setting goals according to the “S.M.A.R.T.” method can help you to achieve more, make real progress towards success, and reduce stress.

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Training Tuesday:Structuring the Sales Call

Posted 5 years ago

Without structure to the sales call, a salesperson is just a tourist. In order to have a successful sales call, you must stay organized and on-track. That means planning and structuring your visit to a prospect so that you can get the most out of each call. Below are our top things to keep in mind when planning a sales call:

  • The pre-call objective/setting an objective for every call. You should set an objective or goal for every call. This gives you direction for the actual sales tactics that will be most effective.
  • Make your goal specific. It is important to remember to set specific and reasonable goals so that you can accomplish them without being overwhelmed.
  • Be focused AND flexible. Yes, this really is possible! It’s important to not allow your focus to cloud your ability to flex and adjust the sales presentation to the reactions and needs of the prospect.
  • Ask the customer for feedback. You can ask specific questions here, like “Did I cover everything sufficiently?” or “Would you like more details on anything we’ve discussed?”
  • Ask for the business. You will reach a point in the sales call where it is not only reasonable, but expected, to ask the prospect for their business. You cannot avoid this step and consider it a successful call. You must ask for the business you want.

Remember it is just as important to set goals and plan your sales visit to a previously visited a prospect as it is to plan for a first impression. Every visit to a prospect or customer makes a lasting impression about you and the company you are representing. Plan, set goals, and succeed!

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Training Tuesday:Dress Rehearsals

Posted 5 years ago

Practice is essential to increasing success on sales calls, and one excellent way to practice is to have a “dress rehearsal” with a coworker or trusted peer. There are certain things you can do to make the role-playing situation the most helpful preparation for the sales call.

  • Set a clear objective. Setting a defined objective for what you want to get out of the practice call, what skills you’d like to improve, and what you’ll have as a goal in a similar real call.
  • If you’re role-playing with a mentor, have them model the skills you’d like to work on in that session. You can also try to model the individual skills you’d like to work on, and then practice putting them all together in a full simulated situation.
  • Remove the fear of failure. Role-playing helps remove the fear of failure in the real-life situation by creating a space to practice various techniques. If a method doesn’t work, you can then use the role-play situation to workshop what went wrong and how to change it. This allows you to fail and learn from it without jeopardizing a sale or relationship with a customer.
  • Role playing can also be helpful in the role of observer or customer, because you are able to see how various techniques play out and what it’s like to be on the other side of the sale. It can help you to identify what you’d like change about your current sales presentation – either by offering new techniques to incorporate or showing you what doesn’t work and should be removed.
  • You can also provide and receive open, objective, and constructive feedback from your partner in the role-play exercise. This feedback is an essential part of the process, and a huge benefit of role-playing and “dress rehearsals”
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LTL 101:DOT Hazmat Rules

Posted 5 years ago

The U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has specific rules for shipping hazardous materials. SunteckTTS can help you determine the DOT hazardous class for your shipment and find contract freight carriers that meet DOT safety and transportation requirements.

Hazardous materials are defined by the U. S. Department of Transportation in accordance with the Federal Hazardous Material Law regulations. A DOT hazardous material classification is applied if a material, in a particular amount and form, poses an unreasonable risk to health, safety or property.

Below is the list of DOT hazard classes:

DOT Hazard Class 1: Explosives.

Division 1.1: Explosives with a mass explosion hazard
Division 1.2: Explosives with a projection hazard
Division 1.3: Explosives with predominantly a fire hazard
Division 1.4: Explosives with no significant blast hazard
Division 1.5: Very insensitive explosives
Division 1.6: Extremely insensitive explosive articles

 

DOT Hazard Class 2: Gases.

Division 2.1: Flammable gases
Division 2.2: Non-flammable gases
Division 2.3: Poison gases
Division 2.4: Corrosive gases

 

DOT Hazard Class 3: Flammable liquids.

Division 3.1: Flashpoint below -18°C(0°F)
Division 3.2: Flashpoint below -18°C and above, but less than 23°C(73°F)
Division 3.3: Flashpoint 23°C and up to 61°C(141°F)

 

DOT Hazard Class 4: Flammable solids, spontaneously combustible materials, and materials that are dangerous when wet.

Division 4.1: Flammable solids
Division 4.2: Spontaneously combustible materials
Division 4.3: Materials that are dangerous when wet

 

DOT Hazard Class 5: Oxidizers and organic peroxides.

Division 5.1: Oxidizers
Division 5.2: Organic peroxides

 

DOT Hazard Class 6: Poisons and etiologic materials.

Division 6.1: Poisonous materials
Division 6.2: Etiologic (infectious) materials

 

DOT Hazard Class 7: Radioactive material.

Any material, or combination of materials, that spontaneously gives off ionizing radiation. It has a specific activity greater than 0.002 microcopies per gram.

 

DOT Hazard Class 8: Corrosives.

A material, liquid or solid, that causes visible destruction or irreversible alteration to human skin or a liquid that has a severe corrosion rate on steel or aluminum.

 

DOT Hazard Class 9: Miscellaneous dangerous substances and articles.

A material that presents a hazard during transport, but which is not included in another hazardous freight classification.

 

ORM-D: Other regulated material.

A material that, although otherwise subjected to regulations, presents a limited hazard during transportation due to its form, quantity and packaging.

 

In order to avoid any issues while booking HAZMAT loads please contact your local SunteckTTS agent so that they can insure your BOL is set up correctly and you have classified your hazardous materials properly with the correct UN Number, Shipping Name, Description, Group, Class and Placard Type.

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