Sales Techniques & The Death of The Sales Call
Many people in the world of sales would love to see the death of traditional sales calls. A sales call is when a seller makes a phone call or visits an in-person meeting with a prospect. This is typically done as part of an effort to solicit new business. This practice has been around for decades and is still very popular today. The idea is to use the power of the sales call to extract business from customers quickly and efficiently.
Making a great sales call isn't always a simple task. This article will discuss when it's appropriate to make a sales call and when it's better to use other methods such as email, marketing automation or social media.
The information in this article will help you make more sales in your business and get the most out of each person that you sell too.
The Typical Sales Call
A typical sales call involves calling a customer to solicit their business in exchange for consideration . This may also be done with prospective customers who are already clients of another company or through advertising . A typical sales call looks something like this:
1. The customer picks up the phone or answers the door.
2. The seller (prospect) explains his reason for calling and why he is interested in what they are selling. He may use his own product or service, or he may refer to a company who provides something similar to what he sells.
3. The customer decides whether they want to do business with the seller, and if so will sign a contract to purchase their products and/or services . This is only applicable for tangible products (e.g., software, tools, physical goods etc.) or services (e.g., website development). Other types of sales (e.g. advertising, consulting, consulting agreements etc.) cannot be signed or written down. There will be a contract before the sales call is over.
4. The sale is closed and the sale has been made. This could be as simple as asking them to confirm their purchase, or it could be a formal signing of the contract.
5. The customer needs to know what you are going to do for them and how much it's going to cost so that they know what to expect once the deal is done and what their responsibilities will be as a result of it being done .
6. The customer will have some sort of payment plan or a billing process in place to pay for the goods or services that they purchased.
7. The seller then gets paid and is on his way to his next call .
The Sales Call: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
A sales call is a very effective way to "pitch" your product or service and get it in front of the right people. In many cases it's more efficient than using other methods because you don't need their email address, their interest in you isn't as high when they aren't aware of what you sell etc.
However, sales people have a few problems with the traditional method of making sales calls:
1. Sales calls take time, and thus are expensive. It takes a lot of time to make dozens or hundreds of calls per week. This means that they cost you money in salaries to pay your employees who can make the calls, and it means you aren't making money while the sales person is on the phone with potential customers.
2. Sales calls require work and leverage other people in order to be successful (e.g.: recruiters, advertising etc.). In order to get more business you need more people working for you collecting leads and making phone calls. This means you need a sales team to make the calls because sales teams can do this task faster and better than recruiters, or you need to advertise yourself more. The result: more work for you!
3. Sales calls are usually not what the customer wants or needs . It's true that some people like to hear from strangers asking them for business, but most people would prefer to get an email from someone who already knows them before they have to deal with a stranger asking for their business. This is especially true with B2B companies where it's usually expected that the buyer will communicate with the seller directly before making a purchase from them.
4. Sales calls are typically high pressure. This can be a real problem if you sell something with a lot of benefits and no real call to action that isn't going to work with pressure tactics. This is the ugly side of sales calls, so let's talk about how to make them less ugly by using several alternatives to the traditional sales call:
The Alternatives
To avoid these problems (and more) most people in the world of B2B sales rely on other methods to accomplish their goals. These methods may not bring in as much business as a sales call, but they do reduce the number of problems that plague recruiters and companies wishing to find new customers or clients . Here are some of these alternative methods:
1. Content Marketing : Content marketing involves producing high quality content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience. This content can be in the form of blog posts, white papers, e-books, e-newsletters and more. Content marketing can be used to market your products and services to your audience one at a time, or you can use it collect leads that you can follow up on later (often using automated emails).
2. Social Media: Using social media for business is powerful way to create a good impression in your market place. You simply post interesting info about yourself (and others) on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ . Your business may also have a public profile on LinkedIn . Social media is great because it allows you to reach your audience, or a new audience all at once, in a very large way. This saves you the hassle of doing a million small sales calls, and it gets your products and services in front of people who may not even be looking for what you sell.
3. Email Marketing: Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate directly with your prospects and customers. You communicate with people on their time (and devices) instead of making them work for you by coming to you .
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Conclusion
Sales calls are important and useful, but they are not the most efficient way to market your products and services. You should avoid the traditional sales call if you can (unless you plan to spend hours every week on phone calls), and instead focus your efforts on doing stand-up presentations, one-on-one meetings or other kinds of meetings that can help you work directly with the people who need what you have to offer.
Hopefully this article helped you understand how to choose a sales technique for your business, how to make more sales in less time, and how to make sure that more of your customers will pay for what they buy from you than won't.