Hal Becker's Ultimate Sales Book

A Revolutionary Training Manual Guaranteed to Improve Your Skills and Inflate Your Net Worth

Hal Becker

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781601632418
• eBook ISBN: 9781601635570
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

There are hundreds of books about sales, but how many of them have actually helped anyone become a better salesperson?

Hal Becker's Ultimate Sales Bookis a sales book and sales training course rolled into one, written by Xerox's former number-one U.S. salesperson and one of America's top sales trainers.

It contains a wealth of practical information that many seasoned salespeople have forgotten…and which new salespeople need to master. It includes action steps to help you develop unique and proven selling methods, set goals, list prospects, and even discover your own ways to answer objections. Plus targeted quizzes at the end of each chapter to hone your skills.

This is truly the one sales book every salesperson needs.

Cold Calls, Phone Selling, and Other Contact Options

“At least you’re getting your foot in the door, Dave!”

Cartoon © Priyanka Pai. Used with permission.

LESSON 26
Cold Calls, Phone Calls, and E-mail

A great salesperson is on top of his or her game, which essentially comes down to two areas: One is the constant awareness of existing clients and making sure they stay customers by keeping in touch. The other is the consistent effort to obtain new business. This section will explore obtaining new business through phone sales and cold calling.

A cold call occurs when someone knocks on the door of a business without an appointment. Typically, this is best done in a geographic territory where the salesperson can do multiple calls in a given day without burning himself out. A nice, round number is 10 to 20 calls a day. Check lesson 19 for how to get past the screen.

Though each salesperson has his or her unique personality, especially on a cold call, the objective is always the same: to introduce yourself and request permission to spend a few minutes asking questions about the business to see whether your product or service is a good fit. If it is, you spend a little time going over the benefits and try to set up another appointment.

Yes, that is correct. Go for another appointment. Remember, your whole goal in selling is to build relationships. Most people are busy and have other things to do besides sitting around and waiting for salespeople to show up and interrupt their day. Be conscious of their time and respect it. If there is an interest, the prospect will want to set up another appointment, will be impressed that you have good people skills, and will want you to come back for a formal meeting. When you do return for the scheduled appointment, the prospect will be expecting you, and you will both be fully prepared.

The beauty of cold calls is that you have no idea what will happen next. Sometimes, everything you do turns to gold and the next day everything does not. It is simply a game, and the numbers will eventually work in your favor.

Cold phone calls are similar to in-person cold calls. The goal here is the same: to get the appointment. You are not trying to close the deal over the telephone. Once again, the client is not expecting your phone call. Here’s the bottom line: have your agenda in front of you and get to the point. People don’t want to chit-chat unless there is something to chitchat about. If you are going to schmooze, do it after the sales call and make sure the topic is of interest to your prospect.

Here are some points to consider:

• If your territory is Utah and you live in Cleveland, the phone is a good idea.

• It is easier to hang up the phone than to kick you out of an office on a cold call, so you may be able to make more of an impact in person.

• The phone will allow you to do more calls in a given time, but it is harder to establish a rapport.

• Within any specific amount of time, you can’t get as many cold calls done as you would phone calls. However, cold calls are better at building a relationship by being there and noticing the surroundings.

Almost everyone is now available by e-mail, and it’s easy to get anyone’s e-mail, even the CEO of a company! E-mail is great for a quick response or for a question to which you need an answer. You can use brief e-mail to set up an appointment, but it shouldn’t be used for an ongoing conversation that you can have more effectively in person.

Drawbacks of e-mail include unpublished listings and spam accounts that block unknown users. The prospect also has the option of deleting your e-mail without even reading it. One option to dealing with this is to go to your prospect’s Website. Almost every Website has a “contact us” section. If all else fails, use this feature and carefully craft your message, making sure you ask that it be directed to the person who makes the decisions.

In short, e-mail works well for quick exchanges of information, but it shouldn’t replace in-person relationships, which is the ideal way to acquire and keep customers.

LESSON 27
Why Scripts Don’t Work

I am still amazed that companies continue to train their salespeople to use scripts when making telephone sales. Scripts have almost never worked and almost never will. The very modest success you may have achieved with scripts is nothing compared to what you would have found using a finely tuned questionnaire.

When I say “scripts,” I am talking about the rigid text on a piece of paper or computer screen that tells the salesperson what to say, what to offer, who her company is, and so on. People can spot this one-sided type of conversation, and have never wanted it and never will. Who wants to listen to someone read from a script? Script selling isn’t old school or new school; it’s just wrong!

Here’s an example of the type of ineffective telephone sales call that some companies actually think works. This type of call is made by small companies as well as large Fortune 100 companies that continue to use it as part of their sales tactics. This example actually happened to one of my friends, a national training director for one of the largest jewelry store chains in the United States.

He received a call, the voice saying, “Hello, my name is Debbie, and I am from ABC Chimney Sweep Company, and we have a special today. It is only $35, and we come out to clean your chimney, oil the parts inside, put a screen on top of your chimney to protect you from birds or squirrels coming inside your house, and we will give you a total inspection for only $35.”

My friend Marv said, “Hey, that sounds great, but what kind of special do you have for me if I don’t have a chimney?” Pretty funny, huh? Instead, the call should have gone like this. “Hello, my name is Debbie and I am from ABC Chimney Sweep Company and I would like to ask you two or three quick questions and it will not take more than 45 seconds, I promise!”

Marv says, “Sure, okay.” Debbie now asks, “Do you have a chimney?” If Marv answers yes, the next question would be, “When was the last time you had it cleaned?” If the answers warrant additional conversation, Debbie could then describe the special she can offer.

The best conversations are two-way, not one-sided. Get the customer to talk by asking questions and getting information from him or her. That is how to sell. People don’t want to be sold to or forced into buying; they want to be helped and to feel they are getting something that is either of value or makes them better.

Believe it or not, most companies sell incorrectly over the phone. They think what they are doing is right, but it isn’t. Most of the managers who set up these scripts aren’t well trained in the science of sales to begin with. They think that they are until you ask the manager what books on sales he or she has read lately, or what courses have they taken during the last year.

Here’s an example of one of the only phone calls I received from a salesperson at a mobile windshield repair company, who introduced himself and asked if he could ask me one quick question: “Do you have any chips or cracks in your windshield?” If my answer was no, he was done! My answer was yes, I have a chip. They now said, “If we could come to your place of business or home and repair it for $40, would you be interested?” My chip is gone.

LESSON 28
Make It a Game

You should have fun every day while selling. People love to laugh, and most people have a good sense of humor. It’s important to incorporate appropriate, friendly humor and fun into sales calls each day. Author Robert Shook seems to agree. Some years back, he wrote a book titled, I’ll Get Back to You. It contained 156 ways of guaranteeing people would return your phone call.

Here are some techniques I used more than 20 years ago. When I couldn’t get people to return my calls, I sent them a fax and asked them to pick one reason they didn’t call back:

• You lost my messages and forgot to call back.

• You are just not interested.

• You hoped I would just give up and go away.

• You are on vacation for a long, long time.

Most people got a chuckle out of this because it was different, and called me back or faxed back for me to call them. We then started on a different course because we both had something in common: the ability to laugh.

Here are a few ideas you can try that are fun and different. Some are in Shook’s book and they still work today:

1. A few years ago, I met this big, burly guy of 275 pounds, an ex-linebacker but a nice, sweet guy. He bought Valentine’s Day cards similar to the ones third-graders would send to their friends in school and mailed them to his clients or prospects as a way to keep in touch.

2. If you are dealing with an organization that makes everything complicated, and its people blame it on the red tape in their company, buy a roll of red tape, unroll it, and pack it into a ball. Then send it to the company with a note, “Now that we’ve gone through all the red tape…”

3. Do you ever have a customer or prospect that offers to call you back but doesn’t? Around Halloween buy a couple of small, plastic skeletons and little coffins. Place a skeleton in a coffin, and send it with a note saying, “This is me waiting for you to call back.”

LESSON 29
The Video Idea

Once in a while I come across an idea that makes so much sense that it’s kind of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• What Makes a Good Salesperson?
• What Great Salespeople Know
• The Importance of Listening
• Preparing for the Sales Call
• The Importance of Questions
• Increasing Your Sales
• Cold Calls, Phone Selling, and Other Contact Options
• Time Management
• Handling Objections
• Setting Goals
• Closing the Sale
• Customer Care
• Role-Playing
• You’ve Earned a Bonus!
• Quiz Answers
• Index
• About the Author