More often than not, if you’re in sales you will spend some time cold calling. Whether you’re speaking to that prospective client in their place of business, in a retail environment, door to door, or out in public, you need to get good at warming up those cold calls.
Warm on product knowledge
Before you start thinking about how you’re going to approach these people, learn your stuff. This will prevent a good contact from fizzling out before you get to the good part. Your product knowledge should be a step above the inventor’s. Practice makes perfect so try it by selling to the mirror, to family, or to friends. Get them to ask you questions, to throw you curve balls, to test you forwards, backwards, and inside out.
Practice pitching to different types of people
Your product has a set of benefits. Those benefits aren’t going to change, but the order you put them in will change depending on whom you are speaking to. How you approach each customer, what you say, how you say it, what you highlight and when, will depend on the person you’re speaking to. Be sure your approach puts you in sync with the person you’re speaking to. Once they start talking, you need to listen attentively to what they’re saying. What they say will determine what you say and the direction you will take in your presentation.
Remember one size DOES NOT fit all
You may think you’re creating short cuts by coming up with the perfect one size fits all approach, but at best, you’re going to get a are lukewarm results. Will the person in front of you respond better to the jokes or the serious you? Are they more of a benefits person or a price person? It doesn’t take long to figure it out, and if you start out going off in the wrong direction, by listening closely and following their lead you can always adjust course. By practicing with people playing the part of different types of people you can fine-tune how you adjust what you say.
In the end you’re going to get a variation of the same message across to everyone you meet, but by adjusting your approach according to the person you’re speaking to, you’re increasing your chances of warming them up enough so they’ll hang around and hear it.
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