"Telephone Sales Skills Differ Critically From Selling Skills"

Telephone sales skills and selling skills are just about as different as night and day.

"If you can sell, you can do successful cold calling." This is a gigantic, costly, and painful misconception running rampant in the sales world.

Here are just a few of the significant differences:

Wikopedia defines telephone sales skills and cold calling as:

“The process of approaching prospective customers or clients, typically via telephone, who were not expecting such an interaction.”

The goal of the call process is an appointment for a sales meeting. Said another way – the goal is to get each prospect to the sales pipeline.

Calling Skills:

• Are adversarial: as to intrude upon the prospect’s day and are unexpected

• Are rapid: and take place in 90-seconds or less

• Are reactionary: the caller and the prospect react to each other rather than take the time to think through what is being said

• Are technique driven on the part of the sales professional

• Communication rely on one sense, hearing. The caller does not have the benefit of communications cues and feedback that are taken for granted when face to face. Such as the ability to pick up visual cues at the blink of an eye; the ability to pick up cues by touch such as the strength/weakness of a handshake.

• Communication is audible and travels at the speed of sound Wikopedia defines selling as a process by which “sales which are the pinnacle act of completed of a purchasing activity.” Said another way the goal is to get the prospect through the sales pipeline.

Face-to-face Selling on the other hand is:

• Is collegial: meetings are welcomed and expected

• Is measured: 20-60 minutes of conversation at the familiar pace of a conversational exchange

• Allows time for business logic: the caller and the prospect have the ability to take time to think through what is being said

• Is driven by thought and the ability to think on your feet

• Communication takes place through at least 3 of the 5 senses including your ability to hear, see, and touch. Giving more than twice the amount of information than is available during a cold call

• The majority of communication travels at the speed of light literally in the blink of an eye

Get it?

Sales skills are significantly different from successful telephone sales skills .

ALL good business systems are processes that have both effectiveness (art) and efficiencies (science).

Your telphone sales skills process is no exception.

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