Cold Calling Tips For Making Sales Appointments to Grow Your Small Business Sales

Cold calling tips can help small business sales people to make effective sales appointment calls, and grow their business. Anyone can build basic cold calling scripts in just a few minutes and start making sales appointments today. Many sales people fear or hate making cold calls, but with these basic appointment setting tips you'll gain confidence and soon become skilled at making sales appointments

Think of your cold calls in three stages: The introduction where you present you, and your small business. Sales questions to qualify the prospect as someone you could sell to, and the third stage is where you ask for their agreement to meet with you. Now look at these cold calling tips for each stage of the call and add them to your cold calling scripts for making sales appointments.

Cold calling tips for the Introduction stage of the calls

When you introduce yourself and your product or your small business, keep it brief. Only use the necessary information to communicate who you are and what your small business sells. They don't need your life story or the full history of your company. If your small business sales have something unique to offer then make sure you include it. Phrase it as a benefit to the prospect. Write down your own cold calling scripts for each stage of the call and stick to only the information you need to include. Practice how you will present you and your business to the prospect. Then, when your introduction sounds right, add it to your cold calling script.

The most important of all the cold calling tips is to include a really good reason for your cold call. Take your time developing this line for your sales appointments calls. It is the line that will motivate the prospect to listen to you. If you get this wrong you can lose the chance of making any sales appointments. Put yourself in the customer's shoes and ask yourself what would you want to hear? What potential benefits can your small business offer a buyer that will make them want to meet with you?

Cold calling tips on how to ask qualifying sales questions

Don't make the mistake of writing a list of sales questions to ask the prospect. When you ask questions from a list you lose the relationship with the buyer. People soon tire of having to think of a new answer between each question they are asked. Instead of a list of questions, use this cold calling tip. Write a list of the information you require from the customer. This is the information you need to decide if you can sell to this customer and that you want to make a sales appointment with them.

Then use your list of information as a checklist while using normal conversation skills to gather the information that you need. Start by asking wide open questions such as, 'Tell me about... or, Explain to me...' Then use more specific questions to pin point the detail. This sales questioning technique works really well in cold calling scripts because it keeps the prospect talking and uses the questions to direct the conversation.

Asking for commitment to the sales appointment

Getting the customer's attention during the introduction stage of a cold call is important and sales people invest in learning sales skills for that stage of the call. But many people fail to build an effective cold calling script for the agreement gaining stage of the sales appointment call. When setting appointments by telephone you have to have an agreement gaining strategy that will work. Try these cold calling tips on asking for the appointment.

Don't ask if they will agree to a sales appointment with you. Instead ask when they are available to meet with you, or if they are available on a specific day or at a certain time. When making sales appointments give the buyer a great reason why they should meet with you. Explain about the possible benefits to them that your small business could offer. But do not get further into the sale than you want to. If your product or service is better sold face to face then hold back on the selling until you meet with them. I've always found it a bad idea to get into conversations about price on the sales appointment call. Use the price as a reason to meet with the buyer. Tell them you need to meet to discuss price and think of a good reason why.

What you are saying to the prospect is, so that I can show you the full benefits, we should meet and I can give you all the information you need to make a decision on whether to take it further. As with all good sales appointment training you should put that last sentence into your own words and write it into your cold calling script. You are not asking for a buying decision on your appointment cold call. You are only looking to secure the appointment. When you have given a good reason for meeting with you, ask them if they are available at a specific time. You are not asking if they will meet with you, you are presuming that because there is a potential benefit for them, the sales appointment is the next logical step.

I'm Stephen Craine and I'm a working sales manager. These cold calling tips are the basics of building effective sales appointment scripts. To add more sales skills to your calls, and grow your small business sales, you can get a free sales training workbook course on how to cold call to make sales appointments at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com/free-sales-training.html

There's no cost, no need to register or leave any details, just open it, start using it today, and you can even save it and pass it on to others. For more sales training on all other stages of the sales process you can click around my website at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com

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How to Cold Call and Make Sales Appointments to Increase Your Small Business Sales

How to cold call and make sales appointments is a sales skill that will benefit your small business, or cost you a lot of time and resources if you get it wrong. Many small business sales people have a cold calling script, either written or mentally rehearsed, that isn't effective and doesn't get the results. It's not their fault, they haven't got the sales training resources that many large sales organisations have. One of the most common mistakes I hear and see small businesses making when they make sales appointment calls is that they use a cold call script but don't build it around a proven effective cold calling process.

If you use an effective sales appointment making process as a plan of the path you want the call to follow, you can then build your own words and phrases around that process and your results will multiply. You will have more selling opportunities and your business will grow.  Consider some of the ideas and sales training in these 3 stages of a sales appointment call. Try them out and measure the results you achieve.  

The cold call introduction

You have to grab the prospects attention, and make the possible benefits they could gain a real motivator for them to continue with the conversation. This is where small businesses have both an advantage and a disadvantage compared to the big well known companies.  

The disadvantage is that the big companies are well known. The buyer recognizes the name and has an idea of what they can offer. If there is any spark of interest the buyer is likely to listen to the caller from a large well known organization. When making cold calls for appointments from a small business you have to get into your cold calling scripts, who you are, what you do, and most important of all, the reason for your call. You have to grab the buyer's attention.  

The advantage that a small business has is that they can quickly adapt and be flexible with what they can offer specific sales prospects. Small business sales operations can also target niche markets, and change to meet the market and customer demands and trends.  Because of this a small business, or self-employed person, selling their own products can make the calls more personal to each prospect.  

Include questions in your cold call to qualify the prospect

A good large scale tele-marketing operation will have a tick list on screen of the information they need to ask a potential customer. The ones that use rigid scripts have set questions for the caller to ask. In both cases the questioning stage of the sales appointment process can sound like an interrogation if not done with some flexible sales skill, or if it is at the end of a long shift in a call center.  

The really effective technique, which I include on the sales training I present to my teams on how to cold call, is to include in the conversation the questions that you need to ask. Simply record the information as you talk, and I mean talk not interrogate the buyer. Use motivators in your conversation to move smoothly into the questioning stage of the call.  

Phrases such as, 'So I can see if you could benefit from this offer.' You could even be honest with them, now there's a refreshing change, and say, 'To make sure I am not wasting your time can I ask you.'   Make your appointment setting call a conversation. This is one of your big advantages as a small business as you are not confined to rigid cold calling scripts and company rules.  

You don't need linguistic tricks and manipulative sales techniques

Up to this point in the call process you have crammed in benefits that the potential customer could gain from doing business with you. Now add more benefits, especially those specific and unique to doing business with your small business. You want to communicate several messages to the prospect that will influence, not manipulate, them to meet with you and discuss what they could gain.  

A message that my sales teams learn to use when learning how to cold call, is that the prospect will only really know whether they could gain, or are missing out, when they have met you. When you cold call to make a sales appointment you are only gaining agreement to meet you. You are not asking for agreement to do business with you. When they have met you, and heard what you can give them, they are then in a position to decide if they want to buy. Use any possible benefits that you have heard hit a sweet spot during the call with the buyer as a reason they should agree to a sales appointment. If when you spoke about saving money, increasing production, or that you are a local company, you heard a positive signal from the prospect, you can use this when you try and arrange the appointment. For example, 'So that I can show you how I can protect your investment while still giving you a good return, are you available on Monday evening?'  

A simple question coated in benefits is all that's needed. No double talk or sales tricks that you and your staff are probably not comfortable with, and that get your company a bad reputation in the long term.

This is a small part of the sales process I use when training my sales teams on how to make a cold call sales appointment. It's a starting point on which to build a cold calling script. It can be added to by the individual using it both in techniques and sales skills, and the words and phrases that are used. You can get more free appointment training and information by going to Appointment Setting on my website.

One of my aims is to make the sales training that has been developed and aimed at large sales organisations available to small and medium size businesses. Often the high cost of effective sales training is too high an investment for some companies, and individuals working for themselves. Buying training books and sifting through hundreds of pages is a poor use of your time just to find a few nuggets of worthwhile information.

On my Sales Training website you can find free sales training that will benefit small and medium businesses. All the techniques and skills have been tried, tested, and developed, by the sales teams I manage and train. Have a click around the site. You can even send in any questions you have, or obstacles to your sales success, and I, and sales people around the world will give you some answers.

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