Pick Up The Phone and Sell

CHAPTER 3LEAD WITH THE PHONE: MAKE IT THE TIP OF YOUR SELLING SPEAR

DEFINITION: WHAT IS A PROACTIVE CALL?

The proactive phone call, for our purposes in this book, is defined as calling customers and prospects when nothing is wrong.

Your call can be scheduled with a text message.

While many salespeople only talk on the phone when the customer calls them, this generally focuses the conversation on problems you need to resolve. But this book is about calling the customers proactively, which almost always becomes a conversation about opportunities for you to help the customer.

PROACTIVE CALLS FEED THE SALES MACHINE

Proactive calls feed the machine of your business growth:

• They flood your pipeline with new opportunities and advance existing ones.
• Specifically, proactive calls expand your pipeline by
  • - Uncovering new leads
  • - Turning leads into prospects
• They move prospects toward a proposal or quote.
• They move quotes and proposals toward a close.
• They close new business.
• They expand your business with existing customers.
• They build relationships in less time than any other communication pathway we can utilize.
• They make you stand out to the point of making you singular, simply because nobody else is calling.
• They make it clear that you care about your customers and prospects and that you are thinking about them.

Nothing else is this effective.

PHONE FIRST: LEAD WITH THE PHONE

The key activity in this book is making the proactive phone call (as defined above) the first interaction ...