Pick Up The Phone and Sell

CHAPTER 6THE PHONE COMPARED TO OTHER SALES COMMUNICATIONS PATHWAYS

The phone doesn't exist in a communications vacuum, and we have many ways to communicate with customers and prospects. Naturally, some are more effective than others; and, further, some are more threatening than others.

Some of these pathways make us uncomfortable.

Some do not.

Here they are, all together, positioned visually, comparing their effectiveness against the level of fear and discomfort they create.

Let's work through them in order, from most effective to least effective. We begin with the subject of this book, the proactive phone call.

THE PROACTIVE CALL

The proactive phone call is the most effective pathway of communication a salesperson has, even more effective than the holy grail of sales advancement: the in-person meeting. This is why:

• You can make a lot more phone calls in an hour or two than you can have meetings. If you pre-plan very carefully, you can have two or three meetings in an hour or two. But you can make two or three phone calls in just a few minutes. In an hour or two, you can easily make 10 to 20 calls. Not that you have to, but for very similar effectiveness (and in many cases, more) than meetings, the phone requires a much lower time investment from you. This is the major advantage: using the phone, you can tell a lot more customers and prospects that you would like to help ...