Pick Up The Phone and Sell

CHAPTER 34THE BENEFITS OF CALLING PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW … YET

Proactive calls to current and past customers are the lowest-hanging fruit in revenue growth.

The next most effective group to call are prospects who know you or your company – or at least would recognize you or your company – but have not yet bought from you.

And finally, we have the least effective – but still important – group of people to call: prospects who do not yet know you. These prospects are covered in the next few chapters.

What important role do calls to prospects you do not yet know have for us salespeople?

Calls to people you don't know create more people you do know.

These calls fill the pipeline, expand your opportunities, and build your bench of prospective customers.

When you make these calls, you also get to help more people, which is no small thing.

Let's explore the benefits – for us and for them – of calling prospects who do not yet know you.

PROSPECTS DON'T KNOW YOU ONLY ONCE: AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST CALL

Salespeople have huge and understandable discomfort about calling people we don't know – but these prospects don't know us only once. As soon as they pick up the phone and you introduce yourself and tell them who you are and what you do, they know you.

Then you can use some of the warm-up techniques described in the coming chapters, and they'll know you better.

By the time you end your first call, you'll have gotten to know each other. You will no longer be strangers.

And when you ...