Good Morning ,
I get a lot of calls every day at my business. Almost all of them are calls to sell my house, sell me Medicare insurance (why are they calling me on my business phone number?), loan me money, or try to sell me services I don’t need or want. Sound familiar?
Yesterday at the end of my day I got one such call. It was from a business equipment company. The young man asked for me by name and got my name correct. When I acknowledged I was the person he asked for, he then launched into his pitch. He introduced himself and his company and then went on to tell me his company was a local, family-owned 30-year-old business and then asked if I had a postage meter. Ah, he was selling postage meters!
Instead of answering his question, I asked him a few questions and found out he was not selling machines but generating leads. I told him he is was going to lose leads and waste his time. Boy that caught him off guard.
I asked if he knew what my company did (no). He was given a list to call. So I told him he needed to find out what my needs and wants are first and then gave him a brief example of an opening to find out about a person’s interest in postal meters.
The example went something like this: Hi, this is Phil with XYZ Business Product Company. Do you send out lots of letters each month? If you do, are you or your staff using lots of time sealing and stamping envelopes? Not to mention wasting time going and standing in line at the post office to buy stamps. If so, we might be able to save you time and money; should we talk further?
The young man was silent for a few moments and then told me I had given him something to think about, suggested I have a nice day and hung up.
This was all on the fly and needs some work to be more effective.
Key Points:
- If possible do your research about each company before you contact them.
- Don’t push your company, products or services before finding out about the other person’s needs and wants.
- Ask them questions, get them talking about their problems, needs and wants. Then let them know how you might be able to help them.
- Remember, it’s about their needs not about yours!
Till next time,
