If you are a sales training professional you need to make sure your salespeople understand that it is important to ask questions of the Prospect during cold calling and during sales interviews. The best way to do this is to have the salesman ask very good questions of the Prospect about important things in their business and their operations. This does a couple of things; one, it opens dialogue and keeps the Prospect talking and developing rapport with the salesman. Two, it helps the salesperson learn more about how the company does business, how the Prospect wishes to communicate and helps the salesperson due to the major objections that may or may not be introduced during the sales process or cold call if the sales interview goes that far. Sales managers need to watch their sales force and make sure that the salespeople are not getting all of their cold calls cut short by prospects who want to dump the call because the salesperson failed to engage the Prospect in proper dialogue. For new salespeople the sales training professional may decide to put a 3 by 5 index card in front of the salesperson with a list of possible questions they can ask the Prospect on until which time they become less nervous in opening dialogue and communication in normal conversation, as eventually it becomes more natural. Please consider all this in 2006. |
