Overview

Professional telephone salespeople encounter the same challenges as their face-to-face counterparts. And yet, selling over the phone is a "whole different animal". Telephone salespeople have no access to their prospects' body language, meaning that they lose 52% of the nonverbal information available to face-to-face salespeople. Meanwhile, telephone salespeople can be rejected 19 times per hour compared to only 4 time per day for face-to-face sales. All of which adds up to some unique challenges for professional telephone salespeople.

Objective

The course Professional Telephone Selling helps telephone salespeople employ a consultative sales approach while meeting the unique needs of buyers of varying personal styles-without experiencing the burnout often associated with selling over the phone.

Content

Participants learn in a small group, highly interactive format that includes large and small group discussion, experiential exercises, brief lectures, video, and telephone simulation.

Personality Style Recognition 

• What Personality Style is. 
• Responsiveness. Assertiveness. 
• Your personal Personality Style. 
• Personality Style over the phone.

Personality Style and Flexing 

• Appealing to buyers of varying styles. 
• Temporary modification of your style to increase buyer comfort. 
• Working with buyers of varying styles when they are upset.

Building Emotional Muscle for Telephone Selling 

• The ABC's of emotional control. 
• Telephone selling and fear: *Fear of rejection, *Fear of mistakes, *Fear of losing, *Fear of discomfort 
• Beliefs and irrational self-talk.
• 4 pillars of empowerment. 
• Interrupt-Challenge-Concentrate technique.

Consultative Selling over the Telephone

• Helping buyers through 4 barriers: *No Trust, *No Need, *No Help, *No Hurry
• Sales strategies based on Personality Style insight - Building credibility with drivers, analyticals, amiables, and expressives - Questioning strategies for the 4 styles - Asking for confirmation - Presenting solutions citing benefits that appeal to the buyer's style - Asking for the order based on Personality Style - Supporting and reassuring

Seminar Length and Implementation

• 3 days 
• Can be delivered in 1/2 day modules with application exercises "bridging" sessions to encourage transfer back to the job 
• Can be delivered with pre-work and customized post-seminar reinforcement