The sales training professionals need to insure that their sales force can handle interrupted phone calls without losing their train of thought and without being upset or irritated at the prospect. If you are a salesperson obviously you will be interrupted and the sales manager needs to explain this to the salesperson that it is nothing personal. After all the salesperson on a cold call is calling out of the blue and perhaps during business hours or directly after business hours or right before work starts. In this case the prospect may have 100 things on their minds and the phone call comes in. You can see how easily things can become disarrayed and the salesman is put on hold while the prospect or potential customer is dealing with another important issue or handling a crisis management problem on their end. The sales training professional needs to help the salesperson understand that this will happen from time to time and could very well happen many times per day and the salesman will just have to deal with it. Occasionally we have watched salespeople apologize to the prospect or potential customer for making the cold call in the first place. This is a mistake if you are sure that you are selling a good product and or service. If the salesman does not believe in the product or service that he is selling then he should not be selling it in the first place and should not be working there. Maybe the sales manager needs to help them understand that and if they cannot figure that out they need to leave the company. There is no reason to apologize for offering a great product or service at a reasonable and fair price that will help the prospect or potential client. Consider this in 2006. |
