How Does Creating a Sense of Urgency Impact a Teleprospecting Call?
Teleprospecting is a successful telephone-based sales technique. When you reach a prospect (in teleprospecting that is an executive or key evaluator), chances are they are busy with something else and really just want to get rid of you.
If you can quickly make an impact by touching on an area of a potential business need or pain, and make a prospect believe or understand that you might be able to solve it – they will spend time with you.
How do you make the impact that creates an interest?
In order to quickly spark the interest of the executive you have called, you have to be believable, and you have to push the right buttons and pull the right levers. This works best when you have a straightforward conversation where you properly position the business solution that you are representing.
People will react to this straightforward approach either positively, or negatively. Often times the negative reaction is built-in and is the first impulse, because their goal is to not talk to you. Again, they are busy at work and will try to get you off the phone. That is understood, and it’s why it is important to immediately create a sense of urgency.
If the person you have reached feels the vibe and understands that what you are presenting matters, and that your proposed solution has successfully impacted others that closely resemble them (i.e. your current and previous clients) then you have significantly increased the chances of furthering the conversation.
It is important that the prospect understands that, because of how well you are positioning what your business solution can do for their organization, and the impact that it has made on similar organizations, that it could make that type of impact on their business too. That is the sense you want to express, and that is the feeling you want them to have from the beginning of the interaction.
How do you create a sense of urgency quickly enough?
There is a saying that “message is everything”. I would say that messaging is something, but not everything.
The message is very important, but it comes down to the individual on the phone and the approach and ability to build confidence into the receiving end of the line.
It needs to be clear that you know what you are representing, and that it is worthwhile enough for them to take the time to learn more about it.
An expressed urgency can give the prospect a sense that what you have to offer can really impact them. You want them to join you in that positive vibe and get caught up in the possibility that this could work well for them too.
Think of it like going to a car dealership and having the salesperson show you a model that can perform better than the car you have today. You, as the potential customer, get excited about those possibilities. Therefore you talk further and investigate the potential of purchasing the new car.
Your job on the phone (like the car dealer in the first meeting) is to get the receiving end excited enough, and willing to get caught up enough, to get involved in the potential opportunity.
Does a prospect form a positive opinion about the client you are representing because you cause them to feel that way by being professionally upbeat? The answer better be yes.
If you are in telesales, you may be making calls all day long, and 90% of that time is spent not reaching people and leaving messages. Because of this, once you reach a person it is easy to come off as mundane.
You need to make the receiving end feel like their call is the first you’ve made that day.
If you are monotone and boring, or even if that is just the vibe the receiving end feels, they will reflect that back to you, and your call will be over before it has begun. If you sound like you think they will say no to you – they will say no to you.
If you are upbeat and enthusiastic in a professional way, and you can get your caller to feel that energy, then they will reflect that back to you. Then you have created a sense of urgency, and the conversation has a chance.
How do you make a prospect want to talk further?
Assuming you have grasped your prospect’s attention with a sense of urgency and an appropriate level of enthusiasm – now you need to maintain that throughout. If you drop off, they will drop off too – in energy and desire. The energy has to go past the initial part of the conversation – you want the momentum to pick up as much as possible rather than fall off.
How do you keep the conversation going?
To do this you must put really good, experienced people on the phone, and they must have a professional, straightforward sales approach. This cannot happen with entry level associates and a script. It can only happen with seasoned Business Development Executives who are capable of creating the sense of urgency initially, and following that up with an informed discussion.
As discussed in an earlier post about teleprospecting – the goal is to get the prospect to open up and talk about their current situation and how they handle the business problem that you are addressing. What do they like about their current system or product? Where are they lacking?
An experienced teleprospector has the ability to answer back to that and explain how their product, solution, or service has helped others, and may be a good fit for this business too.
Teleprospecting is about complex B2B sales – no one is going to sign a contract or buy a product on an initial call. What you need to do is to get them to buy into something. A successful teleprospecting call is when the prospect has expressed an interest to extend the conversation and agreed to next steps.
How do you create the right energy on the phone so that you can extend the conversation? What kind of techniques work for you? Please leave us a note in the comments.
John
