Financial Winter Is Coming. Are You Prepared?

Congratulations to those who attended my recent video webcast on cold-calling, How to Make Millions on the Phone. Thousands of sales professionals, entrepreneurs and organizations watched, and the event trended on Twitter. Those who signed up early received an ebook of the webcast with tips and strategies for using the phone, and a book about sales, with 21 videos paired to the chapters. Two participants won seats to fly with me and my family on my personal jet.

And anyone interested may still sign up to receive the webcast and ebook or learn from the following takeaways from the event.

Comparing the wrong call to the right call

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People have told me, “Your ‘wrong call’ example is the strongest cold call I have ever seen.” However, when you start dissecting the art of the cold call and making slight variations, I believe we've proven that you can increase your effectiveness many times over.

You must have the right opening, of course, as well as know how to set hooks, make big claims without sounding too hokey and establish takeaways to create distance so the buyer reaches back toward you. At that point, you qualify the lead once he or she shows interest.

The difference between the right call and the wrong call equates to comparing a photo taken from your phone with a piece of art. First, reduce your greeting to one name that sticks. Next, crystallize your reason for calling, which should include a big claim. Then, follow with a takeaway that sets up your qualifications. This is where you start adding "magic questions" to set hooks, money questions to determine the decision-maker, then lock-down questions to close on the appointment.

In short, you control the call, not the caller.

Here is one example of a magic question that I offered variations of for different industries: “If we could solve one problem for you, what would it be?”

If you can learn to use money questions to set up your pricing in a call, you can become a pro. For example: “If I can prove that my offer will do only one-half of what I have said, who else would be involved in a decision that requires an investment of $1,000?”

Putting theory into action

During the webcast, I looked into our comment feed and noticed a roofer, a chiropractor, someone in the wholesale seafood business and a door-to-door salesperson, all interacting. So, I quickly created scripts for each of those industries and went over each of them, creating exact calls as examples. I continued with more of that in the last hour, as well, with other industries.

I then covered reasons why so many people hate the phone, and 18 possible mistakes you can make while making a cold call, a warm one or even a hot call.

Consider that even today, 92 percent of all consumers use the telephone to inquire about a purchase, and almost 85 percent of them express dissatisfaction. If either party doesn’t know the other, what's happening here is a cold call.

You could actually know the person intimately but the call would be cold due to so little interest in your offer. The cold call is defined as “the solicitation of business from potential customers who were not anticipating such an interaction.” By definition, that could be your mother as well as someone you don’t know at all.

You could be anybody -- a startup founder, salesperson, direct marketer, network marketer, job-searcher, inventor, techie, sports manager, entertainment agent, celebrity, publicist, promoter, Realtor, Wall Street pro, or anything in between: You will make a cold call at some point in your career.

The power of the phone

Consider: There are something like a trillion phone calls made every year just in the United States. The phone is the most valuable piece of equipment ever created for business, period. It saves time, is more cost effective than direct mail six times over, reduces the cost of a physical encounter by a factor of 8 and preempts the competition.

This allows an organization to properly nurture leads, and that has been proven to result in 47 percent greater sales. SalesForce estimates the cost of an in-person visit to be $276. That includes flight, hotel, car and time. The cost of a phone call is almost one-eighth that amount and allows you to reach 20 the number of customers in that same period of time.

In my webcast, I covered the primary and secondary purposes of the cold call, which are vital. For over 30 years I have been working with sales organizations. My primary goal has always been to close the sale on the call.

Yes, a one-call close is possible if that is your primary goal. You can actually go for the one-call close, but you must know your secondary reasons in order to move to them quickly.

Since the webcast, we have had hundreds of people write in with personal successes from using the ebook. Here are a few of those messages:

“Hey, Grant, I just finished the webinar replay and I have to say I am on fire now. I feel that what you have shown all of us today is something that we can all use for life, no matter what industry we work in. I will continue to use your strategies and become the best person that I was made to be. Thank you so much!” -- Brian Bontomase, Signtronix

“Dear Grant, Thanks for the seminar! Great information. You have changed my life. Happy to have bought the program from you tonight. You're the best! Anything I can do to help you out, let me know.” -- Justin Feinberg, Effective Management

“As a result of implementing a couple of things from the webcast, How to Make Millions on the Phone, I have gone from 6 percent market share in my area to 24 percent, and I had a $100,000 day yesterday. I’m not even halfway through the year, and I have already made four times my last year’s income!” -- Philip Martin

This webcast will change your attitude about phones and make you a dominator in your market. Sign up for it today.

Be great, because nothing else pays . . . much.