Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

5 Top Sales Techniques for Closing Year-End Business

OK, we've got only 3 1/2 days this week to close business for the year end. In our telesales training courses we cover a number of sales techniques to remember when we need to close business. The following techniques appeared in my blog articles this year, and all of them can be put to great use this week. Here they are in synopsis form, along with the blog article that explains each of them in greater detail:

1) Negotiate intelligently and portray price drops --- if you use them --- wisely. There's a reason my post on price negotiation techniques is the best-read on my blog. Too many reps don't use intelligent price negotiation strategies and leave money on the table, or don't get the order at all: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/7413/5-Most-Common-Price-Negotiation-Mistakes

2) Close on the first call, budget money may get re-allocated this week.  Many prospects have year-end money to spend, but they won't necessarily tell you that unless you ask. When I was a purchasing agent years ago, I always had year-end money that had been re-allocated from another budget source. Be sure to call back folks that didn'y buy earlier in the year. They may have additional budget this week: http://www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/9840/One-call-close-on-the-first-call-if-you-don-t-the-prospect-may-not-return-your-second-call

3) Drill down to uncover the financial reasons it makes sense for your prospect to buy now. You can use a quick financial model to prove that delaying the order will cost your prospect in financial terms: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/10732/How-do-I-get-my-PO-in-faster

4) Ask for additional needs through upselling. Don't shortchange yourself just because you're happy to get a small order. Tell your prospects about "the next best thing and they may increase the size of your order: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/9101/Upselling-Don-t-forget-to-ask-for-The-Next-Best-Thing

5) Be careful that you're not being "shopped" by savvy buyers, and remember to "call high." OK, I know you don't view your unique high-tech solution as a commodity, but probably your buyer does, and has more than one solution in mind. On inbound calls, be wary that a decision may have already been made to go with a competitor. But that doesn't mean you can't unlock it and get the business: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/5564/RFP-Hazards-Are-you-being-shopped-by-Purchasing-Agents-Here-s-how-to-fix-it 

Today's post is short because you've got to be out there selling, but these are 5 powerful tools that you can --- and should --- use this week. Add them to your Best Practices Playbook and have a great year-end.

How do I get my PO in faster?

In addition to writing my weekly blog posts on telesales training topics, I monitor a few other blogs in which sales questions arise. A few weeks ago, the following question popped up about getting POs in faster. We're closing in on year-end now, so I think it's topical to repeat the question in today's post, as well as my answer. Have a look:

Question: What methods do you use to put a time limit on a quote without exposing yourself to pressure? Let's say it is two weeks before the end of the quarter. You want to get a sale before the end of the quarter. What methods do you find effective to get the PO in the time you need it? I find that discounting does not contribute to that and that I am not able to back up from the discount even after the time limit. In other words, the discount is gone forever, even if the Purchase Order was not submitted on time. Please assume the customer is ready to decide, that is all other conditions for the purchase are already met.

(Geoff's answer) "You did the right thing by not further lowering the price. But you have to determine how the prospect perceives that your solution will either help him or her make money, or stop losing money. 99% of the time, companies buy for these reasons. This is always best done early in the sales process, but you can still do it now. Call the prospect and ask, and then try to quantify it. For example, let's say the prospect tells you that she will be using your solution to get her product to market faster. You can then ask how much faster she perceives your product will get it to market. Once you find that out, ask how much revenue is projected for that product in the next 12 months. Once you get that figure, divide by 52 (weeks), and you will know how much his or her company is losing based on lost opportunity costs, per week. Then you can tell her that for each week the decision is delayed, his or her company will be losing that much money. Those are real numbers, based on what she just told you, and you've given her a compelling reason to get the PO to you now. In addition, you'll have given her a good, financially sound argument she may have to take to her CFO. I've probably got a dozen examples of how to build an ROI model like this, but this one's one of the most common (for more on "Selling by ROI," read my whitepaper).

"This technique works equally well if your target company is building an external project (for use by their customers) or an internal project (for use by themselves). Ultimately, people buy solutions because they make financial sense, and sometimes the finances are based on projections. But you do have to ask what their thoughts are as to how the implementation of your solution will pass muster on both the technology and the financial sides of the fence. It sounds like you've won the technology battle. Now you've got to tackle the financial element."

(Back in the present again) The technique of drilling down on the financial reasons people perceive a need for your solution is critical to accelerating the sales process, and it's most effective when you're early in the sales cycle (I encourage you to do it on the very first call) because the prospect is not yet in price negotiation mode, and much of the time will be fairly comfortable giving you some hard numbers. Add this technique to your Best Practices Playbook, and you'll be getting those POs in a lot faster, and with less resistance.

One-call close on the first call: if you don’t, the prospect may not return your second call

Later this week, I'm giving a presentation in front of some very savvy high tech inside sales executives and managers. They've heard just about everything about telesales courses you can imagine, and I've been asked to tell them --- among other things --- why my sales training is different. Those of you who subscribe to my blog know I stay away from actively promoting my training classes on it. Instead, I provide inside sales tips that you can use right now, today, to make more money. But in that presentation this week, I'm going to give them the differentiator that I'm blogging about today, because it's important, and most inside sales reps aren't doing it. And the bigger the deal, the larger the enterprise prospect is, its importance becomes greater. It's the one-call, 8 minute close. And it's got to be done on the first call.

It's my firm belief that on the first call to a prospect, you've got to get everything done in 8 minutes or fewer. That means opening the call well, asking your qualification questions, finding out about the prospect's business, determining how ROI fits into the equation, then closing on the next step. Most of the time, about 8 minutes is all the prospect will give you. Your delivery is a lot like show biz. It has to be interesting, concise, entertaining, and leave the prospect wanting more. And if you've done your job well, but forgotten to get the ROI data you need, the prospect is likely never to return your subsequent calls, even though he or she is interested. Why? Because the prospect has gotten a lot of data from you, and feel he or she now "owns" the sales process.

If you are fortunate enough to have a second conversation, the prospect will almost never tell you how much it's costing his or her company not to have a solution, although he or she would have on that first call. That's because he or she may be seriously thinking about buying your solution, and is already thinking about price negotiation. Giving you ROI data in this phase of the sales process puts your prospect at a competitive disadvantage, doesn't it? He or she knows it, too.

There's lots out there in the sales training world focusing on "charting," personality types, New-Age mysticism, psedo-psychology, pseudo-science, and communication styles. I think it's all junk, and lots of it's there to sell books, CDs, DVDs,  magazines, and audio courses. It's not that complicated. You don't have to be a mind-reader to be a great sales person, but you do have to have a sense of urgency. You need to ask great questions, get elaboration on the answers, and find the ROI hole on that first call. And you'll need a call for action within a specific timeframe, too. It's a one-call close, and I recommend doing it in 8 minutes. Plenty of times, the prospect will give you more time or a few more phone calls. But don't bet on it. If you add this one-call technique to your Best Practices playbook, you'll improve call metrics, increase sales, and be better at price negotiation.

 

Cold calling essentials: use your prospect’s website to turn your cold call into a warm call

I'm conducting one of my telesales training courses this week for a network solutions company that has a challenge common to many inside sales organizations, namely cold calling into companies where there has been no prior telephone contact, at any level. In some cases, there are individuals that have downloaded whitepapers, attended tradeshows and seminars, or signed up for webinars, but in most cases, there has been no previous "touch" at all. In calling these companies, it's absolutely critical to mine the prospect's website for clues that can be used to turn the cold call into a warm call.

There are several critical things you can find by visiting your prospect's homepage, and you can do it all in three minutes or fewer (if it takes longer, you'll never meet your call metrics, so you have to know what to look for, and how to find it). You'll want to focus on your solution, and find clues on the website indicating that the prospect company could have a need. If you sell application development tools, for example, you'll look for indicators that the prospect is building applications; if your prospect is selling its own applications on its website, you now have additional ammunition you need to make a more meaningful opening call.

Here are a few classic web elements that are indicators that the prospect could potentially use a solution like yours, if you provide development or networking solutions, as an example. If you don't sell these types of solutions, you can use this as a template to create a list of your own "hot" web indicators for your solution. Look for elements such as these that you can refer to when engaging your new "cold" prospect:

• Bill paying capability
• Online account management
• Order entry
• Reseller portal
• Taxes or auto registration
• Shipment tracking

In addition, scan the homepage for any corporate news that could be valuable, such as acquisitions or mergers, or press releases or whitepapers mentioning the thoughts and ideas of upper-level management. This data will be critical when calling high, and again, turns your cold call into a warm call.

Your prospect's website is invaluable in telling you how the company makes its money. As I've said many times, prospects will only buy solutions if they will help the company to make money, or stop losing money.  To build rapport and begin strategizing an ROI-based sales formula with your prospects, learn these three things from your website research:

• what product or service your prospect company sells
• who buys its products and services
• how its customers buy those products and services

And last but not least, check the Management page to determine the name of the appropriate CXO. It's better than any other source on the internet, because it's always current.

If you take the steps I've outlined in this post, you'll find your cold calls go a lot better, because you've taken some important steps that prove to your prospect that you know his or her company well enough to make an intelligent value proposition based on intelligence instead of guesswork. Remember to take 3 minutes or fewer per prospect (the more you do it, the more efficient you'll get), and add this powerful technique to your Best Practices playbook.

 

What to do when your competition is cheaper (and maybe better!)

This has got to be one of the more serious sales objections in any salesperson's day, and because technology is moving so rapidly, can occur at almost any time. I'll tell you how it happened to me, and what I did about it.

I once sold a hardware-based software debugger, a great product, and we sold thousands for $5000 each. One day, a new competitor came up with a product that did a lot of what ours did, and sold for $400. We tested it, and it was a great product! The only feature difference was that it didn't have something called hardware breakpoints, a feature that not all software developers needed. So I had to reposition our product. I never like to knock the competition, so I decided a good approach was to "damn with faint praise" and position our competitor into a small corner of the developer world. Our prospects and customers were savvy buyers and read all the journals, and a large percentage of them started asking how our product, which cost ten times more, stacked up against theirs. And even if they didn't need hardware breakpoints, here's how I responded. Let's call their product the ABC Debugger:

"ABC makes a really good product, and it's terrific if you're building a home software program to run a sprinkler system. But if you're in serious production mode, and have a hard timeline for getting a product to market, our debugger is the only way to go."

Of course, I had to sell the value of hardware breakpoints, too, even if the value wasn't perceived initially. You know that I place a real value on asking ROI questions, which I teach today in my telesales training courses, so I knew what they were building, who their customers were, and had an idea of how much revenue that product was going to produce for them. My customers' concerns about product rollout timefames turned out to be way more important than a $4500 cost differential per unit, and our sales never faltered. Within a year, our own engineers developed a new flagship product that sold for $20,000 and was wildly successful, but we never stopped successfully selling our $5000 debugger, either.

Damning with faint praise is a great technique when your prospect brings up the name of a worthy competitor. Use it along with your important ROI questions, and add it to your Best Practices Playbook. And if you have another way to handle this sales objection that's worked successfully for you, tell us about it!

Frustrating, annoying, unusable: Three clue words that lead to sales success!

Frustrating. Annoying. Unusable. These words are three of the most common used by prospects to describe a product or service that isn't working well for them. And they're using these words because they're talking to you about potentially changing to your offering, and telling you why they're unhappy with what they're using now. Many inside sales reps, though, ignore these clue words, and instead of asking the prospect to elaborate on the pain point, begin feature dumping all over the place, describing features and benefits like crazy, but failing to use the clue to begin the process of quantifying the scope and return-on-investment (ROI) value of the problem. Let's talk about how to fix this.

Here's an example of how it shouldn't be done. The prospect is a Testing Manager:

Prospect: "It takes forever to build scripts with our current regression tester, and it annoys the heck out of me and the team, because we're getting pressure to get out the new release. How soon can you get me a demo?"

Salesperson: "I think you'll find that our GUI is terrific, and you'll be able to build scripts faster than your current solution. I can fit you in for a demonstration webinar next Wednesday. Work that work with your schedule?"

Prospect: "Yes, I'll get the team together to take a look."

Salesperson: "Terrific. I'll send you a confirmation email, along with a dial-in keycode. Anything else I can answer before I let you go?"

The problem here is that the rep doesn't know about the problem (he or she didn't ask), and is just going to deliver another unqualified webinar. Maybe the webinar goes well, and the rep keeps calling, but after 2 weeks, there's still no PO. Not only that the rep can't reach the prospect, and the rep's calls aren't being returned. Sound familiar? It should, because it's probably happened to all of us (me included, what I was a junior salesperson). So how do we fix this, and accelerate the sales cycle? By asking the prospect to better explain the problem, instead of jumping prematurely into delivering a demo/webinar.  How about improving the call so it goes like this:

Prospect: "It takes forever to build scripts with our current regression tester, and it annoys the heck out of me and the team, because we're getting pressure to get out the new release. How soon can you get me a demo?"

Salesperson: "Tell me a little about that new release, and the internal pressures you're running into."

Prospect: "We have an important upgrade that will fix a lot of the problems in our last release, and included is a new feature set our customers have been asking for. We've got hundreds of customers lined up to buy this upgrade, and they won't buy additional licenses until the old problems have been fixed. Our current regression tester has blown up on several tests already, and the VP of Sales is putting pressure on engineering, because she needs the revenue this quarter."

Salesperson: "Do you have a sense of what kind of revenue is going to be generated when the new release is ready to ship?"

Prospect: "Well, it's conservatively 2000 licenses, and we're charging $495 for the upgrade."

Salesperson: "That comes out to $990,000, does that sound about right?"

Prospect: "Right, and the quarter ends in 60 days."

Salesperson: "I can see why the VP of Sales is concerned. If we divide $990,000 by 60 days, it looks as though there's a lost opportunity cost of $16,500 per day. That's a lot."

Can you see what we're doing here? We're now fully understanding what the ramifications are of not finding a solution. Now you can do your demo webinar. So why hasn't the prospect called us back after the webinar? Busy in the lab, trying again to get the old product working, broken ankle in a pickup game and he or she is out for 3 days, could be anything. But now you have the power to call above the Testing Manager, maybe to the VP of Engineering (and you did begin the sales process by calling high and getting passed down, didn't you?) You can tell the VP that you know that his or her company is losing $16,500 a day in delayed sales, and the VP can accelerate your sale again.

In each telesales training course I teach, we spend a lot of time talking about clues, and how to address them. The clues commonly begin with words like "annoying," "frustrating," or "unusable." When you hear these words, or those similar to them, perk your ears up, stop "selling," and ask for elaboration. It's your key to getting important ROI information that will get you the sale faster. This sales technique will increase sales, and help you to understand your prospect's situation more fully. Add it to your Best Practices playbook.

 

Want to increase sales? Then learn your prospect’s business.

I've long been a believer that the better you understand your prospect's business, the better solution you can provide. In doing so, you'll proactively deal with sales objections earlier in the sales process, understand important elements in the ROI sales process, and provide more effective and timely solutions. In terms of extrinsic value, you'll increase sales. Just as important, intrinsically you'll have more fun on the job by learning more about the world in which you live. I'm going to tell you two short stories that underscore this. In the first one, I didn't make a lot of extra money, but learned an important lesson. In the second, I made a bundle. They're both worth telling.

Story One: The headstone carver and the copier salesperson. I once sold photocopiers, a tough job, because all brands were pretty similar. The Royal brand copiers I sold were identical to those branded by Mita, Pitney-Bowes, and one or two the companies. They were all made by Konishiroku, so the only differentiators were the great customer service my company offered and the salesmanship of the rep. I was an indefatigable salesperson, working both the telephone and walking the beat by going door to door, business to business. Which is how I one day wandered into the California Monument Company, where owner Mike Brunetti carved headstones. As luck would have it, Mike needed a copier the day I walked in the door, and bought one pretty much on the spot, the latest model with advanced enlargement and reduction features. In those days, I never asked much about my customer's business, as copiers were copiers. Or so I thought. I always made it a point to do an onsite visit after installation to ensure my customers were happy. On my post-sale visit to Mike, I learned a lot about why it's important to ask about the customer's business. Mike insisted on showing me how he was using the copier, so I followed him into his office. There, he had a large collection of art books with beautiful designs of angels. "Before I had your copier, I had to hand draw everything, and prepare a stencil which I used for carving. With your copier, here's how I do it now," he said, and proceeded to put a piece of transparency in the copier. He used the enlargement feature to copy a small design from a book. He then removed the transparency and punched a number of small holes along the dark lines of the transparency. Then he laid the transparency on an uncarved headstone, sprinkled some black powder on the transparency, banged it two or three times with a rubber hammer, lifted the transparency off the stone, and voila, he had a perfect stencil right on the headstone. He then took a hammer and chisel, and began carving along the lines. My copier had become a unique tool in the headstone carving process. Mike was the only monument carver in my territory, so I couldn't do much vertical marketing, but I learned two things that day that I've never forgotten: Don't make assumptions about how the prospect will use your solution, and every prospect's business is interesting, has different challenges, and is well worth asking about.

Story Two: Making petroleum out of hamburgers. Fast-forwarding a few years, I was selling debuggers, software development tools that allowed software programmers to write better code. A large fast-food chain (I'll call them FFC, and I'll bet you've eaten there) was one of my prospects, and in my first call to them, I determined that their team needed 5 debuggers. By now, I always made a habit of asking about my prospect's business, so I asked what kind of code they were developing. My prospect told me that they were going to turn their finished code over to a large petroleum company, and I asked why. It turns out that they were working on a joint venture to locate FFCs on the premises of gas stations, and customers would pay at the pump for both food and gas. After filling up, they'd go to the drive-through lane at FFC, pick up their food, and be on their way. Fascinating! I asked my FFC prospect about the debuggers the petroleum company used. He didn't know, but gave me a contact name when I asked. Right away I called the petroleum company. It turns out that they were looking for debuggers, too! And I soon sold dozens to the petroleum company for use throughout the enterprise, in all of their lines of business, many more than I sold to FFC. If I hadn't asked my original FFC contact about his business, I might never have known about the petroleum company. My competitor might have gotten there before I did, and I would have lost the business before I ever knew it existed.

The moral of the story is what I teach in every one of my inside sales training courses. You always have to ask about your prospect's business, because you'll leave business on the table if you don't. You will also position yourself as a consultant with your prospect, and will build important rapport that your competitor may not. In doing so, you will build a knowledge base of how your customers use your product in the real world to improve their businesses, expand your vertical marketing capability, and increase sales, too. Add this to your Best Practices playbook.

Enhance your closing skills by downloading my free Selling by ROI whitepaper

Just about the most progressive, professional, and lucrative road to success in selling is the path that takes the enterprise prospect through the return-on-investment (ROI) process, as it relates to what your product or service will bring his or her company.  My Closing on Return on Investment Data with Enterprise Prospects whitepaper provides a template for selling successfully by using important - but often hidden - financial and business data that the prospect will give you, but only if you know how to ask for it. These data will tell you how to sell, what business factors are involved "behind the scenes," open up sales objections before they occur, and give you important information you'll later need for price negotiation. There's a lifetime worth of hard-hitting sales techniques in this 5 page document which you can read in 5 minutes, and begin using effectively today! Apply the techniques in the Whitepaper, and you'll:

• Increase sales to other prospects within the enterprise
• Better negotiate the final sales price of your solution
• Accelerate the sales process for faster approval 
• Uncover potentially damaging sales objections sooner

These techniques come right from our sales courses, and are a key to strategic sales, whether you're in inside sales or direct sales. This whitepaper is free, so go to our whitepaper page and download it today, so you can enhance your closing skills, and add these sales secrets to your Best Practices playbook.

Those Darn Call Metrics: Reality or Fiction?

Special note: Since this post was written, I've developed a great model for deriving metrics that makes logical sense, and can be easily customized for any company. Read it by clicking here.

Many inside sales reps today are measured on Key Performance Indicators (KPI), among which are Dials Per Day. Ken, one of our blog subscribers, mentions that he's being tasked with 50 dials per day, and asks how he can manage to call high, ask great qualification questions, and still make 50 dials in a given day. Additionally, he's mandated to get back to every inbound voicemail or lead call within one hour. Sounds tough, so let's dig in. I'll analyse it, and tell you how you can succeed through it

In an eight hour work day, a rep can realistically be expected to be on the phone six hours of that time. The rest is spent on paperwork, proposals, and in-house communications. There is also a burn-out factor that every rep experiences by being on the phone for all eight hours. Even I couldn't do it.

So if we take Ken's 50 dials, that amounts to 8.33 dials every hour, based on that six hour call day. If Ken actually has a conversation on every call, each call could only last 7.2 minutes. Furthermore, each of those calls would require at least 2 minutes of post-call data entry, lowering call time to 5.2 minutes. Even on a cold call, a rep should take two preliminary minutes to review the account being called, from a quick visit to the prospect's website to see what his or her company sells, to reviewing notes of past conversations on a warm call. Now our time per call has been lowered to 3.2 minutes, not enough time to fully qualify much of anything. Now we know that 7 people aren't actually going to answer the phone each hour. But if half of them do, and we take 15 minutes to fully qualify the prospect and two minutes for data entry, 34 minutes have elapsed and we have only 26 minutes left for the 6 dials we have left in order to meet the metrics. We have to hope, for Ken's sake, that he doesn't reach anyone in those 6 dials, or his metrics are shot.

Now that we've debunked the real-world reality of a 50 dials per day KPI, let's ask ourselves why management is enforcing this metric, and see what we can do to change it. Typically, this metric is enforced when the revenue numbers are down and call reports show that the reps are making fewer than 20 or so dials per day. Management knows that even great reps won't meet the metric, but does it in order to get reps out of lazy habits. It does tend to get call volume up, but can have a disastrous counter-effect of increasing the length of the sales cycle because leads aren't qualified (or disqualified) as well and efficiently as they should be.

My old boss Perry Lynne had an effective way of measuring metrics.  He asked each rep to log every dial per hour, and also list "lost sales," where the prospect had already bought from a competitor. He then compared the dials metric to the top rep's sales numbers (often that was me). That gave him an idea of how many dials it would take to make optimum sales numbers. Perry could have taken the top rep's dials, doubled it, set a metric, and assumed that sales would double. But he didn't because, in my case, he knew I was qualifying the heck out of every opportunity, and he didn't want to run the risk of monkeying with success. There is both an art and a science to selling. The science involves metrics, but the art involves qualifying. This nexus represents the challenge that inside sales management has to deal with every day.

So how can Ken perform as well as possible within the framework of tough metrics? Here are a few ideas. Not perfect, but as perfect as I can get it, within Ken's boundaries:

1) Spend no more than 2 minutes reviewing the prospect's website and/or previous notes before the call.

2) On inbound sales leads from lower-level prospects, call high instead. You may reach an administrative assistant, but he or she can get you through to someone high enough that it's a better call than starting low. Your sale will progress faster there, and let her transfer you, because the call will be coming from an exec's office, the other party can see that on the phone display, and chances are he or she will pick up your call instead of ignoring it than if you dial cold, which sometimes happens. If he or she doesn't refer you, go back to the original lead, and call that person. That's 2 dials right there.

3) You've got to qualify or disqualify the prospect really fast. Use these six qualification question types we teach in our telesales training courses to ensure that you've gotten everything, and don't forget to get your prospect's official title right up front, so you'll know how valuable your information really is:

a) Timeframe: When do you have to have a solution on board?

b) Requirements: What does your ideal solution look like?

c) Business/Consequences: Tell me a little about your business, how the solution will positively affect your bottom line, and describe the consequences of not moving forward with it.

d) Scope: How many people/departments/lines of business will need this solution?

e) Decision Tree: How does the decision process work for getting the solution on board?

f) Budget: Is the solution budgeted? If not, what is the process for establishing a budget?

In a perfect world, you'd want to get the prospect to elaborate on all of those questions, and a good rep like Ken will probably do it anyway. If he does, his metrics will go down, but he'll increase sales, and overshoot his quota. He and his company will make a lot of money. And I don't think his manager will give him too much grief for not hitting the metrics.

Being the top earner in your department always gives you leeway with management. In a future blog post, I'll elaborate on the questioning methodology in item #3 above, because it works every time, and it's fast. Add it to your Best Practices playbook. And good luck with the metrics.

5 Most Common Inside Sales Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

During the process of designing our customized telesales skills courses, I always interview all of the reps that will be in the class. I ask how they conduct the sales process, what's working for them, and what isn't. There are five behaviors that I see constantly, and each will increase the time it takes to make the sale or prevent the sale from occurring. They all inhibit sales performance. Let's discuss them, and how to fix them. Ho many of these sound familiar?

1) Failing to select the right individual with whom to begin the sales process. Many reps begin by calling a lower-level person at the prospect company, rather than starting by calling high. Here's probably the most common example from the IT world: You get an inbound lead from a Network Administrator interested in your network security solution. Instead of beginning your sales process there, you should instead start at the CIO's office to determine if there is an initiative in place to adopt your type of solution.

2) Not using appropriate language in opening the call. If you're starting with a cold call to an exec (see #1 above), don't begin by asking "How are you today?,"or asking if this is a good (or bad) time to talk. Those openings inhibit rapport immediately, and you're not selling consultatively as a peer. Instead, begin by introducing yourself and your company in one sentence, then tell the exec exactly why you're calling (our sales courses can help you with scripting).

3) Not talking enough about the prospect's business. Many reps spend far too much time discussing their own companies, and far too little time talking about the prospect's business. Let's say you're selling software development tools, and your prospect is in the drive train division of a large auto maker. Why not ask to what other divisions their code goes when finished? Do those divisions use devtools too? Ask who would be a good contacts within those divisions. If you don't know what a drive train is to begin with, try Google or Wikipedia.  With intricate high tech products, you'll often hear obtuse answers to the question "What are you building?" I always like to ask how their end-users use their product or service, which tends to drive the conversation to layperson's terms, easier to understand than the tech terms prospects sometimes use. Being intelligently ignorant at the beginning of a call is OK, because by asking intelligent questions about the prospect's business, you will soon understand the business reasons a prospect is considering your solution.

4) Not asking enough questions regarding the business problem the prospect is facing for which your product could be a solution. If the prospect is interested, why not ask more about the consequences to his or her company if a solution is not found. The answer will provide important return-on-investment data for you as the sales process progresses. A great way to kick off the discussion is to ask  the prospect how his or her product or service makes money for his or her company.

5) Not remembering that people generally only buy for two reasons: Either your solution will help the prospect company to make money, or to stop from losing money. The price for your solution has to look good on the balance sheet. Often, you have to help the prospect to understand the return-on-investment your solution brings to the table, and you can't do it unless you can predict how the conversation will go in the CFO's office when you're not there. Always ask the prospect how he or she thinks your solution will make financial sense for the company. If you can't get these answers from your prospect, you may be calling too low on the decision tree (see #1 above).

If you avoid the mistakes listed here, I guarantee that you'll increase sales. Pass these tips along to your colleagues, and add them to your Best Practices playbook.