A Better Way to Start Every Phone Call

A Better Way to Open a Call

This tutorial is for outbound calls you make to people who do not know you.

At first, you will reject this idea because you have been doing it differently your entire life.

But if you reject something new because it is "new." it is impossible to learn something valuable.

So read this post and TRY IT!

"My name is....."

"Hi Mr. Smith, my name is........"

Most every sales call or appointment-setting call in America starts this way--the WRONG way.

In fact, opening a call with your name and company name confuses the prospect.

"You say "This is Jim Witherspoon with Access Financial Services" and because your prospect is not familiar with your name or your company name, your prospect hears "This is Jimwisoon with acesfishercie." You have now confused your prospect who is thinking "who?"  "from where?" Do you want to start your calls with a confused prospect? A prospect that has been trained as a child, "don't talk to strangers?"

Salespeople and business owners think it's so important to tell the prospect their name. But the prospect does not give a hoot about your name. Because you've been taught to do it this way, you will be astonished by what I tell you here.

Your name is unimportant. Your company's name is unimportant. The sales prospect does not care. The sales prospect has an interest in only one thing. In fact, the sales prospect has a continuous interest in this one thing, 24 hours a day, every day.

What's in it for Me????

The prospect wants to know "what's in it for me?" If you have your entire sales call focused on 'what's in it for the prospect," you will get rich in sales.

The answer to this question, "what's in it for me," must be the FIRST thing out of your mouth when you make a sales call--not your name, not your company name.

Of course, at this point, some readers think "it's unprofessional not to introduce yourself" or "it's the proper business protocol to start off stating your name and company."  Good–you keep using your proper protocol and stay poor.  When I get a call and the caller states their name and company and they are unfamiliar to me, I am 70% ready to hang up because I know it's a cold call AND the caller has given me ZERO incentive to stay on the call.

What to Say

Here's what it sounds like when done correctly:

Mr. Smith? I understand you have an interest in providing a college fund for your boys. Is that still the case?

You now have your prospect's interest, your prospect's engagement, and someone who is likely to listen to you for the next 2 minutes. Your prospect is engaged because you have succinctly asked a question in which he has an interest--the welfare of his children.

Some prospects will immediately say "who is this?"  And that is a good thing because they would only ask your name IF they are engaged by your first sentence!

Please don't make another call to a new contact by introducing yourself. If you call me and tell me your name and your company's name and I do not recognize them, I will hang up on you.  Or even worse, you tip me off that you are a telemarketing-level prospector by asking, "how are you today?"

Now that you have your prospect's attention, disarm him immediately.  If your second sentence starts to sound like a pitch and you return to your natural "about me and my company" orientation, you will blow it.  Your natural inclination at this point is to say something like "Well good, because my company can……."  This causes the prospect to get ready for a pitch and his defenses go up. Rather, continue to engage and disarm.

"I have no idea if the following approach will work for your family but over 100,000 families have used it to send their children to the top universities....."  Now your prospect is interested and disarmed because there is NO seller who says "I have no idea if this will work."  Every sales call the prospect has ever received is from a person telling him that the seller's solution is the best thing since sliced bread and always works. But you don’t say this and you avoid having to cut through his defensive armor.

At this point, because you are ridiculously anxious to tell him your name, you can say "by the way, my name is Jim Witherspoon.  Do you prefer Mr. Henderson or David?"

Here's the point - you need to think like a prospect. You need to understand what is going on in his brain every second and you need to know that he is thinking "what's in it for me."

This new approach works.  We have used it in our business for 20 years. Try it.