Whenever someone asks me what I have in my bag or purse, I can’t help but imagine the scene from Mary Poppins, where the title characters pulls huge items out of her seemingly bottomless carpet bag. In real life, we just can’t carry everything and the kitchen sink in our promotional conference bags, so when you stock yours, make sure that you’re loaded with the most essential items.
This is a preview of
What To Carry In Your Promotional Conference Bags
.
Read the full post (573 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)
Do you make your cold calls with the goal of listening to the other person? Probably not, because very few people do. But it’s one of the most important skills you can have in cold calling.
In the old cold calling approach, you don’t really listen. You speak. You talk about yourself, your company, and what you have to offer.
And long before your introduction is done, you’ve probably “lost” the other person. Within the first few seconds, they’ve put up a wall. Most people aren’t interested in being “sold,” and they don’t like sales pressure.
The moment you use the old-school cold calling approach – the traditional pitch about who you are and what you have to offer – you trigger the negative “salesperson” stereotype. And that usually means instant rejection from your prospect.
The problem is with how you’re selling, not what you’re selling. When you start cold calling by talking about what you have to offer, you’re “pitching” yourself instead of focusing on the other person. Your voice and demeanor is full of expectation. And this creates sales pressure, which triggers resistance.
Have you ever let pride sabotage your career? “Robert,” was a successful TV news anchor who worked in a good-sized TV market. Robert had the classic anchor looks as well as deep booming voice. But he was frustrated that he was unable to move up a better job, which would involve working in a larger city for a much larger paycheck.
Robert’s problem was that he didn’t work much on the craft of anchoring. His delivery could be a bit flat and robotic. Imagine how someone with a good voice would sound reading something dull like a phone book. Robert was good at his job but not great enough to go to the next level.
4 Trust-building ways to cold call without pressure
Sometimes we need to make a cold call to a potential client who has “vanished.” Perhaps a lead suddenly went cold, and it’s our job to reconnect with them. But we’re not sure how to make the call without coming across as aggressive.
There can be lots of reasons a potential client “vanishes.” And many times it really doesn’t have anything to do with us or our cold calling process at all.
Unemployment rate has been high for some countries, but it never crossed that it’s the lack of proper skill that’s why people tend not to be accepted in a specific job. More often than not, it’s their incapacity to catch the attention of their probable employers through their application letters. So this might give you a bird’s eye view on how important application letters of cover letters are. Let’s just put it this way, when you apply for a job your first weapon is your application letter and resume. Since those are the only things that you hand out to your employer, you aren’t initially given the opportunity to explain further what you think needs to be explained fully to your employer. To sum it up, your application letter serves as your prime means of communicating with the very person that could grant you with your desired job. In addition, it is what sets your resume apart from the others whom employers would probably junk at the trash.
What do you find hard to do in sales? Let me guess.
Prospecting
Getting to appointments on time
Closing
Handling objections
Writing up activity reports
Getting samples and literature from your company
Prospecting
I’ve driven to the designated area and sat in my car with absolutely no enthusiasm for getting out and starting door-to-door canvassing. And it’s exactly the same with telephone prospecting. You dream up all sorts of reasons why today is not going to be a good day, or the time is too early or late or it’s lunchtime. Myself, I then procrastinate another 10 minutes tidying up all the junk on my desk.
Last week I hosted one of my Graphic Bootcamps: an advanced skills training workshop for people who want to learn more about the graphic way of working with groups and individuals. I noticed a really interesting trait in my attendees: a lot of them are just itchin’ to make their work more fulfilling and interesting – to try something new (in this case – using graphics in their work). They are skilled professionals and have been doing their work for quite some time and are very good at it. But unfortunately they are also a bit personally bored and unfulfilled – looking for a stretch and something to take them into new, more inspiring territory. Sound familiar?
Management can be a very rewarding career. However, many people apply for or accept their first management job without stopping and thinking about what it really means to make the transition from being an employee to being a supervisor. A lot of things will change when you become a manager, and it’s a good idea to stop and think about whether you just want to move ahead, or if you really want to manage other people.
