It is known that over the phone sales can be an extremely challenging task, but there are very clear and simple things that can be done to improve results.

 

Professional Development

Professional development is one of the first places to start when seeking to improve selling over the phone. Sales is a skill and there are very clear things that can be done, or not be done, to see an improvement in your sales effectiveness.

One way is through trial and error by figuring it out as you go, but why would you want to attempt reinventing the wheel when many others have been there before and figured out what is done best?

By simply reading some of the experts’ books and information online, you take advantage of all the existing knowledge about what should be done during over the phone sales.

 

Research

It might make sense to do some research before speaking with prospects over the phone depending on who you’re selling to. You can research the prospects themselves on social media if you’re doing outbound calling.

By going to a prospect’s website to learn what they do and look for any recent news or events, you can research their business.

 

Use some form of a sales script

A lot of salespeople work without a sales script. Many salespeople actually see a script as being bad, but a form of a script is a powerful sales tool as well as greatly improves over the phone sales.

This might be as simple as a list of questions you should ask to gather information as well as powerful statements that you can make to effectively communicate what you’re offering.

 

Practice

Similar to sporting activities, practice makes perfect. You will not see an athlete just jump into a game or competition without practicing. An athlete will practice over and over and go through drills.

The same can be done when working to improve selling over the phone. Be prepared when you are in the game by practicing your script and responses.

 

Activity

The number of dials you make can be directly correlated with your results if you’re doing outbound sales. As a result, just ensure your activity levels are as high as you want them to improve over the phone sales.

Some simple things that you can do to optimize activity levels are scheduling phone prospecting time, decreasing multitasking, and tracking progress.

There are more advanced things that can be done to increase activity levels such as using a phone dialer and email automation tools from a technology standpoint.

 

Reflect Back

Lastly, to improve over the phone sales, embrace a step of reflecting back. We can try to identify what went well on the call and what could have been done better by reflecting back quickly after a call ends.

We can review what objections the prospect gave us as well as our responses. We can review to see if we asked the best questions and/or if there were any that we could’ve added. This step, which is frequently overlooked, can greatly improve results going forward.

SalesScripter provides a call script tool to help with over the phone sales.