Stephan Schiffman's Telesales: America's #1 Corporate Sales Trainer Shows You How to Boost Your Phone Sales
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About this ebook
By providing one concise, easy-to-read chapter for each daily coffee break, Stephan Schiffman’s Telesales, Second Edition has the power to transform your career and help you post noticeable increases in your numbers in just ten working days and transform your career after a mere twenty-one.
Stephan Schiffman has coached thousands of sales teams across the country to improve their telesales performance.
He knows exactly what works and doesn’t, and in this completely revised second edition, he shares with you all of his insider’s secrets, including how to:
- Master the five ways you can increase your income
- Track your numbers . . . and use them to your advantage
- Evaluate your performance effectively . . . so you hit your own goals
- Gain control of the call
- Leave effective phone messages
- Use "how" and "why" questions to your advantage
- Learn what’s going on in the prospect’s world
- Understand the four types of negative responses . . . and find out how to get past each one
- Turn small adjustments in your performance into large income gains
By spending just minutes a day with this one clear, concise book, you can learn everything from creating a script; to recognizing when not calling a prospect can increase your sales productivity, to practicing the ten traits of world class salespeople. In this highly competitive world where the obstacles against telemarketers continue to become increasingly daunting, you can’t afford not to have these tools in your sales arsenal!
Stephan Schiffman
Bestselling author Stephan Schiffman founded D.E.I. Management Group in 1979 and has since led his company to become one of the nation's fastest growing sales training companies. A leader in motivational and sales training, he is a certified management consultant who has trained and consulted with a wide range of international corporations, including IBM, AT&T, Motorola, Sprint, and CIGNA. Schiffman has written over 50 books, which have sold well over six million copies internationally and have guided generations of salespeople through their career challenges. His articles are published frequently in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Sales and Marketing Management, Personal Selling Power, Corporate Travel Magazine, and INC. magazine. Mr. Schiffman divides his time between managing D.E.I., selling, training, consulting, and product development. He continues to serve as a frequent guest on national radio and television shows, including CNBC’s Smart Money, Minding Your Business, Steals and Deals, and Money Talk.
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Stephan Schiffman's Telesales - Stephan Schiffman
STEPHAN SCHIFFMAN'S TELESALES
Second Edition
America's #1 Corporate Sales Trainer Shows You How to Boost Your Phone Sales
STEPHAN SCHIFFMAN
Copyright © 2003 Stephan Schiffman. All rights reserved. D.E.I. Management Group * 1-800-224-2140 * www.dei-sales.com This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
Published by Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322 U.S.A. www.adamsmedia.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-58062-813-6 (paperback)
ISBN 13: 978-1-44050-079-4 (EPUB)
ISBN 10: 1-58062-813-3
Printed in Canada.
J I H G F E
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schiffman, Stephan.
[Telesales]
Stephan Schiffman's telesales / Stephan Schiffman.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Stephan Schiffman's telemarketing. 1992.
ISBN 1-58062-813-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-44050-079-4 (EPUB)
1. Telemarketing. 2. Success in business. I. Title: Stephan Schiffman's telesales. II. Schiffman, Stephan. Telemarketing. III. Title.
HF5415.1265.S35 2002
658.8′4 — dc21 2002009993
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
— From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations
This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases. For information, call 1-800-289-0963.
Ad omnes
Contents
Foreword and Acknowledgments
Introduction to the New Edition
Chapter 1:
Getting Started
Chapter 2:
A Typical Day
Chapter 3:
Understand Your Ratios
Chapter 4:
Tracking Actual Daily Numbers
Chapter 5:
The Five Ways You Can Increase Your Income
Chapter 6:
Little Things Can Mean a Lot
Chapter 7:
Your Golf Grip
Chapter 8:
Closing
(And Its Hazards)
Chapter 9:
The Four Steps of the Telephone Sales Process
Chapter 10:
Understand the Numbers — and Improve Your Approach
Chapter 11:
Move Forward in the Sales Process
Chapter 12:
Define Prospects Accurately
Chapter 13:
Count the No
Answers
Chapter 14:
The Ups and Downs of Selling
Chapter 15:
People Respond in Kind
Chapter 16:
Interruptive Marketing
Chapter 17:
Why Writing It All Down Is Essential
Chapter 18:
Master the Game of Catch
Chapter 19:
Developing Your Attention Statement
Chapter 20:
Developing Your Identification Statement
Chapter 21:
Developing the Reason for the Call
Chapter 22:
What to Do If You Don't Get Interrupted
Chapter 23:
The Department Store
Chapter 24:
Happy Now
Chapter 25:
Not Interested
Chapter 26:
Send Literature
Chapter 27:
The Direct Question
Chapter 28:
Put It All Together
Chapter 29:
Some Variations on the Standard Call
Chapter 30:
The Art of Leaving Messages
Chapter 31:
Another Effective Variation
Chapter 32:
The Art of Calling Back
Chapter 33:
I Was Just Thinking of You
Chapter 34:
How to Call Former Customers
Chapter 35:
How to Get and Use Connections with People at the Top
Chapter 36:
How to Send the Right Emotional Message over the Phone
Chapter 37:
The Recipe for a Great Conversation
Chapter 38:
The Past, the Present, and the Future
Chapter 39:
Ask How
and Why
Early and Often
Chapter 40:
Verify Your Information
Chapter 41:
Paint a Picture
Chapter 42:
Critical Point #2
Chapter 43:
When to Stop Calling
Chapter 44:
Ten Traits of World-Class Salespeople
Appendix
About the Author
Foreword and Acknowledgments
FIRST, A FEW WORDS ON THIS BOOK'S HISTORY and the purpose of this new edition. Over the decade since this book was first published, it has received positive reviews and has sold quite well. Everything changes, however, including the way that people sell over the telephone. New technologies, improved communication methods, and the Internet have all transformed the way we connect with each other. This book reflects some of the most important of those changes, and I think it will advance your thinking on how to use the telephone more effectively to develop and retain customers. Although the telephone is an everyday part of the business world, it is still seen as an interruption. In fact, the very first stage of growth for a salesperson is that of the interrupter.
That is to say you, the salesperson, are constantly interrupting people with sales calls. The telephone can be the most intrusive medium of all, since a completed call requires an immediate reaction. With the huge number of voicemails and e-mails that we all receive, it is not surprising that many business people feel overwhelmed by the number of messages they must process during a given day. This book shows you how to cut through all the clutter of today's sales world and create a sense of urgency with each and every one of your telephone contacts.
In seminars that I conduct, I often hear salespeople say how well a telephone conversation with a prospect went, or how confident they are that a sale will be forthcoming after a single call. A word of caution on this point: If you have not closed the sale on the initial contact, the real test of how well the call went is not whether or not you got through on the first call, but whether or not you will get through on the second or third call. In a telesales environment, prospecting often does not begin with the first good
call or initial contact; it begins only when you are able to reach the person on the second call. You'll find that basic principle laid out at various points in this book; it's an extremely important point.
I'd like to take the opportunity here to thank some of the people whose dedication to this project has made it possible. First and foremost, my gratitude goes out to Bob Adams, President of Adams Media Corporation, who has worked with me for the past fifteen years. Without Bob, I probably would not have written my very first book, and I owe him a debt of thanks and gratitude.
Thanks also go out to Walter Gibbs, who has been my editor for a number of years, and who helped me to succeed even with this publication. It goes without saying that my staff at D.E.I. has helped tremendously by putting together various aspects of this book, specifically Brandon Toropov, Martha Rios, and, especially, Lynne Einleger, Steven Bookbinder, and Michele Reisner.
As always, thank you Daniele, Jennifer, and Anne.
Introduction to the New Edition
WHEN I WROTE THE FIRST EDITION of this book, D.E.I. Management Group had shown dozens of sales teams in the metropolitan New York City area how to improve their telesales campaigns. We'd gotten results that made us feel quite proud. The book reflected what we'd trained.
Some years later, when I was asked to prepare a revised second edition, D.E.I. Management Group had shown thousands of sales teams all over the country how to improve their telesales campaigns. We were getting results that even we hadn't expected. (See the case study discussed in Chapter 43.)
Over the years, we learned a great deal first-hand from salespeople who actually made sales over the telephone for a living. We also refined our own training content for salespeople in all business environments (including people who sold for our own company). We did this by:
Establishing effective benchmarks for tracking personal sales activity,
Identifying, once and for all, the true definition of selling,
Determining a strict — but workable — set of criteria for tracking that all-important group of people known as active prospects,
Implementing the Ledge, a powerful new communication strategy designed to turn around initial negative responses, and
Discovering why someone who uses what we have to offer is far more important than any preconceived notions we may have about closing the sale.
You will learn about each of these points in the pages that follow. In developing this edition of the book I had two choices. I could:
Update and revise specific chapters without changing the original volume's basic structure, or
Completely rework the text to reflect the new outline of our telesales program, which I believe to be the very best offered by any sales training company anywhere.
Because so much of our training message now relied on the information I've outlined above, and since none of that information was covered in the first edition of this book, I decided to rewrite the book from scratch.
The result is a considerably longer book, one that draws on a much deeper level of experience than the first edition. This new edition will be of significant practical help to people who make a living by selling over the phone. It features all the key points of the telesales program we've shared with some of the country's biggest and most prestigious companies. To put the matter bluntly: I'm proud that the first book helped so many salespeople — but I'm even prouder of this one.
I'd love to hear your opinion about what follows. Please share your impressions by writing to me at the address below or by visiting our web site, which is www.dei-sales.com .
Stephan Schiffman
President
D.E.I. Management Group
888 7th Avenue, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10106
1-800-224-2140
1
Getting Started
CONGRATULATIONS! SIMPLY BY PICKING UP THIS BOOK, you've automatically set yourself apart from the vast majority of salespeople.
A few years ago, our company conducted a survey to find out how many salespeople pursue even a minimal professional development strategy. Unbelievably, we found that nine out of every ten salespeople do not even bother to read a sales-related book over the course of a year! What's more, the majority of companies offer little or no formal training whatsoever for their salespeople. For salespeople in general — and for those who must sell over the phone in particular — self-improvement is simply not on the agenda.
So congratulations are in order. You are part of the elite. By opening this book and beginning to read this chapter, you've taken a major step toward assuming control of your own professional destiny. You've demonstrated that you're interested in improving your performance and your career prospects. You've made it clear that you want to learn more about what works, that you want to get rid of what doesn't, and — perhaps most important of all — that you're determined to change familiar (but unproductive) patterns of selling. My hat is off to you.
Let me give you a little background about my company, D.E.I. Management Group, and the ideas contained in this book. D.E.I. Management has trained nearly half a million sales reps since 1979. The program you're about to follow has helped countless telesales professionals to improve their sales approach, take control of their numbers, and increase their incomes. It can do the same for you … if you read everything carefully, keep an open mind, execute the to-do items that appear near the end of each chapter, and them implement the program for at least twenty-one days after you