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Open with a Grand Opening in Sales

Written by: Frank O`Toole

Article Overview: Did you know that a client will have decided whether they will stay listening to you or not in the first 30 seconds of your call. To find out the ideal opening statement simply keep reading.

Open with a Grand Opening in Sales

My name is Liam and I want to introduce myself and my product. I will tell you what the secret is to a better water system. I want to talk to you about this; I hope you will listen.......blah blah blah. Now in all honesty we have heard these types of opening statements before but have we ever taken the time to listen? No, I guarantee that you have not. I have seen and heard this through calls and sales training courses.

Answer me this, why would a person stay on the line to listen to you talk about you and your company? They simply would not. So what is the ideal opening statement? Well another question that you should not ask is whether they will buy or look into your product. For example you would hardly walk up to a woman in a bar and ask her seriously if she will marry you. You do not need to jump in to soon; you need to go through the process.

Through sales training courses I have heard numerous dead end questions for opening statements such as "I am just wondering if you have read it" or" I am just wondering if you have given it further thought" or "did you receive the brochure" there are a million and one excuses that a prospective client will come up with as to why they have not looked into it any further and the truth most likely is because your first call was not effective enough. When we look logically it is easy to see that this is not an effective opening statement but we all do it because we don't know what else to say or we do not want to sound too pushy.

A strategy that is used in sales training courses is to put the client into a receptive positive frame of mind because when some one is called up they are always preoccupied in something else so you need them to be thinking positively toward you in order for them to give you their time.

Once you have their attention the next trick is to get them to stay on the line by giving them a reason to. The person wants to know who you are, why you are calling and what is in it for them, short but sweet. The statement needs to touch their emotion of feeling that they are the most important person at that minute. One way that you can do this is to know something about them before hand by researching their business and what area they are working in.

What is your organisations differential advantage? Use this as a benefit by gaining their interests. Identify yourself and the company and use your first and last name then add your speciality that has been tailored to their needs that you will know by researching. It is known on sales training courses that to get a better, more effective response you should use words such as might, maybe, perhaps and depending on, in your opening statement so that it is not coming on to strong. For example "whether or not we will be able to help you I don't know, but that is the reason for the call".

When you are making your follow up calls never take advantage of your customer. Always have something new or different to offer them. If you can not think of anything then I have found through sales training courses that a brainstorming competition session could get those ideas burning.

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Article Tags: sales skills training courses, sales training, sales training skills, training course



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