What makes a successful sales call? Having a blueprint for your sales calls in place can ease the difficulty of sales calls for you and for your prospects, resulting in more sales in less time compared to engaging in sales calls without a process. Learn how you can increase your successful sales call rate with the following blueprint that you can apply to your own sales call activities.

Warm the Prospect Before Initiating Contact

Many top sales reps prefer not to make cold calls because a quick comparison will show that fewer cold calls become closes than do warm calls, indicating that a successful sales call is frequently not the first contact point. The good news is, you do not have to know your contact in order to begin interesting him or her before the first call and encourage a warm reception for your messages.

• Send an e-mail or direct mail piece with an article or news piece that is relevant to the prospect’s business.
• Make a connection over social media like LinkedIn with a personal message indicating your interest in meeting the prospect.
• Leverage your personal and business networks to see if you can find someone to introduce you or mention your name and business before you call.

Plan Your Approach for a Successful Sales Call

Your prospects are busy, and so are you. Planning ahead before making a sales call is an important time saving practice. The more research you do ahead of initiating contact with the prospect, the better prepared you will be to find shared interests and activities that you can use to build the prospect relationship – a hallmark of a successful sales call. Based on what you already know about the prospect:

• Think about the features and benefits of your offering that are most likely to be of interest and fulfill the prospect’s needs.
• Consider what selling techniques you might use once the business of selling gets underway; depending on the prospect, you may want to adjust the softness of your approach.
• Develop your response to overcome any reluctance or objections that the prospect is likely to present.

Being prepared also gives you the confidence that you need to sell the prospect on taking the next step, an important requirement for a successful sales call.

Open and Guide Calls with a Conversation

It is common knowledge that people do not like to be sold. Even prospects who begin as inbound leads would rather reach a deal based on a mutual relationship over a deal that is purely based on commerce. Your successful sales call rate will improve dramatically if you can focus on taking a conversational and consultative approach from the first contact. Make a successful sales call by deploying these methods:

• Use observations in addition to standard questions. The goal is to encourage the prospect to start talking; once he or she does, doors will begin to open and you can move forward to the next step.
• Find an emotional connection between the prospect’s needs and your ability to fulfill those needs. This will be the guide to the benefits that you present and those that you spend the most time discussing.
• Build rapport by interacting with the prospect in his or her language and communication styles.

Don’t End the Call Until You Have Commitment

Only once you gain a commitment can you say that you had a successful sales call that ended with the prospect in your sales pipeline. The commitment that you obtain does not have to be a sale; it can be an agreement to meet for another phone call, scheduling a presentation, or anything else that involves a definite and measurable time commitment on the prospect’s behalf. If you can end a call with a clear path to the next step, you can be sure that you have completed a successful sales call that has a high likelihood of ultimately resulting in a sale.