MacKee Sandra L. - Selling to Anyone Over the Phone

Selling to Anyone Over the Phone

SECOND EDITION

SECOND EDITION

Renee P. Walkup with Sandra McKee

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in 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 service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walkup, Renee P., 1957

Selling to anyone over the phone / Renee P. Walkup with Sandra McKee. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-1483-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-8144-1483-4 (pbk.)

1. Telephone selling. I. McKee, Sandra L., 1952- II. Title.

HF5438.3.W34 2011
658.872dc22

2010006636

2011 Renee P. Walkup

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

About AMA

American Management Association ( www.amanet.org ) is a world leader in talent development, advancing the skills of individuals to drive business success. Our mission is to support the goals of individuals and organizations through a complete range of products and services, including classroom and virtual seminars, webcasts, webinars, podcasts, conferences, corporate and government solutions, business books, and research. AMAs approach to improving performance combines experiential learning learning through doingwith opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of ones career journey.

Printing Number

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Appendix A:
PEAK Personality Type Assessment

Appendix B:
Handling Customer Complaints Effectively

Appendix C:
How to Present Powerful Proposals That Sell

SANDRA MCKEE would like to acknowledge the brilliance and unflagging enthusiasm (and occasional nagging) of coauthor Renee Walkup during the development of this book. She also thanks business clients and students who have affirmed, by their progress and feedback, the methods that appear here.

And speaking of nagging, RENEE WALKUP would like to thank Sandra McKee for helping me to make this book a reality. Sandra, you are an inspiration and you never fail to impress me with your skills as a talented writer and storyteller. I would also like to thank my hundreds of clients for their trust and support over these last thirteen years since founding SalesPEAK. You are the people who charge me up in the morning and throughout every day.

To my husband, Ted, thank you for all you do to support me in my work, and also to my daughter, Rachel, for your patience with my time spent on this project. Thank you both!

Both RENEE AND SANDRA are grateful to Bob Nirkind, senior acquisitions editor at AMACOM Books, for his enthusiasm for our project. Rarely do authors have the opportunity to work with an editor who exhibits the level of expertise and professionalism that Bob has shown. His diligence and vision were instrumental in making this book what it is.

We also want to thank our copyeditor, Debbie Posner; Associate Editor/Copy Manager Erika Spelman; and the editorial and production staff of AMACOM. You listened to our suggestions and then made this the best book it could be.

Years ago, our entrepreneurial ancestors pushed a cart through the city square to peddle their wares. And the profession of sales was born.

The interactions were in person. Face to face. And although many a peddler burned untold calories pushing his cart around, he left no effect on the environment in his wake. Since then, many sales evolutions have taken place. John Deere and his wagon loaded with plows led to the more modern day with hundreds of thousands of salespeople on the road driving millions of miles each year to visit customers. These numbers have steadily risen over time.

With the advent of better train and air travel, weve added driving to stations and airports, hopping on trains as well as planesjust so we could meet with our customers in person, hoping to close the sale. And we have been very successful with this method in the past. But consider this: It costs a company between $100 and $600 dollars for a salesperson to visit a single customer in person (depending, of course, on how close together customers are clustered).

A new day has dawned in sales, and with it has come rising travel costs, increased wait times, and a lower return on investment for individual sales staff because of the time/money trade-off. Time spent on planes is not generating revenue. Time spent waiting to see customers can also eat into return on sales investment because its not direct customer contact time. Not only does selling on the phone virtually eliminate these concerns, it adds the bonus of being a more green method of selling.

Or, looking at this another way, the ROI of using the telephone to sell is far more profitable for companies. More salespeople can be employed, less waste takes place, and business gets back on track for profitability.

One of our clients began an inside sales organization employing six telephone salespeople in 1994. Her groups sales grew to around $500,000 the first year they were in operation. Today, she employs over eighty inside salespeople and their sales have grown to over $100 million! Her departmental costs are a fraction of the outside sales organizations. Every salesperson has a desk and a telephone. Her sales-people can make dozens of sales calls per day, as compared to outside reps, who can make a maximum of only ten sales calls daily.

Senior management at this company is thrilled with their results. Our clients employees consistently win the sales awards at national meetings, outselling and outproducing the salespeople who are also using more of our earths resources to accomplish sales. In short, the company achieves a dramatically better ROI for their inside sales team than for their outside sales force.

Hence the double in double greengreener to the planet, and more green in your pocket.

While youre taking a more responsible stance toward the future of the planet by utilizing the telephone more effectively and minimizing travel costs, you may be wondering why customers prefer to conduct business over the telephone as well. The answer is simple. Time. All customers have a limited amount of time to work with salespeople. If youve ever heard Im just too busy from a customer, and you believe there is sincerity behind those words, then you understand.

Meeting with a sales rep in person means that the customer has to carve out valuable time away from daily job demands. A phone call is less time-consuming for him or her, and just as effective for you (if not more so), than that one-hour face-to-face appointment. With a focused call, most trained salespeople can accomplish their call goal in a quarter of the time it would normally take to meet with the customer in person.