Many of the security guard company owners that I know were never salespeople. Consequently they lack the sales experience that a seasoned sales professional brings to an organization…especially with cold calling. As a result, I understand why many of the security guard company owners that I know hate cold calling. Even when some salespeople hear the term cold calling, they break out in cold sweats, but not me. I actually enjoy the process. Now I can hear some of you saying, “Yeah, right! Bull schnitzels!” In all honesty, I haven’t always felt that way. I got to this point through a lot of repetitions and several exercises that I’m going to share with you right now.
Exercise 1: Don’t hang up until hung up on
For this exercise, when making cold calls, you cannot hang up the phone until the person on the other end hangs up on you. The reason for this exercise is two-fold. First, it will help you get over the fear of, “I don’t know what to say when someone says no or gives me some objection.” Having to stay on the phone reinforces the fact that even when people say no, it is possible to push through.
Second, this exercise will give you a large number of objections in a short period of time. So why are getting objections important? That’s because as a salesperson you don’t have to have all the answers to ALL the questions/rejections you hear from your prospect. The only thing that you really have to have is the responses to the ones you hear most often. Once you have those, it’s pretty easy to put together a response to counter any objection that you get.
NOTE: Only try this with inconsequential accounts that you don’t mind being blacklisted from.
Exercise 2: What do you sound like?
For this exercise, you have to record a video of yourself making cold calls. Out of all the exercises that I do, I hate this one the most. That’s because I hate the sound of my voice when I’m making phone calls. But honestly, it’s the only way to see what it sounds like from the person you’re calling’s point of view.
With this exercise, you can see whether or not you look or sound tense. You can even see whether or not you’re smiling, while you’re making phone calls. You might ask why is smiling important when making phone calls? The answer is because when you’re making phone calls, the person on the other end can hear it in your voice and it makes them more comfortable.
Exercise 3: Get 30 no’s and call me in the morning
Out of all the exercises that I do, this is probably the easiest one, in fact you’re probably already doing it. With this exercise, you’ll simply be making cold calls. But you will only make calls until you get 30 no’s or 30 rejections. Once you get those 30 “No’s”, you’re done for the day. Go home, have a beer, go get a manicure, whatever it is that you like to do.
The reason that I include this exercise as is that it helps desensitize salespeople to hearing “No’s”. After doing this exercise enough, getting a “No” is no longer a soul crushing event, it’s just a “No”. Additionally, you start to subsconciously associate receiving a pay off for getting a lot of no’s.
Exercise 4: Learn your calculus
The last exercise is get to know your numbers. With this exercise, what you need to do is to first collect your call numbers and results for a 3 – 4 week time period. Second, calculate the number of no’s you’ve received and the number of yes’s. Once you get that number, find out the average number of no’s it takes to get to a yes. Once you have that number, things get a lot easier. Because you realize for every no that you get, it gets you that much closer to getting the yes.
These are 4 of my favorite exercises for salespeople, do you have any that you would recommed? Are there any sales training that you can recommend for salespeople? Please feel free to leave a comment below.
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By Courtney Sparkman
OfficerReports.com is a software company that provides security guard companies with an easy way to monitor their officers, better manage their operations, and win new business. Take a tour of our software to see how we combine Electronic Reporting, Real-Time GPS based Tour Tracking, and GPS based Clock In and Out into one easy to use platform.
