Pick Up The Phone and Sell. Alex Goldfayn

and prospects only sometimes, when you happen to think about it, you are at the mercy of timing.

      If they don't have an itch that you are offering to scratch at the moment you call, you will not get the business.

      That's a hard way to live, because the odds of the timing of their need lining up with your rare communications are really bad.

      But when you call systematically, you are constantly in your customers' minds, while your competition is not.

      When you are present in their system, it takes the timing off the table.

      That is, it doesn't matter when your customer has a need for your goods or services, because whenever they need something, they'll simply pick up the phone and call you.

      When you are consistently present, the customer will always think of you.

      It's like placing a backscratcher on your customers' and prospects' desks.

And the backscratcher has your name on it.

      So when the itch comes, they pick up the only backscratcher on their desk.

      They scratch, and you get paid.

      There is simply no other communications method that will generate all these benefits.

      And there is certainly no other way to create these benefits with such speed.

      You could go from an empty pipeline to one that's bursting at the seams in short order if you systematically make proactive phone calls!

WHAT ABOUT MEETINGS?

      But you might be thinking, meetings are more effective than phone calls.

      This is probably true.

      But here's the thing about meetings: you can only have so many in a day.

      A perfectly planned, very busy day might get you a handful of meetings.

      You can make the same number of phone calls in less than 30 minutes.

      If you get voicemail, which is more likely than not, your five calls take 5 to 10 minutes – and that's with leaving a message.

      There's one more important thing: we tend to have meetings with people we know well.

      Good customers, usually. Often, our very best customers.

      Everyone else doesn't get to see us very often.

      But phone calls take us well beyond this group.

      Phone calls take us to people we don't know as well.

      Which means we get to call people who are currently buying at least some products and services from our competition.

With proactive calls, we get to expand our wallet share and our market share – and the likelihood of expanding and growing our business goes way up.

      Because we're communicating with people we normally would not meet with.

CHAPTER 5 WHY WE AVOID THE PHONE

If proactive calls are so singularly effective for expanding your pipeline, creating new opportunities, moving existing ones forward, cementing your relationships, and creating new business, why don't more people sell with the phone?

      There are a number of reasons – both practical (not enough time) and mindset (fear of bothering or upsetting the customer). I will focus on the real-world, practical reasons in this chapter, briefly touch on the mindset issues, and dive into them in much greater detail in Part 2 of this book.

PRACTICAL REASONS WE DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE

      Many of the reasons we avoid the phone are mindset- and fear-based. I will review these in the next section and Part 2.

      This list is about the real-world reasons we don't make proactive calls. These are the realities of the business-to-business selling life that get in the way of our making proactive calls.

      You're Very Busy – Calls and Customer Requests Come in All Day

If you've been a business-to-business salesperson for more than a year, you're very busy.

      The phone rings all day long.

      You're answering and reacting all day.

      Answer and react.

      You're serving the customer.

      You have to; there's no choice.

      After all, you're in the customer service business.

      And you're world-class at it.

      Really, who takes care of customers better than you?

      They've been with you so long because you're so good at taking care of them.

      Plus, when they call, you cannot say, “I'm sorry, I'm in my proactive selling window right now; please call me back when I'm being reactive again.”

      Customers call you on the weekends, at night, and even when you're on vacation with your family.

      You take those calls.

      You help your customers.

      All day.

      You write up quotes your customers ask for.

      You reply to email, because goodness knows customers email you a lot.

      Sometimes, if you manufacture or distribute something, and your customer has an urgent need, you even get in your car and drive it over to them.

      Reacting to the incoming requests of your customers – and fixing their problems – keeps you incredibly busy all day.

      When there is a respite, and the phone stops ringing, you sit and breathe for a minute.

      You check in with your family.

      You check the scores and the news (that's allowed!).

      You're super crazy busy.

      And it's hard to find time to do anything else.

       The Good News Is: You can make five proactive calls in 15 minutes or less, so you don't need a lot of time. In fact, because you're usually going to be leaving a message, you can often move through five calls in 5 minutes. So, of course you're busy, but you have 5 to 15 minutes a day, right? Because that's all you need here.

      The Customers Who Call Are Usually Upset, and Who Wants More of That?

Customers don't call you when they're happy, do they?

      They rarely pick up the phone to give you positive feedback, compliments, or congratulations.

      Those reasons aren't urgent enough to pick up the phone.

      When customers call, there is almost always a problem.

      Or they need something.

      There is stress.

      They are under pressure.

      It's quite possible that somebody is yelling at them.

      So what do they do?

      They pick up the phone and bring that stress, pressure, and yelling to you.

      “Here are my problems – fix them now!”

      Perhaps not in those words, but that's the general feeling, right?

      And