Although I am a firm believer in not making cold calls, I still believe the telephone is probably your most useful tool. We still need to interact with our prospects and customers.
Once you have a prospect on the phone, you should be using this time strictly for one thing. You should be using your phone time to pre-qualify your prospect.
However, many people struggle with this process. So, how do you qualify your prospect, so you don’t end up wasting his time, and especially your time? The only way I know of is to ask very direct questions about his ability and desire to move forward.
You need to ask questions that will usually only ask for a yes or no answer. Once you have these answers, then you will know whether you should; 1. Set up an appointment 2. Send him some literature and call back a few weeks or months later 3. Know that this person and/or company is not worthwhile pursuing at all.
Here are some questions I ask whenever I have a potential customer on the phone. These questions relate directly to my business of helping them increase and accelerate their revenues.
Just substitute your product or service benefits into the times it says sales or revenue, and you will qualify your prospect, and know right away whether to set up a meeting or not.
EIGHT QUALIFYING QUESTIONS THAT ASK FOR A YES
1. Do you want to improve your revenues this year?
2. Would you like to improve those revenues faster than you are doing now?
3. Is increasing profits also one of your main priorities?
4. Is decreasing your time to market a priority for you?
5. If I could show you how to do that in a more effective way, would you be interested?
6. Would you be prepared to give some of your time in order to achieve a sales increase?
7. Are you willing to invest some money in order to achieve success?
8. How soon would you like to get started?
Give it a try the next time you are talking to a prospect, and save your valuable time, and therefore money.
