Author: Leanne Hoagland-Smith
You return to the office and listen to your have voice mail messages. Several qualified sales leads returned your sales calls.
Yippee, success!!
Your heart is racing!
Then all of a sudden the euphoria dissipates, the dollar signs disappear and the now what should I do suddenly emerges.
Do you immediately jump on the phone and return the those sales calls?
Or do you stop, review your follow-up script or scripts?
In today’s hectic global market place one size sales script may not work as in years gone by.
Each ideal qualified potential customer (aka as qualified prospect) may have a different want, a different perception of value.
What I have found is to be simple and direct. The most important item to remember is not to make any presumptions such as the sales lead:
- Listened to your voice mail message
- Read your letter or email
- Heard your value proposition
My first sentence of my returned sales calls may take several variations depending upon the original message and the left voice mail message. Here are a couple of them. Sales Training Coaching Tip: I sometimes listen to voice mail messages several times to hear the para-verbal (syntax, loudness, softness) along with any key words to give insight as to that individual’s decision making and communication styles.
“This is Leanne Hoagland-Smith and thank you for your returned call. How may I support you?”
“Good afternoon, this is Leanne Hoagland-Smith and thank you for returning my call. I listened to your voice mail message. To ensure I heard correctly and for my own clarity, I heard…. Did I hear correctly?”
My goal is to show appreciation and ultimately secure a face to face meeting or scheduled a 30 minute telephone call.
For me these initial steps have been quite successful in my follow-up script.
Leanne Hoagland-Smith is a heurist who disrupts the status quo by discovering new ways to guide and support rapidly growing small businesses; those who wish to grow beyond their current employees and executives in career chaos. She is recognized as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers in 2013 by Open View Sales Labs and can be reached at 219.759.5601 CST.
