Reddit mentions of Smart Calling: Eliminate the Fear, Failure, and Rejection from Cold Calling

B2B is more consultive than emotional. Know your product inside and out. And when you’re first starting don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know, but let me find out.” You’ll build trust a lot faster that way. Chances are the people you’re talking to will know a lot more than you when you’re starting out.

To business it’s all about the bottom dollar.

What’s their ROI?

Why should they choose product X over product Z? Why should they choose your company over the competition?

Don’t upsell unless you know the value is there. It’s not about buying bells and whistles for them, it’s about buying at a decent margin and selling at a higher one.

Are you cold calling? If so I’d recommend this book.

And for god sakes, log you’re notes in your CRM. Don’t expect to remember the little details about your prospects. Favorite sports teams, interests, family, recent trips. Anything you can use to follow up and build rapport.

I built myself a call template. Helps me log my notes in the CRM and know I’m asking all of the right questions. That way when your call inevitably goes off script, you know where you were and can reel the conversation back in.

Edit: typo

If you're going to read sales books, I recommend that you stick with books that are specific to sales methodology, that teach you specifically how to sell. The only exception I have is "How to Win Friends and Influence People". To start anyway. Trump and Cardone won't teach you anything about prospecting, qualifying, proposing and closing. Not really.

Jill Konrath's books are really good. They are pretty up to date on modern prospecting. Spin Selling is timeless and fantastic. It's just a little dated. The principles are absolutely effective though. And for anyone who works the phone, Art Sobczak's Smart Calling is in my opinion the best sales methodology out there.

The next great book will be by someone who is an expert at cold email prospecting. This is the future of sales. Most of my biggest customers do not communicate with me via phone anymore. I think most companies need to be coached to come up with an effective cold email system to get their message just right but a good book would be an excellent seller if it could teach people how to write an effective value proposition.

I highly recommend you read Smart Calling if you haven't.

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Calling-Eliminate-Failure-Rejection/dp/1118588711

From what I learned, SEO is a commodity. basically the prospect can always say, so what? this other guy is giving me this for a lower price.

I'm assuming you're position is to gather market intelligence and refer the prospect to the manager to close?


Alot of business has been burned by fly by night SEO agencies, it's a tough market unless you can bring real value to the customer.

if you know how to rank websites and able to close prospects, you definitely can make more than you can imagine by driving leads to your prospects with a pay per performance structure.

In sales, here are my two favorite books:

Art Sobczak: Smart Callling

Little Red Book Of Selling

Art's book is wonderful for anyone that is doing B2B. While most of his techniques are described onto to selling into larger businesses, his techniques can be applied anywhere. Basically the premise is to find things through the internet, social "hacking", etc.., to turn any cold call into a friendly warm call.


Jeffrey Gitomer book is a good quick reminder on some of the basics.

And for Sales Leadership
People Follow You

Each of those books really affected my sales profession, and the way I lead.

True.

If you want to get past the gate, your pitch should be about THEM, not about YOU.

How can ABC Bank help them? Ideally, you must be able to lower their cost, provide faster answers, or increase their revenue.

The DM is VERY busy, That's why they are managers. If you want to ask them 1h of their time, you must give them a promise that this hour will help them to do their jobs.

A shameless book recommandation is this book from Art Sobzack

I am 100% positive that you will get a look of precise answers and concrete action points for your industry!