The future of the phone is here. Yet most salespeople are using it for old school purposes only. The phone is no longer just about calling people. When I tell my sales staff to “pick up the phone” I’m not just talking about calls. I’m talking about using the phone to track down and close prospects without calling.
Here’s the deal; 86% of all phone calls go unanswered. Using your time on the phone to dial out, wastes 86% of the time you’re dialing. There’s a reason you have to make 100 dials to make one sale. Nobody answers the damn phone! Yet, the average American spends more than four hours per day staring at their phone. This should alert you that times are changing. The way we used the phone 5 years ago, is not the way we use the phone today.
I’d like to share with you how my sales team and I use the phone. It’s not about smiling and dialing. It’s about communicating and closing. I hate wasting my time on anything. I’m addicted to efficiency, and making phone calls to prospect, is not the best use of time.
There’s more than one way to use the phone. Matter of fact, I’ll share my top 5 ways to close sales via the phone just below. But first, you have to think of the phone in a different manner than you have in the past. I’m talking smart phones. Not office phones. I’m talking about iPhones and Androids with all sorts of apps and functions. People use the phone for over 4 hours each day on average. Let’s go close them where they are hanging out.
Texting: As I said above, 86% of all phone calls go unanswered. Yet, 99% of texts get seen and 95% get read. This should tell you more people are texting than talking. Which is 100% true according to AT&T. We text our clients before we call them. On our landing pages and applications, we ask for mobile phone numbers. We don’t want work or home. We want to be able to text you. This way we have a better chance of being in the 14% of calls that get answered.
If you’re not good at selling via text, you’d better practice. Selling with your finger tips is the way of the future. We use the ‘text replacement’ feature in our iPhones. This allows us to save a shitload of time when we text our prospects. We can send more auto texts our in an hour than any salesman can make phone calls; dialer and all. You can see how we use text to sell by clicking here
Email: When it comes to email, most people think Outlook on a desktop somewhere. That’s not how email is accessed these days. Most emails are sent from mobile devices. Even work emails are now found on people’s personal devices every day. It’s easier for most people to send and read an email from their phone than it is hop on a desk top. The phone screen is the new desktop.
If someone is comfortable emailing back and forth with you, keep the conversation where they are comfortable. Most salesmen will try and flip a client from email to a phone call. A master salesman can close right there through email. Again, it’s all about learning to effectively talk with your finger tips. Learn to type like you talk. It’s a skill that’s powerful yet missing from most salespeople’s skill sets.
Chat Messages: I regularly close $10,000+ sales to people via Facebook Messenger. Just like I said above, if they hit me up though chat, I don’t flip them to the call, I just talk with them right there. I say the same things through chat that I would say on the phone. If the prospect feels comfortable hitting me up via chat message, that’s where the sale will go down.
I get more messages from chat each day than emails and texts combined. I look at chat messages as hot leads. When folks hit you up through some social media site’s chat feature, it means they feel like they know you. All any salesman wants, is to known, liked and trusted. I’ve found chat messages to be the best communication platform there is for my demographic.
Videos:You know that camera on your phone? You can use it for something other than selfies of you at the bar. I’ve been making videos that sell, from my phone, since 2011. When I was working in the auto industry, selling metal, I’d take videos of the cars the prospects wanted to see. I even sent videos to the clients, via email, to introduce myself. Here’s some examples
Ever since you were young, you’ve accepted that whoever was on TV was an authority. It’s subconsciously programmed in our heads. When people see you on video, in the palm of their hand, they think of you in an expert like way. The number one fear Americans have is public speaking. Video is a form of public speaking. So videos show that you’re a fearless expert. Not a bad first impression to make if you ask me.
Social Media: The best part about making a post from your phone to all your friends on social media, is that you get to pitch 100s of people at once, and only deal with the ones who are serious. Social Media Selling is the future of sales. I’ve made 7 figures from selling on social media. It’s my favorite platform to make a sale on. Social media selling is a one to many sales pitch. I love efficiency, so it makes perfect sense to me.
Selling on social media is just like selling from the stage. You’re pitching a crowd. You have to warm them up, get them interested and deliver the perfect pitch. If you think about it, you can even use video to pitch your base on social media. The combinations are endless. You social media contacts are willing buyers if you sell what they want. You should be constantly reminding your social media connections what you sell. When they think of what you sell, they need to think of you.
My best advice to you, would be for you to master the phone. Not just voice, not just emails, not just social media and text, but all of it. You need to be able to close no matter where, when, how or what you are using to do so. It’s time you step your phone game up to 2016 standards.
Look around you, most salespeople aren’t using the phone like this. Yet ALL of our prospects are. It’s time you got on board and started dominating the competition with your phone. If you’re looking to massively improve your phone skills, check out my program www.buyshowupandclose.com It’s a game changing sales program that teaches you to close anyone anywhere.
If you’re looking for my personal help, I’m looking for a few badasses to work with. It’s not free, not a job and it requires you to already be successful and building a business. If you’re serious about working on your business and growing to unprecedented levels, click here and fill out the form.
