Use these door openers in telephone sales

In the first part of this blog post on telephone sales, we looked at the hurdles you can expect when cold calling and what traps lurk in telephone marketing. You have realized that your voice and your way of speaking make telltale unconscious statements, which often significantly weaken your effect as a telemarketer in customer conversations.

They have understood the importance of the four core attributes of your voice dominance, security, empathy and relationship.

Telefonakquise

If you are now asking yourself: "How can I use all these attributes for my positive, convincing effect in my work when selling on the phone?", I will give you practical tips in this article so that your conversation or interview on the phone is not over after the first sentence.

The right body language also counts in telephone sales

How lead vocally attract your customer's attention and use your vocal Dominance to appear self-confident as a telemarketer, but without appearing "pushy" or even pushy with your interview questions? Here it is important to find the golden mean. The middle ground between "sounding totally ingratiating" and too much brashness in speech and voice.

As is so often the case, the solution lies in the right body language. Yes, also and especially in the Telephone sales . The rule is: As you sit or stand, so you sound. Most people take a much too casual attitude after the third phone call at the latest, after all, "you" want to be comfortable. But since the phone calls are important, "you" still try to step on the gas with the language in order to appear dynamic.

However, this combination of sitting casually and wanting to appear powerful is fatal for the voice. It is immediately less voluminous and therefore less convincing. For the successful Telephone sales this is not an option. As a provider or salesperson on the phone, it is best to use the so-called Coachman's seat one.

  • To do this, detach yourself from the backrest, straighten up.
  • You will immediately radiate more body energy.
  • Even if your conversation partner can't see you, he will automatically feel your new and taut posture in your voice. It is also very good to get up at the beginning of a phone call.

This immediately gives more energy without appearing pushy and makes you confident.

Tipps gegen Nervosität Arno Fischbacher

Gain more security

If you want to sell successfully on the phone, you have to radiate security. If you fear your calls, see them as a huge hurdle, then it will be a difficult path. How do you make it lighter? By calming your brain stem – which likes to activate protective mechanisms. Because as soon as the brain stem has a problem – i.e. fear – the relationship brain is less on the hook. Whenever this happens, the full range of performance of the downstream brain areas is limited. So we have to put the relationship brain in readiness to perform, drive full power, and thereby tell the vulnerable brain stem, give peace, everything is fine.

  • The remedy here is a little exercise, get up, walk around the desk, sit down again.
  • Or, if the situation allows it, fool around. Shake yourself, make faces, relax, loosen up, and the fear evaporates. You can also let out a deep sigh – before the phone call, of course – and then pick up the phone "relieved".
  • However, it is very important to visualize the world of your customer in a very vivid way. Imaginatively question those scenarios from which your customer has the needs that you can serve.
  • Imagine the situation in which you will reach your customer on the phone. In the office? In the car? Your relationship brain is happy about every detail and responds with invigorating curiosity!

Salespeople who live the safety aspect positively radiate the highest possible personal security vocally and through their vibration, a healthy self-confidence. They signal: I stand behind myself and my product, and I'll make this call with my left hand!

Empathy – door opener for telephone sales

To ensure that you come across well on the phone and go beyond your introductory sentences, I advise "Sense Focusing". It means escaping the incessant compulsion to think in business. Of course we have to think, otherwise we won't achieve anything. But, selling is still people's business. Especially when it comes to more complex things, where we have to think a lot, the trap we are talking about here snaps shut. You are so caught up in thinking that if an objection, an undertone is audible from the other side of the conversation, you immediately try to parry it with arguments. In doing so, we overlook the fact that a good conversation is hard relationship work. Often because of this pressure to do everything right, we don't even notice that we talk too much, that we are too much with ourselves and not with the other person.

That's exactly what we need Sense Focusing, a mechanism that allows us to feel ourselves in a fraction of a second. As a result, we pull ourselves out of this hectic chain of argument and counter-argument as if at the push of a button.

  • Sense Focusing: Activate your body awareness, kinesthetic perception. For a few seconds, notice how you are sitting, whether your back is bent or erect, your shoulders tense or relaxed, or how much weight is resting on the soles of your feet.
  • This focus on "feeling" automatically releases tense muscles, usually in the face and shoulder area. With a little practice, you will quickly perceive this as a pleasant sign that you have a good grip on yourself.

Result: You feel yourself again! By feeling ourselves, we let go of tension in our body in the three muscle zones stressed by everyday life. Our facial expressions, our shoulder and neck area become softer. Our muscles in the upper abdomen also let go, the breath releases, which as always benefits the voice.

With Sense Focusing, you consciously do something for yourself, feel yourself and perceive how your body reacts to it. At this moment, you have yourself under control and thus also the situation, which you can now emphatically feel again. Your voice automatically becomes calmer, deeper, sounds more relaxed and indicates that you are at peace with yourself in this moment.

Long live the relationship

Imagine yourself at the Telephone sales always this question: Who are you calling? A human being or a potential money supplier? This body of thought controls the first 7 seconds of the phone call. If you present yourself in such a way that the callee only feels addressed as a future paying customer, massive relationship termination signals are immediately triggered in his brain. Every impersonal call provokes a very, very dramatic reaction in the other.

So what can you do in the first 7 seconds of the phone call to get your conversation partner on your side?

  • The important thing is how you react as soon as the other person has come forward. Most callers then immediately start with "I am", "my company is", "I'm calling because ... " and thus give away the important opportunity to treat the person who has come forward with appreciation.
  • But it can be so simple. "Hello, Mr. XY, I greet you." The other also says, "I greet you". So the relationship is already there. A small thing, but with a huge effect. This includes the inner willingness to talk to other people at eye level or at least to come into contact. Then, depending on the situation, you can choose the further discussion strategy.

In any case, the basis for fruitful conversations is to make the first contact via the relationship tone of the voice, and to make it very clear that you are speaking as an individual to another individual.

If you understand these four aspects, work with them and actively practice these conversations, you will never be annoying again when selling on the phone, but will convince all your conversation partners enthusiastically!

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Summary:

The unconscious statements of the voice open or close the doors, especially on the phone. In the first few seconds of a phone call, four core attributes of the human voice set the course for the further course of the conversation. This is where it is decided whether the acquisition call leads to a longer phone call at all or comes to a premature end after just a few sentences. If you don't want to use the unconscious Power of the Voice in sales talks on the phone and can use it for itself, convinces its customers from the first word that their time in the phone call is well invested. This gives you a clear competitive advantage.

The power of your voice is given especially in the Key Account and in the Sale to business customers of the highest importance. According to scientific studies, 40% of educated people judge new acquaintances by the sound of the voice. The higher the level of education and life experience, the more important the voice becomes. Among academics over 50 years of age, 56% of the vote determines sympathy and antipathy (Amon 2004, p. 19).

How you can use the above four modes of action of your voice concretely and effortlessly even in critical phases of your phone calls in order to achieve your goals on the phone effortlessly and successfully, you will find out in one of the next articles!

Blaue handschriftliche Unterschrift auf transparentem Hintergrund, die Bände spricht und mit Raffinesse verkauft.You

Arno Fischbacher

 

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The author:

Arno Fischbacher is a business voice coach and rhetoric expert, speaker and author. He prepares executives and employees of the top companies in Germany and Austria for negotiations, presentations and media appearances. Fischbacher is the author of several books, past president of the German Speakers Association (GSA) Austria, chairman of the European Network of Voice Experts, stimme.at.

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