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Cold Call Example for Accounting Services - read the full article about Call center services, Call Center Services and Calling and answering from Sales Scripter on Qualified.One
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- [Salesperson] Michael Halper, please.
- [Michael] This is he.
- [Salesperson] Oh, hi, this is (beep) calling with (beep) were local here in Sugar Land.
Just wanted to introduce our company, give you an opportunity to see what we have to offer, and offer you a no cost, no obligation, second opinion.
And I was wondering, do you handle all of your accounting in house, or do you outsource? - [Michael] We have a CPA that does our taxes, but we do bookkeeping in-house.
- [Salesperson] Okay, bookkeeping is in-house, okay.
So we would like to invite you to a zoom meeting.
Were running them in the next two weeks where you can learn a little bit more about our company, our services, and how we are helping companies like yours to save on taxes, be more successful.
Would you have about 20 minutes for a zoom meeting to do a comparison? - [Michael] Why dont you send me an email with your information? - [Salesperson] Okay, thats fine.
And what email do you want me to send that to? - [Michael] Uh, thats (beep)@salesscripter.com.
- [Salesperson] Okay, very good. I will send that to you.
Ill have my name and my direct phone number on the first line of the email.
So if you want to do a zoom meeting you can just give me a call. Thank you so much.
- [Salesperson] Bye bye. - [Michael] Bye.
- All right, so a really good cold call there to reflect back on.
Lets talk about what went well, what could have gone better, and then well finish up with a recommended cold call script that she could have used.
The purpose for her call was, she said, she "just wanted to introduce our company and give you an opportunity to see what we have to offer".
The real problem with this is that thats a very all about me approach, meaning all about the sales person.
I recommend you make the cold call more about the other person, more about the prospect.
Ill show you how to do that.
Then she moves on to her value prop, which was she wanted to offer me a no cost, no obligation, second opinion.
That sounds kind of interesting if you are in buying mode.
Most likely when you cold call prospects, they are not in buying mode for what you sell.
Ill share with you a better value prop that she could have used.
The real thing about this call is its a great example of product selling.
If youve watched any of our other training videos, we break down product selling compared to consultative selling.
And this is the perfect example of product selling because product selling is a salesperson that goes out and primarily talks about, this is the company I work for, this is what we sell, this is what it does, do you need what I sell? And every conversation and their sales message is focused on getting you to be a customer today or moving you forward to becoming a customer, which actually sounds logical.
If youre a sales person, you have a quota, you have a territory and you need to sell your product, that sounds like a logical approach, but it can turn off.
So we recommend more of a consultative approach, which is instead of being all about you and your product, focus more on the prospect, talking about the improvements that you can make and the value that you can deliver, the pain points you can make go away, and the problems you can solve.
Asking good questions to see if the prospect has the problems that you can help to solve and connecting your product with those problems that your prospect has and the needs that your prospect has.
And instead of trying to sell the prospect on your product and moving forward, your sales message in the early stages is simply focused on starting conversations and establishing the dialogue.
Thats our approach.
The cold call script that I give you at the end will align with that.
She did move on to ask me a current state question, which was, "do you all handle accounting in-house or do you outsource?" This is a good question.
This can tell her a lot of information in terms of if Im pre-qualified, if it makes sense for us to talk.
There are probably other current state questions that she could have asked.
Then she goes pretty quickly for the close, she wanted to invite me to a meeting for her to show me a little bit more about her company and her services.
So once again, shes closing me to more time with her, so that she can be more all about her.
Then in her close, she does move on to say something, I think this is one of the best things that she said on the entire call, which is she said, "and I want to share with you how were helping companies like yours to save on taxes and be more successful".
This is basically her value prop.
Now, the biggest problem with her cold call was the sales process that she was trying to take me through.
And to explain that, I want to actually explain the steps that I recommend you go through.
And so it starts with the interaction.
This is the first step of the sales process.
This is the first time youre speaking with a prospect.
It could be on a cold call, could be a cold email, could be talking to someone at a networking event, and thats the interaction step.
And that then progresses to some sort of deeper conversation between you and the prospect.
And then based on how that conversation goes, then there might be an explanation of how you can help that prospect, how your product could possibly solve their problems and help them to improve what theyre currently doing.
This is what we call the ICE sales process, ICE, Interaction, Conversation, and Explanation.
Now, when we look at this, its very clear that we were in the interaction on this cold call and her close was for the explanation.
She wanted to close me for a zoom meeting where she can talk more about her company and how her company can help me.
So what she was skipping there was the conversation where shes learning more about me.
And so I recommend in the ICE process is if youre in the interaction step, focus not on selling the product or selling the explanation, focus on selling the next step in the process, which is to simply have a conversation and talk more.
Thats not only an easier sell, its a more logical next step to try to sell the prospect on and to move the prospect through.
And its in that conversation where you can determine if it even makes sense to have that explanation step.
If Im not qualified, it doesnt make sense for the sales person to spend their valuable time on delivering their presentation or their demonstration.
When youre reflecting back on these cold calls, I recommend you always think about what objections came up.
The one objection that I gave her was just send me your information.
And by the way, I just wanted to get off the phone call with her.
I did not care for her information and youll notice how easy this objection was at ending the call.
Because of that, this is one of the most popular objections for not only prospects, but also gatekeepers, because its so effective at ending the call without rejecting the salesperson, because they then end up just sending your information.
Now, when I said this to her, she said, "sure, what is your email?" So what you want to do is you want to try to keep the call going, sure, at some point you might want to send over your information, but try to keep the call going and Ill show you how to do that.
All right, so lets talk about what she could have done differently.
This is a cold call script that I put together.
It starts out with the introduction.
Hello, Mary, this is Michael Halper, calling from company X.
Have I caught you in the middle of anything? Then lets open with our value proposition.
Great, well the reason for my call is we help businesses to find new ways to decrease their taxes and decrease the amount of time they spend managing their financial books.
But Im not sure if we can help you in the same way, and thats why Im reaching out.
If I could ask you real quick, how confident are you that youre minimizing the amount of taxes that you are paying? Right away were going to a pain question.
Trying to figure out how things are going.
Based on the answer there, I can either ask another question, or if I get a great answer, I can move to a different part of the script.
We might want to ask some of our current state questions.
Are you working with a CPA today? Are you doing bookkeeping in-house or outsource? Who are you using? Hows everything going? Do you think theyre doing a good job at decreasing your taxes? When was the last time you looked at some other options in this area? Depending on how the conversation goes, we could progress to sharing pain points.
The main reason why youd want to share this is as if youre not finding pain in the questions youre asking, so if everything seems like its okay, you might want to just share some of the symptoms that you could possibly fix.
So, oh, a lot of businesses that I talked to, theyre often paying more taxes than they need to, and the bookkeepings really time consuming and complicated.
Are you concerned about either of those areas? Maybe the prospect might answer you, provide some more information.
Depending on how everything goes you might want to progress to at some point talking about how you can help, and that is to share some product details.
Based on what you shared, it might make sense for us to talk in more detail because as I mentioned, Im with company X and we provide CPA and bookkeeping services.
And we do everything from year-end tax returns to bookkeeping, to payroll.
Some ways that were different is were typically a lower cost provider, and were also experts in your industry and easier to do business with.
And then you might want to progress to a customer example, right before you go for the close.
This is a great way to not only create a little more interest, but also establish credibility for your business.
We actually worked with a business similar to yours and were able to find new areas for tax savings and reduce their tax exposure by 20%.
Also eliminated the time they spend on their books and created more time for business development.
Then you go for the close.
And remember, this is the close not for the product or the explanation.
This is just the close in the next step in our process, which the next logical step in the process is just to talk more.
But you know, Ive called you out of the blue.
Im not sure if this is the best time to discuss this.
Are you available for a brief 15-20 minute meeting where I can share some examples of how weve helped other small businesses to find new ways to decrease their taxes, decrease the amount of time they spend on their books.
So those bullet points there are just a repeat of our value points, which were just sharing our value proposition at the end right when were trying to close.
Similar to actually what she did in her cold call script, are you available Tuesday or Thursday morning? or are you available to continue talking about this right now? So thats a cold call script.
Not saying it would magically turn every call into a lead, but I do believe its a more effective approach than her approach, which was more product selling.
This is more of a consultative selling approach and it should lead to establishing more conversations and that would lead to better quality leads that she would have moved on to her zoom meeting, where she can present her company.
The last thing I want to talk about is I want to go back to that objection that I gave her, which was just send me your info.
So instead of just sending over the info, she could bounce back to an earlier part in her cold call script to keep the call going, which is to ask more pain questions.
Maybe when I said, just send me your info, there are questions that she has an asked.
And so she could deflect that objection by saying something like, I can certainly do that.
So that I know what best to send you, can I ask you real quick, how much does managing your books distract from you building your business? And then she asked me that question then, I might answer that.
And based on my answer there, then she could either follow up with another question or maybe my answer there gives her a reason to go back for the close.
Instead of sending over information, there may be justification for talking in more detail.
She could also respond to that objection in the exact same way with her current state questions instead of her pain questions.
So, hey, I can certainly do that.
So I know what best to send you, are you currently outsourcing your bookkeeping and payroll, or are you doing that in house? Hows everything going? Do you know if theyve done a good job of decreasing your taxes? So again, those questions keep the conversation going.
You might get completely away from the request for information and just end up in a longer discussion and maybe progress to the next step of your sales process.
So thats pretty much it.
Hopefully that gives you some ideas of how you can improve your cold calling, your cold call script.
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If you want more help and you find this fairly intriguing, everything Ive shown you here today is part of the SMART Sales System.
To explain to you what SMART is, SMART is Sales Messaging And Response Tactics.
Our approach to helping salespeople to sell more is to improve what they say.
We believe that the words that a sales person uses is their best sales tool.
And so, as you can see from this video here, were very big on being organized and having a good message.
And thats the sales messaging part of this sales system.
And then as you can see, were also big on response tactics.
So how are you responding to the prospect? How are you responding to objections? Now, we refer to this as a sales system, because this is not just a bunch of tips, but this is an actual system and process that you can implement for yourself or for your sales organization.
And it starts with level one.
Level one in the SMART Sales System is to build your sales message.
This is the foundation.
So this is what I went through to create the sample sales script for this video.
And so the process to build your sales messages, to go through steps, to identify what is it you sell? Who are you communicating to? What are your benefits? What are the pain points you resolve? What are the questions and whatnot.
Then once you have your sales message, then you can use your sales message to create your script and your emails, and your voicemails, and objection responses, and whatnot.
Then you can progress to level three in the smart sales system, which is sort of the how to.
So, once you have your cold call script, how are you actually using that on the call? How are you bouncing from one section to another? How are you doing cold emailing? So everything I showed you in this video in terms of those tactics is part of level three in the smart sales system.
Now, the good news is if you want to get started with the smart sales system, you could do that for free because it is all on YouTube.
Our full training program is on YouTube that takes you step-by-step through all of these levels and all of these processes, and its all completely free.
Now, the upgrade there, and the reason why we give that away for free is that our business model is to sell our software product called Sales Scripter.
And Sales Scripter basically aligns with these three levels as well.
So if you wanted to go the next level, Sales Scripter will help you to build your sales message, because theres actually an area in Sales Scripter called the sales message builder that takes you through each step and helps you to organize all of your thoughts and build your sales message.
Once you have your sales message, Sales Scripter will actually use your sales message to populate level two, and theres an area of Sales Scripter called the Sales Playbook, which is actually a library of scripts, and emails, and voicemails, and objection responses and whatnot.
And it fills in with your sales message, providing you with a library of documents and then Sales Scripter can help you with level three in terms of helping you with your cold calling, cold emailing, objection handling and whatnot.
If you want more help beyond that, the upgrade from there would be, you could certainly purchase consulting hours with me personally, and I can work with you at any of these steps, or all of these steps.
I can help you to build your sales message, build your scripts, build your emails, and help you the execution part of level three.
So if those are interesting, but youre not quite sure another option for you is you can buy our book called The SMART Sales System, sell smarter, not harder.
Theres basically a chapter in the book for each step of the process.
So theres a chapter on sales process, cold calling, cold emailing, objection handling, getting around gatekeepers and whatnot.
You can get a copy on Amazon here.
Thats pretty much it.
Hopefully this was interesting and helpful to you.
If you want more information, more tips, more help, go to salesscripterr.com.
Theres plenty of videos, free eBooks.
You can contact us with any questions there.
Thanks a lot.
Have a great day, happy hunting.
(relaxing music)
Sales Scripter: Cold Call Example for Accounting Services - Call Center Services