The Art of Telephone Prospecting – Skills & Techniques

Skill Development and Customized Techniques to Improve the Effectiveness of Your Prospecting Conversations

The Art component of the ColdCalling101™ Solution focuses on the skills and techniques of telephone prospecting using our guiding methodology called The Appointment Making Formula™ (The Formula™ for short).

Delivered through The Prospector's Academy™ Total Immersion Training Program, The Formula is an approach that dramatically improves the effectiveness of telephone prospecting conversations, resulting in the ability to convert a higher proportion of conversations into genuine appointments. The Formula draws on the psychological research of Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice, NLP concepts (Neuro Linguistic Programming) concepts, as well as our own years of research and continuing empirical feedback from many different customers' real world experiences.

Our approach is based on an understanding of human behavior and in particular, how we as human beings respond to requests for an action. It also provides the platform for sales professionals to feel more professional about their interaction with targets as opposed to more traditional techniques which are more confrontational when handling objections.

Our approach has been successfully implemented in face-to-face and phone selling environments. It has been applied successfully to selling products, services and product/service combinations.

The Art is fully integrated into our comprehensive approach. The Formula and techniques are embedded in Best Practices as developed for each customer, and supported by the Science of our Klpz automated prospecting tool.

How The Appointment Making Formula is Different

Most appointment making methodologies have us concentrate the majority of our effort on the opening message and then teach us to handle those first objections we receive with logic. The problem with that approach is that it doesn't work as well as we think it should. This is because of two ground rules our targets instinctively play by:

• Less than five percent of our universe of targets believe they are in the market for what we are selling when we call them… so they don't think they need to talk to us.


• No matter when we call, we are interrupting that person from doing something… so they don't want to talk to us.

Until we get them beyond the initial conditioned knee jerk response of saying anything (including lying to us) to get us off the phone, logic has no place in their thinking.

Our Art methodology acknowledges this reality of human nature and provides the formula to get the target to stop thinking about how to get us off the phone for a moment, and open their minds to a short conversation where we can apply our value propositions through a proven, logical set of techniques to counter their responses more effectively.

The Formula –Skills and Techniques

During the Total Immersion Training Program, sales professionals are given a thorough grounding in the range of skills and techniques that come together in The Formula. Here are just some of the key ingredients of The Formula:

• How to control the flow of the conversation
• Understanding the benefits of using scripts and well thought out process vs. winging it
• How to effectively anticipate and prepare for the flavor of inevitable, "No thank you," heard in your environment
• How to get past those initial, "Nos" (conditioned responses) and into a short conversation using our specialized Bridge Questions™
• How to secure an agreement to meet–including qualification techniques
• How to use voicemail and email effectively and efficiently
• How to enlist the help of Gatekeepers
• How to deftly and professionally get through to the decision maker more often
• How to create strategies for penetrating accounts large and small
• Develop the concepts of successful territory building through the cumulative value of telephone prospecting over time
• How to monitor, measure and then manage the process through key metrics.
• How to benefit from the planning and execution of concentrated prospecting call blocks
• Lead Generation Ideas
• Key steps in preparing for calls

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A properly implemented program consisting of Art, Science and Best Practices for the process of appointment making always pays for itself within the very first buying cycle. What impact would a doubling or better of the number of initial appointments set by your sales team have on your business? Contact the Caponi Performance Group to learn more.