[E68] Telesales Week: Stop sounding like a telemarketer

No one likes being called by a telemarketer. Or being pitched by a salesy salesperson who is pressuring them to buy.

So why do so many inside salespeople fall into that same mode when they are on the phone? When in doubt, don’t do what everyone else is doing.

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Episode 68 – Transcript

This is episode 68 of the sales experience podcast.

So glad that you’re here, so glad that you’re listening. I know I say that a lot, but I truly appreciate everybody’s support. A

Anyone who downloads one episode or all of these episodes today, I appreciate the fact that you’re interested in sales, want to improve your sales process, become a more professional salesperson and fundamentally hopefully with my goal is to change the landscape of how sales is viewed such that the sales experience is a positive one for both you, the salesperson, as well as the prospect and future potential hopeful client and what they felt like they got from you.

How that process went. Avoiding things like buyers, Myrrh Morse and them waking up at two o’clock in the morning and being worried or upset or freaked out about what they purchased and instead I want them to feel happy and feel great.

Become an advocate, send you referrals, shout from the top of the mountain, become a raving fan. Now of course that’s not going to happen with every single person who buys from you. There’s people who gravitate more towards those kind of tendencies and being a referral advocate and being the outspoken person who’s talking a lot about you in positive ways, and then there’s others that will buy it, use it, and then not really hear from them again.

And so that’s fine as well. But the goal is on the overall sales experience. Now, today’s episode this week in particular talking about telephone sales can, today I want to talk about the sales experience and how that feels, how that looks when it’s done right and when it’s done wrong.

In my experience with the telephone with salesperson now when it’s done wrong, and this is just my experience over 16 years of being in telephone sales related businesses, working with different companies, different call centres, nationally, internationally, all around in companies I’ve worked at companies I’ve had as clients.

One of the big things that people default to that doesn’t work or that makes the job of being a salesperson harder is when you sound like a salesperson. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that prospects are going to start off in any interaction with a potential salesperson with their radar on with this concern or fear or just looking out for the fact that the person they’re dealing with might be a salesperson.

Now, of course, and I covered this in the personality and behaviour weeks that I covered many, many weeks ago, is that there are certain personalities, certain people, and just different people based on their life experiences in the world where they’re more trusting or they’re not as worried about it and they’re not as sceptical.

Their emotional mental walls and barriers aren’t as high when going into a sales interaction. And then there’s people on the other end of the extreme where their walls are really high, they have a lot of barriers in place, they’re super concerned, they’re worried about being taken advantage of.

Most likely they’ve had some experiences in the past with a salesperson who has ripped them off or sold them a bad product, a bad bill of goods, or manipulated them in some way and got them to buy something they didn’t actually want. And so they’re coming to you with that baggage and that baggage is causing these walls to go up their radars on high alert.

They’re constantly looking out for ways that they’re interacting with a salesperson. That sales person might be on the bad side and not the good side. So your number one goal as a salesperson, as a telemarketer, whatever that is, is to not sound like a salesperson and not to sound like a telemarketer. What does that look like in practicality? Well, let’s just get into actual details. So a telemarketer when they call you, what does a telemarketer sound like? Hi, my name is Jason.

Is this John? Hey John, how are you doing today? Oh, oh, hello. Can I speak to bill? Hi Bill. How are you doing today? How was the weather? There’s a certain thing and we’ve all gotten these phone calls and I have had the luxury of being in many different call centres and hearing lots of them.

We all know what a telemarketer sounds like. We all know what a sales person sounds like. We all know the way they start the conversation, the rapport, the small talk. They want to talk about the weather and they want to talk about sports.

They want to kind of butter up the prospect and get them kind of warmed up so that they are a little more comfortable with moving forward into the sales pitch. And then there’s the sales pitch itself where it’s all about the company and how great they are and how amazing what they’re selling is and their long track record and all the people who think they’re awesome.

That’s what salespeople do. That’s what telemarketers do. Now, you may have the title of salesperson, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like the stereotypical salesperson, which is focused on me, me, me. I’m going to sell my product to you.

I don’t really care about you and or I’m going to follow the same old school processes, which is, hi, how are you? And then let’s talk about the weather and Oh, did you see the game last night? And all of those things, especially that telemarketers do. Your fundamental goal should be if you’re in a telephone sales role, an inside sales role, or you sell anything over the phone, even if it’s not 600 500 calls a day, maybe it’s 30 calls a day, whatever that is.

Your goal should fundamentally be to sound the opposite of what a telemarketer, cold caller salesperson, high pressure sales he kind of person sounds like, is to take what that is in your mind, in your experience, any calls that you’ve gotten.

If you’re not sure what that sounds like, like for the next week, every time you get a random call, especially from a toll free number, answer your phone on your cell phone. Listen to how they sound, and then observe how you feel as a result of that phone call, that opening all of that. Take that information and then do the opposite.

Always do the opposite. Don’t do or sound like what a telemarketer or a salesy salesperson who’s just coming out of the gate with their own needs and wants and desires in mind. Now, of course, of course, if you’re listening this, you have a quota, you have goals, you have money that you want to make.

You have a number of deals that you have to close either a day or a week, a month, quarter or whatever that is. So of course closing deals is super important.

That’s what this is all about. The sales experience is not just about the other person, the prospect in the future customer having this great, wonderful experience that hopefully they buy. It’s also about you having the wonderful experience as a salesperson that’s you feel confident and good about.

It’s also helping you meet your goals while at the same time doing the right thing for your prospects, but fundamentally do not sound like a telemarketer or salesperson unless you want to be treated like them.

If you want to be treated like a cold calling telemarketer or a cold calling salesperson, cold calling, SDR account executive, whatever it is that you are, if you want that sound like that person come out of the gate, happy, cheery, you know, asking how they are talking about the weather, do all of those things. If you want to be treated that way and put in that bucket.

Now, here’s what I’ll tell you. I mentioned this a few minutes ago. It’s not that this will kill all of your sales coming out of the gate and doing things, in my opinion, in the wrong way, relative to what a prospect is wanting, right? So they want more of a relationship.

You’re calling them, it’s not something they can just order online, which means they want to have a conversation with a professional. And if you’re cold calling them, then you’ve got to explain to them why it’s important. But you got to figure out why it’s important to them. And so it’s not that doing any of this that way, doing it like a telemarketer or a salesy salesperson is gonna make it so you can’t close any deals like a single sale because those people still get some results.

It’s just that it’s gonna make it harder. It’s going to put you one step behind where you want to be 10 steps behind because it’s going to trigger their walls like I was talking about.

And then you have to be really good at what you’re doing. So you can bring those walls back down so that you can get through to the other side, which is the sale and it’s not that being those kinds of ways. Talking like that, being excited and cheery, being super animated is going to make it so you can’t close a single thing, just me. And it’s going to have to work harder and you’re going to have to be better at it once you do get your foot in that door.

Now if you don’t sound like that and you take your own approach, you act like yourself and you just go into it like a conversation between you and somebody else instead of trying to manipulate or persuade somebody, figure out what they want, which I’m going to talk about in the next episode. And you just truly just have a conversation.

Instead of trying to be something you think you’re supposed to be as a salesperson or a telemarketer, you’ll find much better results because you won’t hit up against that wall as hard and as often. Hopefully that helps. So again, we’ve talked about being on the phone a lot, following a process.

Now, the key is to not sound like those people that everybody does, not like getting a call from or enjoyed dealing with. That is your mission. That will help you with your sales experience. Subscribe. Make sure to find this podcast everywhere that you downloaded from. It’s everywhere online. If you can’t find it online, send me a message cutter consulting group.com website.

You can find me on LinkedIn. Send me a chat if you can’t find it somewhere or if you want help with how to not sound like a telemarketer or a salesperson, people don’t like, send me a message. Let’s get on a phone call.

Always, remember that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.