Want to Know How to Get an Appointment with a Tough Prospect?

Buyers are Liars!

Actually that’s not always true – but it was one of the first bits of advice someone gave me when I went on the road as a B2B sales bod.

But can you really blame customers for keeping their cards close to their chests?

I mean when was the last time you met an honest salesperson?

I don’t know how many sales training days you’ve been on, but I regularly have conversations with people who have been (professionally) trained to get a sale through any means necessary – and most of the time, it’s not doing them any favours.

One young lady told me that she was at a cold calling day (with all her colleagues watching each other trying to book appointments) and with the aggressive sales trainer pushing them all on from the side lines.

She was told to keep on at one Managing Director’s PA to such an extent, that the call was eventually put through – even though the PA said the MD was definitely not available.

Turned out – when the call was put through – that the MD was on a beach, on holiday with his family, and only answered because he had been told that it was incredibly important to his business and definitely couldn’t wait.

Result of exercise: Nobody from that office ever being able to call the MD or PA back ever again.

Well done to everyone involved.

There’s lots of people who sound like they’re spouting great advice – virtually always untested – but it still sounds like great advice if they say it with enough conviction (and you don’t know any better and desperately want someone to help you).

I remember when I was looking to buy my first home – a one bedroom apartment – and I regularly heard;

“Don’t buy a flat or an apartment. Flats are really hard to sell on – nobody wants to buy a flat! When you want a house, you’ll be stuck with it.”

It was all I could really afford back then, and it seemed like a good idea and quite bohemian. You know – living above a café in a small village environment on the edge of a large city, fresh bagels for breakfast, wooden floors, guitar leaning against the old sofa – it just seemed to suit who I was at the time.

But that’s the advice I kept hearing – don’t buy a flat, you’ll never sell it on.

I spoke with a chap one day in the local pub, I’d bumped into him a couple of times at the  bar – he was about twenty years older than me – and lived in a two bedroom apartment down the street with his second wife. So I asked him why he had ignored this sage like property advice and bought a flat so “late in life“.

“Because it’s nonsense,” was his reply, “the fact that you want to buy a flat and someone has a flat to sell – means that there must be people who are happy to buy that type of accommodation!”

So, what kind of person would buy a flat?

Answer – I would!

And I could sell it on to other people just like me.

So what has that got to do with getting your appointment with the MD and getting past that fierce, gatekeeper of a PA?

How do you get through to the MD on the phone and make an appointment?

Answer – With the same actions it would take to make YOU stop what you’re doing and take a call from a salesperson just like you?

The other way is way is definitely quicker – so feel free to bypass the effectiveness of the above statement if you like by bullying or lying to people to get what you want – until absolutely no one will take your calls or let you into the building.

Or you can sit down for thirty minutes today and ask yourself why YOU would speak to someone just like YOU – and when you’ve worked it out – just do that instead.

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My new book – Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction is now available from Kindle and as a Paperback. If you’d like a preview, you can download the first 30 pages as a PDF document – completely free – by clicking right here

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Chris Murray is founder and Managing Director of Varda Kreuz Training, a company created to deliver sales, management and customer service training that really works – not in theory and not just sometimes – training that really works.

If you would like to discuss how we can help to develop your team, email us now on info@vardakreuztraining.com, give us a call on 0844 293 9777 – or follow this link to find out a little more about our courses and workshops.

If you were looking to book a training workshop for an individual rather than an in-house training course for an entire team you’ll find everything you need over at our Open Workshops Page by following this link.