{"id":1787,"date":"2008-11-13T13:50:28","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T19:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2008-11-13T12:32:23","modified_gmt":"2008-11-13T18:32:23","slug":"8-things-not-to-do-on-a-sales-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/11\/8-things-not-to-do-on-a-sales-call\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Things Not To Do On A Sales Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read this post on Bnet<\/a> and got a chuckle out of a couple of the points and thought I would share this article by Geoffrey James with you.\u00a0 I especially laughed when I read don’t flirt with the admin…<\/strong>who does that?!\u00a0 Anyway, here are the 8 things not to do:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Flirt with the admin.<\/strong>\u00a0 It may seem tempting, but unless you\u2019ve got soap-opera-quality looks, chances are you\u2019re only going to annoy (or even alarm) the admin, who will tell the boss.\u00a0 Fix:<\/em> Stay polite, friendly and respectful.<\/li>\n
  2. Talk more than you listen.<\/strong>\u00a0 Initial sales calls are all about relationship building and gathering information, which you can\u2019t do if your mouth is moving. Fix:<\/em> Get curious about the customer and ask questions.<\/li>\n
  3. Comment on the memento. <\/strong>The last 372 people who came into that office remarked about the signed baseball on the desk.\u00a0 Ho-hum\u2026\u00a0 Fix:<\/em> Research the prospect and ask about the prospect\u2019s job.<\/li>\n
  4. Pretend to drop by.<\/strong>\u00a0 Who are you kidding?\u00a0 Do you think that it\u2019s going to cushion the rejection if you pretend that it\u2019s not a sales call?\u00a0 Fix:<\/em> Have something important to say or sell that justifies your presence.<\/li>\n
  5. Answer your cell phone.<\/strong>\u00a0 Ouch! Ouch!\u00a0 What were you thinking?\u00a0 How could any telephone call be more important than a real live prospect?\u00a0 Fix: <\/em>Turn it off and leave it in your briefcase.<\/li>\n
  6. Overstay your welcome. <\/strong>Your prospect has hundreds of other things that he or she could be doing, rather than spending time with you.\u00a0 Fix:<\/em> Set a time limit for the call.<\/li>\n
  7. Let the meeting meander.<\/strong>\u00a0 This isn\u2019t the time for a wandering conversation that slowly gets to the point or a long series of complicated questions.\u00a0 Fix:<\/em> Provide brief agenda of how you expect the call to proceed.<\/li>\n
  8. Argue with the customer.<\/strong>\u00a0 If the customer doesn\u2019t agree with an important point, arguing is only going to set that opinion in stone.\u00a0 Fix:<\/em> ask the customer why he holds that opinion; then listen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I read this post on Bnet and got a chuckle out of a couple of the points and thought I would share this article by Geoffrey James with you.\u00a0 I especially laughed when I read don’t flirt with the admin…who does that?!\u00a0 Anyway, here are the 8 things not to do: Flirt with the admin.\u00a0 It may seem tempting, but unless you\u2019ve got soap-opera-quality looks, chances are you\u2019re only going to annoy (or even alarm) the admin, who will tell the boss.\u00a0 Fix: Stay polite, friendly and respectful. Talk more than you listen.\u00a0 Initial sales calls are all about relationship building and gathering information, which you can\u2019t do if your… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[1755,1050,1085,446],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-sP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1792,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions\/1792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}