Bargain Travel Agency

Do you truly believe that your company’s products and services will help your prospects? Have you ever thought, “I know I could find ways to help (company name) if I could just get (prospect name) to talk to me for 20 minutes!”

Why is it so difficult to convince prospects to schedule time to talk with us? There are two main answers to this question. First, dozens (or even hundreds) of salespeople may be asking for your prospects’ time. If prospects gave everyone who asked the time they ask for, they would never have time to get any work done!

Second, chances are that your prospects are not just sitting around waiting for salespeople to contact them. They are focused on their own (business and personal) objectives, issues and concerns. When you contact them, you need to find some way to break through this “mental clutter”, grab their attention, and focus it on what you are saying.

This makes developing an effective “elevator pitch” the single most important step in sales prospecting. After all, what good is it to have fabulous solutions to problems if you can’t get the people who have the problems to talk to you? Plus, how many times a day are you asked, “What do you do for a living?” How many prospects (and referrals) might you uncover if you had a highly effective and intriguing answer that rolls right off your tongue?

The concept behind an elevator pitch is simple

Imagine you are riding in an elevator. The doors open and one of your top prospects steps into the elevator. You now have a very brief (thirty to sixty second) opportunity to introduce yourself and convince your prospect that they need to have a longer conversation with you. What are you going to say?

To be effective, your elevator pitch must differentiate you from all the other salespeople who contact your prospects, and break through your prospects’ mental clutter and grab their attention. The best way to begin to develop an effective elevator pitch is by considering the following questions:

1. Who are your target prospects? What do they do? What job titles do they hold? What vertical markets are they in?
2. How will your products and services help your prospects? How will their lives be different after they work with you?

3. What are the quantified impacts (dollars or percentages and time frames) that have been produced by your company’s products and services? How (specifically) has your company helped its customers?

Here are sample answers to these questions based upon my own company’s products and services

Q1: Who are your target prospects? What do they do? What job titles do they hold? What vertical markets are they in?

A1: My target prospects are business owners, executives, and managers. Because I address sales performance issues, and these issues occur in all vertical markets, I do not focus on specific vertical markets.

Q2: How will your products and services help your prospects? How will their lives be different after they work with you?

A2: My products and services help my customers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales.

Q3: What are the quantified impacts (dollars or percentages and time frames) that have been produced by your company’s products and services? How (specifically) has your company helped its customers?

A3: Some of my customers have seen their sales DOUBLE in as little as eight months.

Once you have answered all three questions, combine your answers to create an elevator pitch

Here is an example based upon the preceding information:

“I help business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance (where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales). In fact, some of my customers have seen their sales DOUBLE in as little as eight months!”

If you have never measured the quantified impacts of your company’s products and services, that’s OK - it is a new concept for many salespeople and companies. However, it is crucial that you collect some quantified impact information as soon as possible! Why? Because nothing breaks through a prospect’s mental clutter like quantified impacts!

Here are several questions you can ask yourself and your customers to define quantified impacts for your company’s products and services:

1. What business problems is your company especially good at solving? (Make a comprehensive list - it will provide a useful outline for your conversations with customers.)

2. How have you or your company helped a customer in a way that was unusual or especially valuable? In other words, when have you or your company really been “a hero” in a customer’s eyes?

3. What (specific dollar value or percentage) increase in revenue or reduction in expenses can the customer associate with each identified example of “unusual value”? Over what time frame was this value delivered?

Conclusion

If you want to pump up your sales prospecting success rate, develop a truly compelling elevator pitch. Make sure your elevator pitch identifies your target prospects, how they will benefit from using your company’s products and services, and one or more examples of quantified impacts that you (or your company) have actually produced for other customers.

A properly designed elevator pitch will help you stand out from other salespeople, break through your prospects’ mental clutter, and grab their attention. These are crucial first steps to convincing prospects to schedule time for more in-depth conversations!

Copyright 2005 — Alan Rigg

Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don’t Perform and What to Do About It. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers DOUBLE sales by implementing The Right Formula for building top-performing sales teams. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.

Telemarketing lists have a major role to play in making a business successful. If you are aiming at expanding your business and enhance your clientele, you have to go for some exclusive telemarketing lists. The lists must comprise valuable and reliable leads to take your business forward. Telemarketing lists increase your business contacts. Business houses rely on telemarketing lists to a great extent, as they always help them search for the best contacts.

But business houses can’t afford to always maintain up-to-date and effective telemarketing lists. That’s why various telemarketing companies have emerged to come to their rescue. They are committed to offer useful telemarketing lists to those business entrepreneurs. Business will improve once you have the power of some resourceful telemarketing lists. So you need to be careful when choosing the best telemarketing companies. Make sure that the company you want to go for has got the experience and expertise to offer you a completely customized telemarketing list. The company should specifically be able to offer you whatever information you require. The companies shouldn’t get a chance to mislead you. Ideal telemarketing lists contain genuine and accurate information. It will be extremely disappointing for any telemarketing entrepreneur to have irrelevant contacts on his telemarketing lists.

The lists should preferably have contacts of those people who are likely to make purchases. The telemarketing companies generally carry out extensive research to prepare telemarketing lists that are relevant and legitimate. It’s fair to go for the high-volume telemarketing lists, but at the same time you should keep in mind that you don’t have to make any compromise with quality. Resourceful telemarketing lists have got the potential to make a positive impact on your business.

You’ve read the book, seen the ads, heard the rumors. Making
money online is easy, isn’t it?

Well yes, it is. Maybe.

There are a lot of people who get seduced by the big idea that
all they have to do is sign up for an affiliate program, throw
up a quick, free website and sit back on the beach waiting for
the cash to flow.

It ain’t like that.

Maybe if you have a ton of experience you can automate
everything to the point that you need to do very little. But
that isn’t the road a beginner can tread.

It is said that one in twenty people who set out to make a
profit online actually manage to see a return. Most disappear
without trace after spending their, often vital, last cent on
hosting or ebooks or programs.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

The problem is not with the Internet, but with people’s attitude
towards it.

Two people can buy any of the famous ‘guru’s’ program on the
same day. One may make a $1000 a month and think the sun shines
from the guru’s every word (I cleaned that up). The other may
not make a dime and retire believing he was scammed.

Both are wrong and both are right. It isn’t the program that
works, it is the operator. Some things just don’t work for some
people. Maybe their attitude is wrong. Maybe they try to change
things. Maybe they truly believe they are following the rules,
but actually are bending a few. Whatever the reasons, these
people won’t believe that the problem is with them It must be
the program. They were scammed.

In all of my talking with people who are making money, there are
three key traits that they have in common:

1. They truly believe in themselves 2. They are not afraid to
change course 3. They don’t give up

You have to believe in yourself to achieve anything. If a man
says he can and another says he can’t, they are both right.

If at first you don’t succeed, reinvent yourself. This is vital
in Internet marketing. Test, test, test. That is the key that
unlocks the door of success online. Nineteen times out of twenty
your first idea won’t make money. So what do you do? Give up?
No! Learn why and move on.

There are many ’secrets’ out there - most of them are free if
you know where to look - that will tell you how to target your
audience, which product to sell, how to get traffic, how to
write great sales copy, how to create your own products, how to
automate your business.

But the biggest secret of all is this: you have to be willing to
learn.

I started out online less than a year ago. My intention was to
build up a newsletter, create a useful and resource-filled
website, provide an online shop- window for my offline
consultancy business, and, maybe, make a few dollars to cover my
costs.

I have achieved all of that. I don’t try to, or profess to make
a fortune - that was never my intention. But almost as a
by-product of doing what I love - writing, teaching and helping
others - I generate a steadily growing income - currently about
$250 a month. Enough to cover my costs and show a nice profit.

I’ve got to this stage by learning everything I can. I read
endless reports and ebooks, spend time in forums, and, most
importantly, learn from my own experiences.

Nobody can tell you how to do it. They can tell you how they did
it. You have to do the rest.