How to use the phone for business sales calls

By Walter Blackburn2 Comments
Nigel Temple @nigeltemple asked me the following question: "Do you have any tips for using the phone in business? What is the earliest time of day that is acceptable to start calling? Do scripts still work? What is the right way of calling a LinkedIn contact and what would you say in the opening 10 seconds? Is it OK to call prospective clients from mobile phones?" Earliest time to start calling: 8am if you’re calling someone in their office on their landline. If you’re calling their mobile I would leave it to 8.30 or even 9 because you don’t know if they’re working from home and most people don’t want to be disturbed there if they’re getting the kids off to school or whatever else they might be doing to get ready for the day. I would be careful calling mobiles if you don’t know them. Most of us are quite protective of our mobile numbers - but I believe it’s ‘fair...
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11 words that inspire or create dread

By Walter Blackburn1 Comment
“We’d like you to present your proposal to the Board”. When you hear those words do you think “Great!” Or, “Oh dear”? A few years ago we worked with a large multi-national corporation. We were working on sales skills with their senior team when the MD told me – “we’ve got a pitch coming up next week for a bid worth £50m” I asked him if he was excited about it. His reply was “no, we’ll probably lose it; we usually lose the big ones”.  We were shocked and offered our help. Happily he accepted and after a hard day’s coaching with the team that were pitching, they won the deal. They were delighted. And so were we. Over the next 4 years we helped them win over £1bn of new business. Simply by helping them to present their pitches more effectively; better teamwork, better presentation skills, better handling of the Q and A session, and having a real focus on the key...
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Why should you know your business numbers?

By Walter Blackburn1 Comment
Why should you know your business numbers? 530 million. That’s the number of people who will travel on a particular escalator at Waterloo Station over that escalator’s lifetime. I know that because of a poster on the station wall telling me so. I also know there are 413 escalators on the London Underground Network – another poster. So it seems that London Underground know their numbers. One of the reasons that LUL need to know their numbers is because they need to predict the numbers of passengers each day on each line. This helps them work out how many trains they need and how many staff etc. It also helps them work out if they’re going to make a profit or not, and the top management of LUL will be reporting back to the Mayor’s office on a regular basis, particularly about profit. So how about you? Maybe you love numbers; maybe you hate them; maybe you think they’re not important or...
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