“I do a lot of telephone prospecting and am quite successful in getting meetings, but one of the things I am not clear on is how much actual selling I should do on the phone. I sometimes find that the more I tell the prospect about our solutions, the less likely they are to book a meeting with me. Do others experience this or am I just imagining it?”
You have made a very insightful observation here. The purpose of your telephone prospecting should only be to target a problem or opportunity that you can solve for the customer – and create interest in the mind of the prospect around this. If you can do this successfully you will gain an appointment. Your objective in the meeting should then be to diagnose the problem / issue / opportunity the prospect is facing; and establish the reasons behind it. You should never be selling before you have done the diagnostic work, just like a doctor would never prescribe before diagnosing. Trust what your intuition is telling you and leave the selling til later. You will have a higher rate of conversion to appointments if you simply focus on creating the need properly first.
