Hopefully if you’ve been following these lessons you’ll be writing short and punchy sales pitches. Sometimes from an initial pitch you’ll be invited to tender. Generally this will be for those bigger jobs, quite often if a potential client wants a call it will be just to clear up a few small points

Never Assume

Never assume that the person you’re talking to has read through all of your pitch. Generally when you talk to someone on the phone it’s usually good to begin with a reintroduction of yourself and a little of your history.

Stupid Questions

As well as going through who you are again, it’s always wise to go back through the project again and scope out any of those small questions that you might have no matter how obvious it seems. The key things to get a handle on are how important this is to them, who exactly will be dealing with it, time scales and normally a sense of whether or not they have a solid understanding of what is involved with what you do. Try and get rid of potential problems before you even begin.

Time scales

Have a fixed time slot for your meeting from start to finish. It’s good to build up a rapport, but its all too easy to spend a few hours chasing a piece of work with no return. Keeping a tight time schedule also sends out a message to a prospective client that your time is worth money and that you have other clients to deal with. It’s also important that in this call YOU establish when a decision/another call will be made.

Flex

I never like to plan out rigidly what I’m going to say in a sales call after asking whatever I need to ask. This is because you’re going to be interrupted, sidetracked, and thrown off. This is inevitable on a sales call, and sometimes I think a prospect will put you on the spot precisely to test your reactions. Oh and somehow this prospect will ask you that one question you hadn’t prepared for.