Once you get the pitch (or obtained a lead), your next
step is to move that lead to first base.
Your goal at this step is to "qualify"
your leads to determine if they have an interest in a home-based business and
the capacity to run a business (or if looking for customers, are they
interested in saving money).
The best way to do this is to ask
questions.
Properly implemented, the qualifying process will weed out
the "tire-kickers" who are not truly interested in hearing about your business
and leave you with people who want to get more information about starting a
home-based business. Remember, the 80/20 Rule applies - you do NOT want to be spending most of
your time talking to leads who are NOT qualified for your business so it's
important you have an effective system for qualifying your leads as quickly and
effortlessly as possible.
Amateurs Sell -- Professionals
Sort Please understand that collecting many, many no's is all part of
the journey on the path to success. That journey is a process all successful
people must go through at some point in their networking career. Networking
truly is a numbers game. You must get many no's in order to collect a few
yes's. You're on the path to personal and financial freedom and it's your
responsibility to share your products and opportunity with as many people as
possible. A yes or no answer is not a good or bad decision and it's never about
you.
Did you know that for every lead you do NOT call can potentially
cost you $10,000?
MANAGE YOUR
EXPECTATIONS: Not every one of your leads will be a qualified
"prospect." In fact, only about 20% of your leads will even qualify as someone
who is interested in our business - or become a prospect. Our goal should be to
as efficiently as possible to sift-and-sort our leads to identify that 20% who
will move to the next base. (Of the 20% of those who do move to the next base,
only 20% of those will likely seriously consider the opportunity and only 20%
of those will become a customer or join you in your business.) If you do the
math, you'll notice that you have to work through allot of leads to find a
business partner. Those who learn this lesson will become
wealthy.
Active vs. Passive
Prospecting
The approach YOU use will depend on several factors
including your skill level, how fast you want to build your business, the
amount of time you have available to work your business, your marketing budget,
and your technological expertise. I don't believe there is ONE way that works
for everyone... each person must determine what works best for them.
Active Approach Certainly, the fastest
way to qualify your leads is to take an active approach by using the telephone.
This approach will obviously require you to spend more time using the telephone
and you will experience more rejection. Most of the leads you contact using
this approach have signed up for information at one time because they were
curious, but not necessarily ready to take the plunge.
This approach
will grow your business the fastest.
Call your leads as soon as possible upon
receiving their information Regardless of the source of your leads,
you'll want to contact your lead by telephone to introduce yourself and qualify
them to see if they are willing to take the next step. That step might be to
visit your website, order a free report, attend a life opportunity web
conference, or watch the Financial Freedom Seminar. You are NOT waiting for
them to take an action before you call them as in the passive approach. The
sooner you call your lead - the better.
A note about using scripts Don't fall into the
trap of believing there is a "magic" script. A script is only a roadmap - it
gives you the organization and some phrases to use as you talk with your
prospects. It is only the starting point of your presentation. Fully expect to
modify it for your personality and certainly expect to expand it as you gain
more experience.
It’s never what you say - but "how you say"
what you say that is important.
Did you get that?
More
important than the script you use is your posture!
Read How to Become Effective at
Prospecting by Todd Falcone Todd also makes a good point that when
making calls, he has a very specific agenda, an objective for each call. He
doesn't need to use a script because he has a plan to attract quality
like-minded people to his business and he knows WHY and WHAT he will be doing.
When you know WHY and WHAT you will be doing, you'll begin to experience more
success.
Prepare your phone scripts for prospecting and practice with
friends or family. Read the scripts aloud as fast as you can over and over
again until you begin to "own" the words and they flow naturally. Adjust any
word or phrase to make it more personalized for you. You don't want to sound
like you're "reading" a script.
Another good training aid to become
proficient with your script is to make a tape of yourself doing it. Then,
listen to it over and over again to get it in your subconscience.
MANAGE YOUR
EXPECTATIONS: When using any new script, it will take some time
before you feel comfortable with it. I've found it takes probably about 100
calls with the script before it begins flowing naturally for you. With the next
400-500 calls you will refine and perfect your delivery, and by the time you
reach 1,000 calls you'll be very proficient with it.
Here are five things you want to find out about your leads
before you can consider them a prospect. Always have these things in mind as
you are interviewing your lead. 1 - What do
they need? 2 - What do they
want? 3 - What they can
do? 4 - What they're willing to
do? 5 - What they have the potential to
do?
The Art of Enrolling by Teresa
Romain
Awesome
training where Teresa spoke about Enrolling being made up of a set of skills:
Listening... Marketing... Selling... Coaching.... It's "enlisting" and
"engaging" people in their own process of taking action towards their goals...
their vision. She explained that Enrolling is supporting and empowering people
to see the possibilities. It requires de-railing people's automatic thinking,
so they can act on getting what they want and need.... How most of us do to
much "telling"... That we need to ask questions and listen to find out what
THEY want.... How Enrolling is creating an opening by helping people through
their "blocks" to having what they want.... That Enrolling is helping people
see they have more reasons to change than not to change....
Some general tips regarding what you say to a prospect
on the phone:
Your initial phone call should be kept very short -
less than 5 minutes. Don't say too much on your first call where you are
simply inviting them to get more information. Instead, sell the next call... a
chance to see the rest. Leave your prospect with a reason to talk to you AFTER
they've visited your website.
Control the conversation: You do that by asking
questions, not answering them. You do NOT want to be the one doing most
of the talking... you want to ask questions and let your lead do the
talking.
Don't bring up the income question. If you bring it up,
your prospect is more likely to ask about it. When you say something like, "you
can earn lots of money" or "you can make a good income", your prospect will
likely respond by asking you to qualify that statement or provide some
examples.
Don't respond by saying, "great". It's better to simply
say, "okay" or "fine".
Don't say, "what I'd like to do is...", but rather say,
"may I make a suggestion?" Your prospect really doesn't care what you'd like to
do... they're more interested in what they would like to do.
Avoid listing features of our product. Rather talk
about "benefits" or advantages.
The purpose of the initial call is to qualify your
lead, not sign them up. Attempting to make a sale before some level of
comfort and trust is established usually won't work.
TIP: One key to a successful initial prospecting
call is YOUR posture. Remember, It’s never what you say - but "how you
say" what you say that is important. This is YOUR call not theirs and you
want to always be in control of the call. Remember... the person asking the
questions is the person in charge. You should be interviewing them to see if
they are qualified to join you, not the other way around. You have already made
the right decision and are already on the path to success. When you transfer
that "feeling" to your prospects, they will WANT to follow
you.
Once you have mastered the simple invitational script you
will want to begin refining your prospecting calls even further to become a
Master Prospector.
Click
above to listen to Audio by Jeffrey Combs: Secrets of a Master
Prospector
How do you get past fear?
Your attitude about prospecting will determine your
results
Learn how to manage yourself in time
Learn how to connect with prospects within 30
seconds
Develop the Art of Listening
Learn how to say less to more people
Be a professional sorter, not an amatuer
salesperson
Learn how to qualify the right people
What's the difference between "how" questions and "why"
questions
Learn the 30 Second Rule of
Connection
Listen
to this audio training by Doug Firebaugh called: How To Make Friends
With Prospects Over The Phone In 30 Seconds Flat! To learn more from
Doug Firebaugh, I highly recommond visiting
PassionFire
International
The Rule of Geography
An Exit Strategy
Focus on Value in their Life
MANF Rule
Recruiting Through
Golden Rule of the Cold Market
The Rule of Reality
T.I.N.A.
What do you say to people?
Once you have qualified your lead and believe they are a
good prospect for your business, you will want to move them to the next
step.
Passive Approach The key to success with
a passive approach is LOTS of leads and lots of patience. Basically,
what you do is load your automated prospecting system(s) with as many leads as
you can afford and then wait for them to sign up.
IMPORTANT: This
approach will only work once you have tens-of-thousands of leads in your
pipeline and the results will most certainly be delayed for several months.
The benefit to this approach is that it can be almost totally
automated and you will likely experience "rejection-free"
prospecting. The drawback to this approach is that it will take
longer for your organization to grow and can be quite costly to generate a
sufficient number of leads.
Combination Approach Combining both an
semi-active and passive approach is my preference and the approach I've
used to enroll an average of 3 new reps a month. I prefer to let the automation
do the initial sort passively - then initiate a more active approach when a
lead has self-qualified themselves to be more than just a curious
onlooker.
When using a combination semi-active/passive approach, you
will still need lots of leads in your system - your goal is expose as many
"leads" as possible (500 to 1,000 or more leads a month) with your marketing
message and then wait for them to either visit your website, call you on the
phone or respond to your email message in some way. When they DO respond, you
will want to call them right away. When contacting people initially, you have
only one goal: to qualify the lead to determine if they have an interest in
starting a home business (are they a good match for FFSI, do they have the time
and money to not only work their business but also to market), and if so... to
get them to review more information. That's it! You're not selling them
on the product or the business.
Allowing Automation to Qualify Leads If your
automated prospecting system is set up properly, it can sift-and-sort your
leads allowing qualified prospects to move themselves forward in your
prospecting pipeline to the presentation. I'm looking for triggers or "hand
raising" activity from my leads indicating they are WANTING more information
and will take the initiative necessary to learn more. Generally I will wait to
call them until after they have taken an action.
Remember, you're looking for action triggers or "hand
raising" activity from your leads indicating they are WANTING more information
and will take the initiative necessary to learn more. Once a lead has responded
to your automated systems in some way, your next goal is to contact them by
telephone to simply establish rapport and determine if your lead has the
interest to move to the next step. You are NOT selling or convincing
them.
See the discussion above under the Active Approach heading for
more about making your phone calls.
If you're using leads through our team (or any source),
you might be interested in the training resources provided by
Cutting Edge Media.
What you'll find here is: - Sample Scripts - Handling Objections - Audio
Training - and much more.
Your goal at this step is to "qualify"
your leads to determine if they have an interest in a home-based business and
the capacity to run a business (or if looking for customers, are they
interested in saving money). 
Read 