Five keys to success in telephone prospecting, classified ad sales

In my 25 years of work in training, coaching and consultation within newspaper call centers—as well as five years as a consultant to Morgan Stanley, whose lifeblood is telephone prospecting—I have come to recognize five keys to telephone prospecting success that we can apply in today’s market for newspaper classifieds.

1. Enthusiasm. Successful telephone prospect

ing is 12 percent what sales reps say and 88 percent how they say it. On the telephone and with life in general, enthusiasm is the little-recognized secret of success. Prospects can only hear and feel your attitude, and it must be enthusiastic, confident and positive.

2. Good lists. Forty percent of a rep’s success will be related to the quality of the list. Besides accurate numbers, a good list has well-qualified prospects with whom reps have some sort of connection, enabling them to build rapport quickly.

Additionally, it is important today to put automatic systems in place that will generate lists throughout the year based on key criteria including:

• Previous advertisers who have not advertised within the last 90 days.
• The previous year’s seasonal or special-day advertisers, many of whom are likely to want to advertise again this year for Christmas, President’s Day, Mother’s Day and other annual occurrences.
• Advertisers whose ads are about to expire.
• Advertisers who have placed ads around special events such as business anniversaries, end-of-model-year, local festivals, athletic events or arts and entertainment.

All reps should receive such lists regularly so they can, for example, call every restaurant in town about advertising their Mother’s Day, New Year’s Eve, or Valentine’s Day specials. Supervisors should provide close guidance and frequent follow-up on using these lists.

3. Pace. Telephone prospecting involves developing a rhythm—one that comes from cutting out all distractions and allows a sales rep to stay focused on the behavior of making dials. If you focus enough on desired behaviors when telephoning, desired results will follow.

When it comes to pace, it is important to set aside block time—times of the day and week that are most conducive for reaching targeted prospects. During this block time, reps should be making at least 30 dials per hour.

4. Skill. Sales reps who have appropriate enthusiasm, a good list and great pace will see their skill level improve significantly because they will be generating enough “at bats” to get better on the telephone. The skills required to become a good sales rep—a good greeting, good discovery questions, excellent objection-handling, appropriate solution, compelling offer and assumptive close—develop significantly under fire from prospects.

It is important to consider giving reps scripts to follow so they communicate effectively and appropriately and avoid bad habits.

5. No avoidance. Prospecting is hard work and reps, by human nature, will succumb to avoidance behavior without discipline and prevention. Get creative—run outbound parties and specify special block times to drive enthusiasm and dials per hour. Have daily contact with reps to see how many dials they can make daily. The bottom line is that we must measure activity level every day to make sure reps are not avoiding what they must do.

It is safe to say that the days when classified reps could sit back and wait for the phone to ring are long gone. Newspapers are no longer the only game in town. We can’t meet our goals by merely serving the calls that come in to us. It has never been more critical to focus on telephone prospecting—and to do it very well.