Building rapport with a prospect as quickly as you can is critical if you want them to be receptive to what you have to say.

Experienced professionals know that this early part of the pitch is an art rather than a science. This makes building initial rapport is an ideal topic for your next sales training as it helps both new and experienced sales professionals find areas of connection that open up prospects for a productive conversation.

Why do you need to build rapport after the sales call?

According to many sales coaches, people tend to buy – and buy more – from sales reps they know and trust. Skilled rapport building after the sales call will increase your chances of success if you can effectively build a connection with your prospect.

By building an initial rapport, you will also gain more influence over your prospect and it will also make them more comfortable sharing their plans and goals for the future with you.

Five Ways to Build a Rapport

To build rapport, certified sales trainers suggest you try these tricks:

Be yourself and be friendly

The chances of making a successful sale are always increased if you can remember to be you. Do not try and act like you are somebody else. Acting and pretending will only make you look uncomfortable and lose the trust of your prospect. Conversely, if you are confident and relaxed you will be able to make your client feel comfortable being in your company.

Ask the right questions

To understand your prospect and build a relationship, it is important you ask the right questions. Try starting with some of these:

• How was your day/week/weekend?
• Where did you go to school?
• How did you end up working for these guys?
• Ask something that demonstrates you have done your homework on the company. Try to be a little more specific with each subsequent question about the company

Adjust to the situation

Yes, you should be yourself and act naturally. But, many leading digital sales coaches believe you should also respect the culture of your client, especially if they are from another country or speak a different language. Simple gestures that show you respect their culture will go a long way to building rapport even if you are far from being an expert.

Another example would be respecting the dress code of the company you are pitching to. Or, if they have a specific way of communicating, adjust yourself to that even if it is not the best option for you.

Give compliments

Giving a compliment to your prospect is a good way to make them feel appreciated and it will help build a good foundation for making a sale, say many certified digital sales coaches.

Listen and understand their needs

All salespeople are good talkers. After all, that is why they do what they do. But, to sell something and – perhaps more importantly – build a relationship with a customer, talking is not always enough. You also need to listen to your client carefully.

Listening to them is very important because you will learn more about their wants and needs and how you or your company might be able to help them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Natasa Tomic is a journalist and content producer who specializes in writing about business and sales.

Even for the best sales professionals, not all sales calls end well. Sometimes, they end with significant pushback from the person on the other end of the line. According to many leading sales coaches, losing prospects and sales is not an easy thing to deal with, but how you deal with that rejection may completely change your attitude and make you a better salesperson in the long run.

Sometimes, you encounter pushback because your prospect doesn’t see the value of your product or it doesn’t meet their needs or fit within their budget. While it is natural to down after this kind of rejection, great sales professionals actually condition themselves to embrace the word NO and use it as motivation to sharpen their axe and avoid running into similar difficulties in the future.

Let’s be clear, nobody likes hearing a NO, but in sales, it goes with the territory. You have to accept that it is going to happen no matter how many hours you spent preparing your presentation or how certain you were that the prospect was going to be excited about your product or service.

However, by learning to love hearing the word NO and by using the right techniques, you can easily reduce the numbers of times you actually hear the word NO. Recommended by top virtual sales trainers, here are seven ways you can overcome prospect pushback and come out the other end a better saleperson:

Keep calm

No matter how frustrated you feel or what you think about your prospect’s negativity, you must maintain an air of calmness, stay profressional and unaggressive. At this stage of the call, it is critical you remember a NO today doesn’t mean a NO forever. The last thing you want to do is burn that bridge!

They’ll be back

Many leading digital sales coaches teach that a NO might actually be your prospect’s way of asking for more information or more time to think about what you’ve told them without the pressure of scheduled follow-up calls. It could also mean they just don’t have a use for your product or service at that time. Who knows? They may already be considering doing business with you in the future.

Ask why

Regardless of how unprofessionally (or even aggressively) the NO was delivered, you should always try to maintain your composure and ask WHY? By doing this, you may learn where you went wrong with your pitch or even get another opportunity discuss the reasons for the rejection. It will certainly give you a chance to clarify things if your prospect misunderstood something in addition to helping you learn a valuable lesson.

Take heed

Instead of hanging up the phone and muttering (or yelling) words like ‘jerk’ and ‘idiot,’ make it a habit to go right back to the drawing board. Get out a piece of paper or open a Word doc and start going back over the call the a football coach watching game film. This practice is recommended by many industry-leading certified sales trainers as they believe it is a surefire way to eliminate weaknesses and improve your pitches.

Follow up

Just because they said NO this time doesn’t mean they’ll say NO forever. Give it a couple of months and follow up with them to see if their situation (or their mood) has changed. Keep an eye on how they are doing and you might just find the perfect reason to reach back out. Perhaps they’ve launched a new service or their business has grown to the point that your product or service makes more sense. Sign up for their newsletter or visit their website periodically. One good way back in is to send a congratulatory note if you notice they’ve been doing well. Persistence pays off!

Be prepared for pushbacks

Part of being well prepared for any sales call is considering everything that can go wrong during your that conversation. Expecting everything to go smoothly is naive and may end up costing you a sale if you start stuttering and stammering as soon as your prospect starts pushing back. Try prepping with someone on your team like a defense attorney getting a client ready for a hostile prosecutor. Get them to really hammer you so there is literally nothing your prospect can say that will get you flustered.

Forget about it

Getting rejected is not the end of the world and there has never been a salesperson who hasn’t it heard the word NO more than they’ve heard YES. Use the techniques listed above as a way to get over it quickly, learn from it and move on to future successes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Natasa Tomic is a journalist and content producer who specializes in writing about business and sales.

As strange as it may seem, many sales professionals are actually afraid of making follow-up calls to prospects because they are concerned about being perceived as pushy. However, as noted by many leading certified sales coaches, this can prove to be a critical error as effective follow-up habits markedly increase the probability of making a sale.

In truth, few people are going to buy from you or your company immediately after that first introduction. Even though your first emails and meetings are important (after all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression), reaching out to your prospects again after they’ve had a chance to think everything over is equally important.

Why is follow-up so important?

In 80 percent of sales, according to top online sales trainers, sales professionals conduct at least five follow-ups to close a deal. That being the case, salespeople with well-structured follow-up plans have a significant edge on their competition who tend to give up after just one call or email.

Simply put, you are far more likely to secure a sale if you reach out to your customers more than once to see where are you with the deal and what can you do to close it. Also, conducting follow-ups helps build truting relationships with your prospects thereby increasing the likelihood that they will become loyal customers.

It is important to note that even after you close the sale, you or your team should carry out regular follow-ups to strengthen your connection and continuing building trust with your clients.

How to follow-up effectively?

Top online sales coaches swear by the following five tips when it comes to creating an effective follow-up strategy:

1) Provide added value

Don’t just follow-up just for the sake of following up. It is important you provide your customers with something of value every time you reach out. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you follow-up with a new prospect as your nuggets of added value will often work on multiple prospects. Just try to remember some small details about each client so you can personalize your subsequent conversations. Asking questions about their business or offering them a coupon or a discount is another great way to personalize these calls.

2) Establish a clear path

Always end your call by telling your prospects what they can expect from you going forwards. Even if all you do is set a date and a time for your next call or visit, it is important to set a clear plan for what happens next before you let them go. If you have To Do items for them, keep them simple and only give them one clearly defined request at a time. Never assume they will already know what is expected.

3) Use a vareity communication channels

If your prospect is not answering your phone calls, try reaching them by email (and vice versa). These days, many people will not answer a voice call until they’ve received a brief text outlining what the call is about. Giving your prospects a varity of ways to respond to you in their own time is widely considered a best practice.

4) Stay in regular contact (but know when to stop)

There’s no rule that says you can’t simply ask your clients and prospects how often they want to hear from you. In fact, asking this question lets them know you value their time and are sensitive to their needs. It is also a subtle way of demonstrating that you are not arrogant or pushy. There are also no clear rules about when you should stop follow-up communications but most certified sales coaches suggest calling it quits after the sixth or seventh try.

5) Set a follow-up timeframe

Certified digital sales coaches agree there is no right answer when it comes to how soon you should call a prospect again after that first conversation. Certainly, you don’t want to seem too eager by calling the next day but you also don’t want to appear uninterested by letting it slide for a month. Carefully space out your follow-ups to avoid coming across as over-eager or pushy but try to remember that people will need some time to digest all the information you gave them the last time you spoke.

Conclusion: There’s no reason to be afraid of making follow-up calls as long as you have a plan and a schedule in place. Be organized and know that you are providing something of value to your and these critical calls might actually turn out to be something you start looking forward to (especially when you see the impact they have on your commissions!).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Natasa Tomic is a journalist and content producer who specializes in writing about business and sales.

In successful companies all over the United States, Chief Revenue Officers are playing increasingly pivotal roles, directly influencing culture and growth.

They are becoming more and more sought-after as CEOs with product and engineering backgrounds realize the importance of being able to offload revenue management so they can stay focused on what they do uniquely well.

What does a CRO do?

Simply put, a CRO is accountable a company’s revenue streams and they are responsible for driving growth by overseeing and aligning revenue generating departments such as marketing, sales and customer service. As their role comprises everything from pricing strategies to customer retention, successful CROs typically have a deep background in sales and marketing, finance and management.

Their job can include the following tasks:

• Creating marketing strategies, defining ideal clients and marketing segments
• Creating financial goals and preparing plans to meet those goals
• Working with product teams to define products and offerings
• Optimizing value props and positioning
• Establishing go-to-market models, pricing strategies and developing growth strategies
• Analyzing data to determine ways to improve profits
• Forecasting short-term and long-term results and strategies
• Reporting data, plans and findings to executives
• Using customer feedback to increase customer satisfaction

Since a successful Chief Revenue Officer must cover a lot of bases, they need to be a jack of all trades when it comes to operating a successful company. That said, many industry-leading sales coaches with expertise in this area have found they all seem to possess these six key attributes:

1) Sales and marketing acumen

As Chief Revenue Officers work extensively with both sales and marketing, successful ones are adept at getting these two critical teams to work more closely together. To do this – and truly tap into both teams’ potential – they typically have a lot of experience working in those departments themselves. To get the best out of both teams, the CRO must be able to create goals and strategies that help them to row in the same direction. A truly effective CRO combines solid leadership with skillful diplomacy to create an alliance between sales and marketing.

2. Great team-building skills

Experienced and skilled Chief Revenue Officers know the importance of good teamwork. That is why they are good team builders with a knack for recruiting A-team players who can help them achieve their revenue-generating goals.

3. Leadership prowess

With many employees reporting to the Chief Revenue Officer, the great ones prioritize motivating people and helping them to reach their full potential through an effective planning process. As they make a lot of the big decisions around sales and marketing, the CRO must be also be skilled at assigning duties in addition to overseeing the group and individual performance of everyone under their charge.

4. Goal setting knowhow

Exceptional CROs are not only motivated to work toward their company’s goals, they help create those goals. This includes setting long-term goals that will help the company achieve sustainable revenue growth through solid planning and communication. If you’re in the market for a CRO, finding a goal-oriented animal who lives for reaching goals is definitely the way to go.

5. Critical thinking ability

Being able to think strategically and analytically are vitally important traits for a CRO to have. As one of their many jobs, they will spend a lot of time pouring over piles of data to develop new plans and improve processes. They have to be able to identify gaps between revenue potential and revenue performance, analyze these gaps and set new goals accordingly.

6. Tech competence

Finally, there is just no way in today’s modern marketplace that anyone in this role can be successful if they are not a tech guru. First, they need to know how their products integrate into the client’s technology stack to be able to sell it properly. In fact, staying on top of all the developing technology that could make or break their company is one of the most important facets of their job. Be wary of anyone who tries to tell you they’re a ‘big picture’ thinker who lets the tech people deal with the ‘tech stuff.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Natasa Tomic is a journalist and content producer who specializes in writing about business and sales.

A growing trend among small to medium-sized enterprises is to engage in outsourced sales management. This allows companies to access highly skilled sales professionals at substantially lower costs than hiring an employee.

In fact, many SMEs are now seeing outsourced sales management as a surefire way to boost their economic growth while keeping the size of their teams manageable. In this article, we explore the seven top reasons why finding an outsourced sales manager could be your ticket to increased sales at lower costs.

1) Improved Processes

Many SMEs lack a well-defined sales process or they struggle to follow the one they already have in place. A third-party sales manager can help in this area by creating a professional sales process or by reviewing and making improvements to an existing one. These sales mercenaries likely already have a tried and true plan that has worked elsewhere and can be tailored to fit your team’s needs, strategies and goals.

2) Lowered Costs and Increased Profits

Adding a sales management consultant to your team will reduce the costs associated with hiring a full-time employee which will free up budget space to go after new sales leads and increase spending in other areas proven to boost sales performance. In fact, a qualified and experienced consultant can help you plan to use these saved funds to target qualified leads, drive inbound traffic, convert leads and nurture relationships with prospects and existing customers alike.

3) Increased Motivation and Mentorship for the Existing Team

By bringing in a hired gun, your existing sales team members will get the message that they need to raise their games. In addition to bringing new ideas and concepts to your company and the team members they work with, their presence will subtly send an important message to your existing sales professionals that the status quo is no longer good enough.

4) Improved Recruitment and Team Management

Many SMEs don’t have professional sales recruiting and management teams because they literally don’t even know where to start in this highly specialized area. The right consultant will not only be able to pitch in and boost sales right away, they will also have the experience and the know-how to help you flush out this critical part of your company’s future sales success and create a professional environment for your employees.

5) Accelerated Sales Funnel

Many SME owners wear multiple hats and are therefore unable to dedicate themselves solely to improving and managing their sales processes. This can lead to gaps and choke points in the sales funnel which in turn can lead to lost sales. An expert outside sales manager will be able to review your existing funnel and provide solutions to any recurring challenges. For example, they will be able to assist with how best to identify solid prospects and how to market to them to ensure they make it all the way through the funnel.

6) Boosted Scalability

Because of an inherent lack of resources, many SMEs are more susceptible to market changes than the larger companies they compete against. By bringing in the right consultant to provide proven solutions at the appropriate time, your lack of size can become an advantage as your company becomes more flexible and agile. By adding a third-party expert to guide your team through these challenges, it is possible you will actually prosper during market shifts instead of being hurt by them.

7) Improved Access to New Technology

In today’s highly digital world, it can be a full-time job just keeping up with all the new technological advancements. Employees can tend to become comfortable using tools they are familiar with whereas any outside sales management consultant worth their salt will be up to speed on all the latest tools and be able to point you in the right direction when it comes to adding performance-enhancing technology to your operation.

SUMMARY: Finding an expert outside sales manager can have a hugely positive impact on small to medium-sized businesses at a far lower cost than one might expect. However, as with anything in business, it is important to carry out an appropriate level of due diligence to find the right fit for your company.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Natasa Tomic is a journalist and content producer who specializes in writing about business and sales.