Thomas A. Freese's Blog, page 9

Increase Voice-mail/Email Responses by 1000%

Voice-mail and email are very effective communication tools. As such, your target list of prospects and customers is being inundated with voice-mails and email messages from your direct competitors, in addition to any number of other vendors who compete with you indirectly—for budget dollars.

The are only two reasons people respond to voice and email messages—obligation and curiosity. If your boss calls and leaves a message, you will likely return the call. If your largest customer calls, you will surely return their call as well, because that’s what you do when you have important customers, or a boss.

But, what about decision makers who don’t feel “obligated” to return cold calls from vendors? Besides obligation, the only other thing that causes people to return voice-mail messages or email is curiosity.

The challenge is, most voice-mails and email messages that get lobbed into potential decision makers do more to satisfy their curiosity than create it. Oops! As a result, the average return call rate on voice-mail has dropped below 5%, and the odds of getting replies to email can be just as bleak.

Sample messages of Curiosity Inducing Voice-mails:

i.) “Hi, George, this is Pat Wilkins calling from Dynamic Systems—I’m on the team that works with industrial accounts in Central Florida. I was on a conference call with one of our products managers last Wednesday afternoon just after lunch, and two issues came up that I thought might impact your current manufacturing platform, one of which is time sensitive. I wanted to be proactive and try to catch you in the office this afternoon. If you get a chance today, could you please call me back at (770) 123-4567? I should be here until around 5:30pm.”

ii) “Hi, Dale, this is Lane Patterson with HLM Corporation. I’m on the team that supports healthcare accounts for the Midwest region. I was hoping to catch you for a minute because we’ve had 13 new announcements in the last three and a half months, two of which I believe might impact your diagnostic assessments under the new legislation. If you get a chance today, could you please call me at (770) 123-4567?”

(iii) “Hi, Steve, this is Joe Tomlin calling from Templeton Partners. I manage a team that works with financial brokers in the tri-cities area. A note came across my desk yesterday morning that caught my eye regarding (insert something relevant) and I wanted to try and catch up with you today if possible. When you get a chance, could you please call me at (770) 123-4567?”

Key Point: If I sent 5 different voice-mails or email messages, they would have five different sets of words depending on what information I had about the account, my purpose for calling, and the objective of the call. But in every case, my intention would be to leave (or send) a purposeful message, that was specific and relevant. Do that in your business, and you can easily realize a 50%+ response rate, which represents a whopping 1000% increase over industry averages.

Tom Freese’s New Book is Here (270 pages)!

Free Download: CLICK HERE to download a full PDF of SalesForce 2020. Find out why sales leaders are calling this book the next generation of sales enablement!

Have you noticed that the selling environment has changed dramatically over the years, yet the world of sales training has remained surprisingly stagnant? That’s about to change in a BIG way with the release of Tom Freese’s new book.








$14.00

(Click to Save 50%)








(Paperback)

$19.95

SalesForce 2020 is the only book of its kind. It is a book about the future of selling. While hindsight may indeed be 20/20, it has become increasingly clear that many of the old school sales tactics that have been touted for decades no longer make sense as we rapidly approach the year 2020.

Might it be time for an upgrade?

There’s a reason why top performing salespeople continue to excel, while those who are struggling continue to struggle…even though they are all following the same basic sales process. It’s because just identifying the steps of the sales process is no longer a differentiator. Your competitors have a sales process in place, too, and theirs is very similar (if not identical) to yours.

Sellers today are hungry for strategies and techniques that can give them an ‘unfair’ advantage in their respective markets, rather than revert back to much of the outdated logic that has plagued traditional sales approaches for the last 40 years.

Is this book an indictment of old school sales methods? In a word—Yes. It’s also a road map to show sellers how to re-engineer their sales approach to create a differentiable advantage moving forward.

SalesForce 2020 is a must read for anyone engaged in today’s rapidly changing sales environment. The book flows like you’re having a one-on-one conversation with Tom Freese, as he provides clarity for how to execute more effectively, with clear and concise examples of real-life situations that bring key points home. Definitely a break-through in how to sell today!

—Richard Brock, CEO

SalesTalk Technologies

Join the New Generation of Sales Enablement.

CLICK to download a full PDF version of Tom Freese’s 6th book. See for yourself how to catapult your team to the next generation of sales enablement.

SalesForce 2020, Tom’s New Book, is Here!

Would you agree that the selling environment has changed dramatically over the years, yet the sales training world has remained surprisingly stagnant? That’s about to change in a BIG way with the release of Tom Freese’s new book.

$14.00
(Click to save 50%)








(Paperback)
$19.95

SalesForce 2020 is the only book of its kind. It is a book about the future of selling. While hindsight may indeed be 20/20, it has become increasingly clear that many of the old school sales tactics that have been touted for decades no longer make sense as we rapidly approach the year 2020.

Might it be time for an upgrade?

There’s a reason why top performing salespeople continue to excel, while those who are struggling continue to struggle…even though they are all following the same basic sales process. It’s because just identifying the steps of the sales process is no longer a differentiator. Your competitors have a sales process in place, too, and theirs is very similar (if not identical) to yours.

Sellers today are hungry for strategies and techniques that can give them an ‘unfair’ advantage in their respective markets, rather than revert back to much of the outdated logic that has plagued traditional sales approaches for the last 40 years.

Is this book an indictment of old school sales methods? In a word—Yes. It’s also a road map to show sellers how to re-engineer their sales approach to create a differentiable advantage moving forward.

Like to preview SalesForce 2020 chapters? Click Here.

SalesForce 2020 is a must read for anyone engaged in today’s rapidly changing sales environment. The book flows like you’re having a one-on-one conversation with Tom Freese, as he provides clarity for how to execute more effectively, with clear and concise examples of real-life situations that bring key points home. Definitely a break-through in how to sell today!

—Richard Brock, CEO

SalesTalk Technologies

Selling Power Magazine Puts Freese’s Books on Their Top 10 Summer Reading List

Summer time is an opportunity to catch up on your rest and relaxation. It’s also a good time to think about retooling your selling skills in order to gain an advantage over the competition. Selling Power Magazine’s Top Ten Summer Reading List for 2011 is out and it includes Sell Yourself First, a 250 page hardcover bestseller by Thomas A. Freese, Author of Secrets of Question Based Selling.

Freese says, “I wrote Sell Yourself First, my fifth book, as a direct commentary on how a salesperson is perceived is more important than the products they sell or company they represent.”

Special offer: Mention this blog post in the comments section while ordering and receive 50% off the retail price.

Try Using Humbling Disclaimers

Sellers are encouraged to ask specific qualifying questions, most notably about decision makers, timeframe, and budget. A fine line exists between appropriately qualifying an opportunity and probing too invasively.

To minimize the risk of being shut down by a defensive prospect, and to maximize the quality of the information you receive, you simply precede your most delicate questions with a humbling disclaimer.

A humbling disclaimer creates a permission of sorts which makes it easy for the salesperson to ask, and also paves the way for the other person to be more receptive to the question. For example:

Salesperson:  “Mr. Customer, I don’t want to overstep my boundaries and ask too many questions, but I would like to understand the big picture before recommending a solution. Do you mind if I ask a couple of specifics about how this project might impact your long-range growth plans?”

Other examples of humbling disclaimers include:

           Salesperson:   “I’m not sure the best way to ask, but would you mind if…”

                                       “Without stepping on anyone’s toes, would it be okay if we…”

                                       “I don’t want to step out of bounds, but would it be too forward to ask…”

Key Point: If you are respectful of someone else’s right to not to share with you, it’s amazing how much information you can get. Humility is a very attractive human quality, and one that people are naturally drawn toward. Thus, you can significantly enhance the value of the responses you receive by strategically preceding your most sensitive questions with a humbling disclaimer. Simply put, causing people to “want to” share more information with you gives you a strategic advantage over other sellers who are just out there probing for needs.

Diagnostic Questions to Initiate Needs Development

For decades, salespeople have been taught that open-ended questions are the best tools for causing prospects to “open up.” This thinking is incorrect. In fact, asking for too much too soon is one of the quickest ways to cause someone to shut down and not share anything with you.

Open-ended questions can be valuable conversational tools, but only after you have successfully piqued someone’s interest and have established some credibility. Hence, in QBS, a technique called Diagnostic Questions becomes the most effective way to kick off your needs development conversations.

Salesperson:  “Can I ask you a couple specifics about _________?”

Customer:  “Sure, go ahead.”

The first question is the easiest part. At some point in most sales conversations, there will be an opportunity for discovery. When these opportunities to ask questions arise, there is only one time in Question Based Selling where I recommend exact wording (above). Basically, you are asking permission. This is a low risk approach.

Once the customer grants you permission (99%), you ask a series of short-answer questions to understand specific facts about their current situation. Selling technology, for example, you might ask:

Salesperson:  “How many servers do you currently have installed?”

                           “Supporting how many users?”

                           “In how many locations?”

                           “Do you manage the network in-house, or do you outsource?”

                           “How many engineers do you have on staff?”

                           “How many are Microsoft certified?”

Within a short time window (generally less than 60 seconds), this technique of Diagnostic Questions enables the strategic salesperson to kick off needs development conversations in a non-threatening manner, gather valuable information that guides the conversation, establish credibility as a valuable resource, and earn the right to transition into more depth.

From here, you can easily broaden the Scope to ask open-ended questions

What Groundhog Day Means for Salespeople…

The passing of Groundhog Day last week reminds us that sellers now have less than a year to attain their newly assigned sales quotas. Particularly once all the hoopla and festivities of the annual sales meeting are in the rearview mirror, that’s usually when reality sets in and sellers are suddenly faced with steeper revenue targets and the challenge of figuring out how to attain them. This is also the time of year when sellers resume their search for that one magic bullet, or clever one-liner, that will hopefully make selling easy again. 

If you were in the customer’s shoes, and being targeted by a sales caller, can you think of a single sales one-liner that would work on you? While fads tend to come and go, one fad that continues to linger in the sales world is the notion that focusing on how sales were conducted in the good old days will somehow help you achieve your goals moving forward.

Honestly, I tire of sales trainers crowing about how much research they have conducted in an attempt to pinpoint what worked in the distant past. Who cares what may have worked in days gone by? In today’s rapidly changing business environment, our focus needs to be on what sellers can do to give themselves a competitive advantage moving forward. But why is no one  talking about what it’s going to take to be successful in the future?

Perhaps you’re a fan of Spin Selling, which is based on extensive research Neil Rackham conducted between 1975 and 1979. Or, you may be attracted to the latest fad, The Challenger Sale (2011), which is also based on research where the authors claim to have studied 6000 sales calls on the way to formulating their conclusions. But, isn’t it possible that the selling environment has changed significantly—over however long it takes to study 6000 sales calls, not to mention the last 40 years?

Hindsight might indeed be 20/20, but what sellers did to gain a competitive advantage in the past is very different from what’s required to be successful moving forward. To illustrate, let me ask you a simple question: “Would you say that potential buyers over the last 2, 5, or 10 years, have become more open and receptive to sales callers, or more cautious and standoffish?” I think we all know the answer. Do you think this trend is going to reverse itself anytime soon?

While some sellers are gearing up to resume their quest for that one power statement that challenges the customer’s thinking, or for an insightful question that will cause prospects to roll over like puppies who want their tummies rubbed, it’s becoming more and more clear that the days of sales tricks, marketing gimmicks, and clever one-liners are long since behind us.

Your success moving forward will more likely be a function of your ability to leverage specific strategies and techniques in a way that gives you a consistent and repeatable competitive advantage. So, rather than trying to challenge your customers or wow them with clever one-liners, you might want to look in the mirror and challenge yourself with some (or all) of the following questions:

· How can I separate myself from the rest of the “noise” in the marketplace?

· How can I be seen as a valuable use of time and a credible resource, rather than just another cold-caller?

· How can I increase my response rates when leaving voice-mail messages or sending emails?

· How can I get potential buyers to share information with a salesperson they don’t yet know or trust?

· How can I leverage ‘curiosity’ to gain moe mindshare with key people in important target accounts?

· How do I convert a customer’s fixation on price into a conversation about cost-effectiveness?

· How can I increase a customer’s sense of urgency, and then ask for the order without sounding pushy?

· How can I empower internal champions to make a compelling business case to others?

The answer to these questions will either kick-start your selling efforts, or cause sellers to seek some level of comfort, like the when the infamous Groundhog crawls back into his cavern to hide. In a place where the surroundings are safe and familiar, sellers can rest easy knowing they have many weeks (even months) before they will be held accountable for their sales performance and yearly results.

I can tell you that your success in sales moving forward is all about giving yourself an advantage into the foreseeable future, rather than relying on 40 years worth of sales logic that’s based on whatever may have worked in the past.

2016 QBS Spring Boot Camp: May 5 – 6

“There has never been a better time for sellers to do everything possible to make themselves invaluable to their customers, colleagues, and their company.”         -T. Freese

We are excited to announce the upcoming 2016 QBS Spring Boot Camp! If you would like to renew your focus on increasing your own sales effectiveness, or give your entire sales team an unfair advantage over the competition, join us on May 5 – 6, 2016.

The program will be facilitated by five-time best-selling author Tom Freese.

The learning environment will be highly interactive, with participants from a variety of industries including technology, financial services, healthcare, consulting, insurance, real estate, manufacturing, advertising, hospitality, and retail, and feedback from previous QBS Summit events has been “off the charts.”

With limited seating, reserve your seats early since we are expecting a full house. You might also want to bring extra pencils and a stack of writing pads for note taking.

“Tom! I wanted to thank you for an amazing training two weeks ago-my head is still spinning from all of the great info. I met with our Regional Manager yesterday and he wants you to train the rest of our team. You will be hearing from us very soon…”    -Liz B., Michigan…your newest QBS groupie!

Click for Early Enrollment Discount &  BOOT CAMP DETAILS.

QBS "Rocks" in Singapore!!!

I just returned from the other side of the globe, having trained one of our multi-national Life Sciences clients on Question Based Selling. With an audience of salespeople and managers on hand representing most Asia-Pac regions, it turns out that there are more cultural similarities in the sales profession than differences.

For example, in what cultures do you suppose it’s important to gain credibility, convey value, or differentiate your value proposition? That’s right, those are important in all culture. Thus, I took the opportunity to point out that just having a sales process in place no longer gives sales teams any advantage, because all of your competitors has a sales process in place too, that theirs is probably very similar to yours.

That’s where things got interesting, talking about "how" best to position the various products and services within the different companies and cultures. All around the world, someone who understands "how" to execute more effectively than the competition, and “how” to help the customer accomplish their objectives, will prevail over anyone whose sole focus is just trying to make a sale.

Congratulations to Singapore for their 50 year celebration of independence since 1965!

QBS Summer Special

*Schedule a Two-Day QBS Training for the cost of a One-Day event.

There’s an old saying… “There’s never a ‘good’ time for sales training!”

What if you let your competitor’s think that way? Meanwhile, while they’re out soaking up the sun, you give your sales team the edge needed to dominate the remaining half of the calendar year.

Rather than just holding another “refresher” course on the process, QBS shows sellers “How to” re-engineer their approach to engage more decision makers in more productive sales conversations, in a way that ultimately creates more business opportunities.

QBS Methodology Training is delivered in a high-energy, interactive, two or three-day program that is designed to give salespeople a significant advantage over the competition. An abridged one-day version of this QBS training is also available for sales meetings, mid-year kickoff events, or vendor-sponsored partner seminars, which can be scheduled upon request.

QBS Course Objectives Include:



Make lead generation a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Get a 50%+ response rate on both voice-mail and email messages.
Use strategic questions to uncover more needs.
Identify decision-makers and key influencers.
Establish more credibility earlier in the sale.
Eliminate the causes of buyer resistance.
Motivate many different types of buyers.
Expand the scope of existing opportunities.
Escalate the prospect’s sense of urgency.
Deliver more punch in your presentations
Prevent objections in addition to handling them.
Qualify and accurately forecast sales opportunities.
Close more sales…faster.

Contact Information:

QBS Research, Inc.

Atlanta, Georgia 30097

Ofc: (770) 840-7640

Fax: (770) 840-7642

*QBS is a registered trademark of QBS Research, Inc.

“Why not ‘challenge’ the customer’s thinking…by first challenging your own?”

Two-Day QBS Course & Agenda: [Details]

One-Day QBS “Blitz” & Agenda: [Details]

*Q3 Special Pricing is Subject to Availability.