Sales people have used a variety of unconventional approaches when it comes to their sales calls. Some are more effective than others, but more importantly, some can cause serious damage to your company’s image. Ineffectiveness is one thing, but you definately can’t afford to have staff damaging your company’s image. You’re probably wondering what approach could a sales person possibly take that would have that effect. It’s one simple thing:

Lie about their intentions.

Sadly, it happens all the time, but when people are hungry and desperate, it gets worse.

I was recently contacted by a local organization who wanted me to come speak at their event. The woman who contacted me went on and on about how much they admired our company and were impressed by the coverage we’ve received in the media. She raved about the work we’ve done for some of our local clients. She then went on to tell me about how beneficial it would be for me to speak at her organizations event because they would be heavily marketing the event and me/our company to their members and we would get tons of exposure. At the end of a 15 or 20 minute phone call, her true intentions came out when she said “I just realized you’re not a member of our organization; since we only allow members to speak at our events I could email you our application. It’s only $XXX to become a member, are you interested?” The funny thing is that I had been planning to become a member of this particular organization, but now I will never consider it.

Yesterday, I was contacted by the producer of a national television program that you’ve probably heard of. I got the same spiel from this guy; we’re really impressed with your company and your work, we’ve seen you in the media, we’d love to do a story on you, and so on…then came the truth. “Oh, and we’ll just need a $9,500 affiliate fee to get the program on the air.” No thanks.

Having worked in just about every facet of advertising, I’ve seen first-hand that this happens in every major newspaper, magazine, television and radio company.

While the FTC is strongly considering enacting legislation to force bloggers to disclose if they are being compensated in any way for writing a review, posting a link or in any way providing exposure for a company or product, they turn a blind eye to big media companies. Obviously, the impact of bloggers (Twitter, Facebook or any other social media users too) is taking a severe bite out of traditional media who is retaliating by turning their army of lobbyests loose to stop competition. I guess what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, but I digress.

When you make a sales call, don’t try to shroud it in some false pretense. You’ll waste your own and the prospect’s time, come off as shady and lose to opportunity to ever convert them into a client. Instead, make your intentions clear, be polite but get to the point. You’ll save time, make more sales calls and most importantly, close more sales.

Regardless of the industry, the true professionals add tremendous value and as a result, demand a higher fee than the average. This works out well when a prospect is looking for value rather than simply the lowest price. Unfortunately, the true professional must contend with others in their industry who are willing to work for much less; of course lower prices come with less value because they are based on skills and knowledge.

• New entries in your field often undervalue their work or are desperate to scratch out a living, so they work for less than their skills and knowledge would justify.
• Those who have failed to stay up to date and evolve with changes in your industry will work for less because they don’t have the skills or knowledge to do otherwise.

Are you charging what you’re really worth? Do you know what you’re really worth? Don’t simply base that on what your current customers are willing to pay or what your competitors are charging. Base it on the value that you bring to the table.

Your time is obviously the first factor, but there are many more. You have a special set of skills that you’ve developed over the years. Skills that your prospects and clients don’t have; that’s why they’re coming to you. Along with those skills is your knowledge and experience. That has a tremendous value, but it’s still not the end of the equation. For every hour of work you do, you often spend hours or even days behind the scenes reading, researching, testing and planning. All of that work, even if your client never sees it, brings additional value to their project in the form of better results.

It’s been said that you train people how to treat you. The same can be said for setting expectations of the value of your services. If you base your rates on the value of your skills, knowledge and experience, you’ll earn what your really worth. If you don’t, you’ll simply become another commodity.

Like many others facing challenging times, you may be looking for every opportunity to bring new revenue into your company, but before you find yourself into a situation you’ll later regret, you need to take a minute to carefully evaluate each and every new client. When times are good and business is free-flowing, you can afford to make a few mistakes here and there in choosing new clients, but when business is slow, even just one nightmare client can bring your company to a grinding halt.

It may seem counter-intuitive to turn down potential clients, especially when you need the revenue, but when you look at the long-term implications, it makes perfect sense. A nightmare client can monopolize your time, pay slow (or not at all), frustrate you and your staff and even tie your company up in time-consuming and costly legal battles, all of which make serving your good clients more difficult. This can have a serious impact on your company. The thing is, most of us have at least a gut-feeling long before any of these problems come to pass, but we (myself included) often give the potential client the benefit of the doubt.

Aside from trusting your gut, here are some things to look out for:

• Is the client in an unusual hurry to get a project started? This is often a sign of poor planning on their part and more often than not, it will get worse as time goes on. Things may start off rosy and friendly, but before long they are failing to communicate with you on a timely basis and then blaming you for the delays, making more and more last minute changes and demanding special treatment.
• They ask for special deals right off the bat, claiming they’ll make it up to you on subsequent projects. A spin-off of this approach is when they ask for special deals claiming they will send you tons of referrals. Think about this; people tend to associate with others like themselves and if they can’t afford your products/services, their associates probably can’t either. Do you want those type of referrals?  Save the special deals for your valued clients who have brought your company consistent revenue.
• The client complains that all the vendors/suppliers/contractors/etc. they’ve worked with are incompetent, overpriced and can’t meet deadlines. The chances of this being true are pretty slim, instead, look at the one common denominator; the client.
• The client says their last vendors/suppliers/contractors/etc. won’t return their calls any longer. There is probably a great reason for this.
• The client is flaky. For example, they miss scheduled calls or meetings, agree to project terms but then forget or try to change them at the last minute, fail to provide necessary project information and/or files. If you see this, it’s a sure sign of things to come and you can bet that it’s only going to get worse.
• The client outright lies. Did they contact you claiming to be the sole decision maker, only later to admit that they are just one member of a commitee responsible for making a decision? Did they ask for a detailed proposal based outlining every action, step by step, based on a $250,000 budget, and then tell you that their budget is really just $2,500? If they will lie to you at this stage, the lies will increase and get worse.

You may be tempted by the additional revenue, especially if the figures are quite large, but before you make a decision, look for the signs and trust your gut. You’ll be far better off in the long run.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you get good at it. If you are terrible at sales calls, then you should be out there every day making them so that you have an opportunity to learn from a variety of situations. If you are persistent and learn from your mistakes, over time you will become better, and possibly outstanding at making sales calls. This applies to everything in your business. If you put things off because you’re not good at them, your situation will never change. On the other hand, if you spend a little bit of time every day working on the things you’re not good at, you will advance light years ahead of your competition.

When asked what they do, most people respond with a canned answer describing their job title. If you work in a large company doing a typical job, this is probably a suitable answer, but if you are an entrepreneur running your own business, this is far from a suitable answer.

People are busy, usually stressed and often wrapped up in their own world so when you tell them that you’re a lawyer, accountant, business consultant or whatever it is that you do, it does not stand out. To them, you are just another face in the crowd. They know that if they need the type of services you offer, they can simply visit a search engine, ask an associate or friend to refer them to someone or even pick up the yellow pages.

If you want to avoid this situation, it’s often as simple as perfecting your answer to the question. Hopefully, you’re more than just a lawyer, accountant, business consultant or whatever it is that you do. For example, one of our clients is an accountant that specializes in developing tax strategies for small businesses so they can maximize their revenue to become larger and more profitable. That’s pretty specific and definitely stands out from all of the other “accountants” in the area. Furthermore, you can bet that any small business owner who’s trying to grow their business will be interested when they hear that.

So take some time to determine what exactly it is that you do, and craft your answer around that. It will be one of the best investments of time you can make in your business.