Before I go straight into the heart of the techniques for selling through the phone for pharmaceutical sales reps, there's a few things that we need to be clear. Perhaps, the most important thing I want you know is this: Phone selling, ideally, is not meant to close a sale for a rep (well, if you know my attitude towards closing then you know that I don't believe in it!). It's the initial step to secure an appointment with a prospect where you can sit down and meet face to face. That's the objective.Plus, here's an article which I wrote a few years back, and I strongly believe very much relevant today: Selling on the phone is tough business. I'm not discounting phone selling but it's good to get the heads up, right?
In fact, in my years of pharmaceutical sales career, the only time when I used the phone is when I'm following up a call, securing future appointment, clarifying immediate issue with long distance customers, or something similar. I had never once use phone to secure an order. Is this a sign of incompetence?
Well, consider this article I wrote about telephone sales training tips.
So, what do you think? Does that make sense? And to top it all, I have list some simple tips if you must use the telephone to increase your sales. Perhaps, this is not something that you can achieve in a single sitting but depending on your product and industry, even if it's outside pharmaceuticals, you can implement them and yields the benefits nonetheless: Improving tele-selling sales script.
Leave your thought below. I'd like to see how masters of the mouthpiece respond to this info :)
