The best Telemarketing books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount really helped me. I was in a very similar situation as you. After I read that book, it gave me the process/tools and inspired me to make 50+ cold calls a day in about 1-2 hours.

Another way to think of it is this: for each call you make, you are earning $X dollars. If your average sale nets $5k and it takes 250 calls to make that sale, then every time you pick up the phone you are making $20.

"Cold Calling That Really Works" . Easy read to get you motivated. https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Calling-Techniques-That-Really/dp/1440572178/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=cold+calling&qid=1619470519&sr=8-5

One thing I do recommend is this book, because I read it once last year, and will read it again. This guy outlines an excellent way to help segment a sales team (as small as 2-3 even). One person would be a rockstar prospector, one would be account exec/closer, and another would be market team (to handle inbound leads from website and other marketing). We plan to do just this. We are going to hire a dialer overseas (and try to find one with little to no accent) from oDesk, get a list(hoovers), and have them set appts. Then I will be the one going to the appts and hopefully closing the deals.

http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-Salesforce-com-ebook/dp/B005ERYEGU

I can't speak to personal experience because I am an inside sales rep, but I believe the general consensus here is that a call and email together are highly recommended.

Also, I just bought this Book. I haven't read it yet, but I have seen many recommend it here. It may provide some good ideas on finding a solution that works for you.

Best of luck in the new role.

Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01617VD3I?ref_=kcr_store_sample

The only book you'll need.

Basically, the gist of it is that you are a monster when it comes to cold calling, initial contacting of prospects. I can call up to 250 prospects in a day. I have known people that reach out to 10 new people per day. They failed, I didn't.

As long as you are not a total social awkward, if you make 100-125 new contacts per day, you will succeed. If you don't, you will either fail or be below average.

There are some industries that are not like this, though. So, if you sell airliners for $50 million per airplane, there are only 300 or whatever airlines in the world, so it is a limited pool of buyers, so that is a long-term relationship game. But, they really can't go anywhere else, as there is only Airbus and Boeing as the only sellers.

But if you are selling regular old "stuff", then it is a numbers game. Send out 200 new emails per day. Make 200 phone calls. Whatever. I like phone calls because I get immediate feedback, I'm on with the owner or decision-maker and not hoping that they will return my email or whatever. If you have a great website and SEO and that gives you hot leads every day, that is great. But what are you going to do if you get 5 leads and it only takes you 2 hours to deal with them? What are you going to do the rest of your day? Prospect. Calls or emails, or something else.

Outbound Sales no Fluff is $3 on Amazon right now - has a great section on how to handle your outbound workflow that has been huge for me

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https://www.amazon.com/Outbound-Sales-Fluff-millennials-something-ebook/dp/B077Y49KF4

Shift your perspective...it fucking sucks as a human (rejection) and that will never go away (though it should, over time, become easier)...but most cold calling is around 1-5% successful...so look at it like a game...or a gauntlet (I prefer game...as it seems more positive)

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"I know if I make 100 calls today I should get at least 1 sale"

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start there...see if you can do better than that...try and beat your previous records...

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Also...don't waste time...make a cold call, get to the point...if people aren't interested then don't argue with them...thank them and move on. Depending on your product and call list you should be making at least 1 call per 30 seconds or so.

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100 calls should literally be an hours work. Break it down into sessions and do it a few times per day (1 hour of calling 3x a day for example)

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Check out the book "Fanatical Prospecting" for a little change of perspective on the idea of cold calling and what goes on around it.

Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119144752/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_PcpsDb5WAXQ6X

10 cold calls/day seems perfectly reasonable, based on the information you provided.

You may benefit from reading Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount.

This is basically the idea behind Combo Propsecting - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072LPZ3JP/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

No affiliation, but I really liked the book and am actively implementing a lot of the tips in it.

Read Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross: https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213 This will be your bible, all successful b2b tech sales organizations use many components of this book.

1. Try local facebook groups or paid facebook ads.
2. Read Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross or just read it summary (page 8 is about compensation)
3. I would check your competitors or similar companies how they attract sales people and where do they have the job offers.

If you google "books recommended by Mark Cuban" youll find some great books in general, and one on cold calls. Im actually reading it for the 3rd time in 4 years (it's short).

Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1440572178/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_vAbVybPMYTTYF

It stays away from theory, and instead focuses on how to structure a script and respond to some common responses.

For example, when I call Ill say something like "Hello, my name is Dan LastName with Process Donation, is this a good time to talk?"

Sometimes people say yes, and sometimes people say no. Ive actually had better success when people say no! But no matter what they say, I jump into:

"Well all I really want to do is setup an online presentation of our donor management platform. How does Tuesday at 2pm central sound?"

At the point they either say yes or no. He teaches what to say if they say no, but I havent had the balls to use it yet. Im still getting comfortable being a salesman myself.

Calling people up and trying to sell them something... even if it will help them... still feels unnatural. But it just takes practice like anything else.

So lead generation and client care isn't the hard part, it's going to be the cold calling.

Knowing what to say, how to sound confident, how NOT to sound like a sleezy salesman, etc.

Once you understand the product, the industry, and your competitors, technically its easy. You are a professional problem solver there to help them. They want your help, they NEED your help. If you believe that and you truly stand behind your product /service, then cold calling is easy. It's something you will want to do in order to improve the lives of others.

One thing that is big for me is standing while cold calling. Get up, hangs big in the air, smile on your face... It comes through in your voice and you feel more confident and calm. Amy Cuddy did some research on this. Check out her Ted Talks about it. Pretty famous work and it's so true.

https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are

I recommend reading Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. This particular book will be right up your alley. I got it on audible. It's a short 8 hours and listening to it a bit faster, you can easily knock it out in 6 hours while driving, cooking, working out, shopping, etc. It will service as a good starting point.

https://www.amazon.com/Fanatical-Prospecting-Conversations-Leveraging-Telephone/dp/1119144752

It's a pretty simple yet tricky thing to do. I found Predictable Revenue (a book) to be a solid summary of how to go about this problem:

http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213

True.

If you want to get past the gate, your pitch should be about THEM, not about YOU.

How can ABC Bank help them? Ideally, you must be able to lower their cost, provide faster answers, or increase their revenue.

The DM is VERY busy, That's why they are managers. If you want to ask them 1h of their time, you must give them a promise that this hour will help them to do their jobs.

A shameless book recommandation is this book from Art Sobzack

I am 100% positive that you will get a look of precise answers and concrete action points for your industry!

I know you said free but I highly recommend that you pick up Art Sobczack's book. He trains our inside sales team once a week and has a brilliant sales methodology.

What are you struggling with? Are you not finding as many prospects as you like? Are you not successfully scheduling meetings with them? Are you simply not closing them?

Tell me and I will set you straight my friend!

Is this a quota carrying, closing role? If so, then read Smart Calling.

Don't read too many books. I used to pride myself on the fact that I have taken all the courses and read all the books and it frankly left me with an unrefined sales methodology and conflicting ideals. You picked some great ones though.

If you do nothing else, do two things:

1) Always speak with the decision maker. Speaking with the wrong person is a horrible waste of time. Even some senior level salespeople still make this mistake. Get a thorough understanding of their decision making process and speak with the right person.

2) Qualify your prospects. Ask your boss what the 8 best qualifying questions are then ask the top salesperson the same thing. They will come up with very different answers.

I have been following the Cold Calls 2.0 process described in Predictable Revenue and I am liking it a lot. Another great resource is Steli Efti's Close.io blog.

Read this article friend, and then ask yourself if this is something that could be a possibility? ;) http://buzzmarketing.com/2010/11/26/6-maxims-of-creating-buzz/

Looking back through the hypothesis I proposed, do you think this could be possible given current information? :)

Here is the book if you would like to delve further friend: http://www.amazon.com/Buzzmarketing-People-Talk-About-Stuff/dp/1591842131

Predictable Revenue, by Aaron Ross is a good, quick read. He's originally from Salesforce.com and outlines several effective, new strategies, such as "Cold Calling 2.0."