6 Sales Training Tips for Beginners for Selling on the Phone

Do you know that over 90% of all customer interactions happen over calls? Considering how pervasive smartphones are in every aspect of life, it’s not surprising. 

If there’s one skill that every sales rep must master – it’s communication over calls. Communication, in general, is a crucial sales skill, but being able to persuade someone to close the deal over a call takes their game to the next level. 

In this article, we have compiled 6 tips on sales training for beginners that will help all sales representatives – beginner or otherwise.

6 tips for more effective sales calls

Mastering telephone conversations is perhaps the most important skill for a salesperson. An in-person meeting is generally reserved for a few high-profile clients, while you have to convince everyone else over one or multiple calls. Here’s how you can be better at selling on the phone:

1. Practice

There’s no way you can become better in sales without practising. Although you can take the most extensive training or read a book every week, you won’t get better unless you put theory into practice. 

Here are some strategies that can help you practice selling on the phone:

Roleplay

Since you cannot actually call up customers and practise with them, you are left with your peers. Take turns being sellers and buyers and practice sales calls. The person playing the buyer should always push back on the seller, making it as difficult to convince as possible. By being in mock stress situations several times, you will be able to handle actual stressful situations better.

Practice scripts

Scripts are like presets that help you ease into a conversation. The great thing about scripts is that you do not need a partner to practice them. You can get scripts made by someone else or write your own. 

Treat your scripts to accommodate different situations like busy, reluctant, interested or rude buyers. Then, you can fit this practice into your day even if you do not have much time. 

2. Record calls and evaluate them later

Have your colleagues record their call and do the same yourself. Then listen to the calls and note the highs and lows. Understand the use of language and arguments and how that drives a conversation. Apart from practising, this is something that anyone interested in sales training for beginners should focus on. 

Keep a notebook handy to jot important points as you listen to the recordings. If you don’t have colleagues, you can do this exercise alone. Simply record your calls. This is an excellent way of figuring out how well your practice translates into real-life scenarios.

3. Build customer personas

There are many use cases for customer personas. They are widely used in projecting sales and targeting advertisements. What many sales reps miss is that they are also great for sales conversations. 

Customer personas reflect different types of buyers for a particular product or service. They represent the buyers’ age, sex, preferences, etc., and try to replicate how these people would react to sales pitches. By building personas, you are giving a concrete shape to the idea of the potential customer. It can take some hits and misses to get it right, but it’s worth the effort.

Once you have these customer personas, you can write and practice your calling scripts accordingly. Gear your conversations around the interests of the personas to have the most persuasive tone. Customer personas are helpful for any sales representative to get better at their craft.

4. Practice tone

The tone is everything in communication. You can say the same words in different tones, and they would convey completely different emotions. However, not everyone has a friendly and persuasive tone by default. So sometimes, you have to practice your tone to get it right.

Practising your tone is not different from practising any other aspect of phone sales. You must work on it day in and out to attain perfection. A professional sales tone is all about being persuasive without being overpowering. Your tone must evoke friendliness and, at the same time, be convincing.

When practising tone, it's always a good idea to have a second opinion. You may not be the best judge of your own tone. Everything from your words to your flow makes a difference in tone. So evaluating the nitty gritty all by yourself is not the most effective strategy.

5. Know what you are selling

When selling a product or service to someone else, you must first know it yourself. That’s often the most challenging part for sales reps, especially if they do not have a formal background in that specific sector. But as a salesperson, you should be able to sell anything to anyone. That requires both flair and knowledge.

You can take several approaches to learn more about the product or service you are selling. One of the best ways is to talk to people who know what it is. Talk to subject matter experts and learn as much as you can. Read books and articles, or watch videos explaining the industry as a whole.

With a bit of time and dedication, anyone can learn about anything. You do not need code-level knowledge where you can explain the technical details of a product/service. All you need is a thorough understanding of how it works and how it can benefit people.

6. Have a strategy

Sales calls are not one-off affairs. You would often have to follow up with a client multiple times before a deal is closed. That requires strategic planning on how you are going to approach the first call and the subsequent calls. 

It takes 6 to 8 interactions for a lead to become a buyer. If you do not have a sound strategy for sales calls, you will hang up after one or two calls. But success often lies in following up multiple times, even when the chances seem bleak.

Having a strategy is essential for every salesperson. For this reason, sales training for beginners primarily focuses on cold calling strategies. With a robust strategy, you can improve your sales figures significantly. 

Sales training for beginners: Get your basics right

Do you want to get better at sales and move ahead in your professional life? All you need is some training, a lot of hard work, and the right people and resources to guide you. Juno School offers interactive online courses for all budding salespeople who want to be better than the average.

We hope these tips and ideas help you ace selling over phone calls. For more resources on sales and marketing, head over to the Juno School blog.