Larry Prevost

Is It More Effective To Leave A Message When Cold Calling Over The Phone?

Larry Prevost — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:10:19 +0000

Every encounter is an opportunity to learn something that you can apply in your cold calling activity. Here is a call that reveals how NOT to behave if you want to build your credibility when calling.

5 Tips For Using Visual Aids In Sales Presentations

Larry Prevost — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:53:36 +0000

When delivering sales presentations, remember to engage yourself as well as your audience. In this post, there are 5 tips for using visual aids to keep your audience's attention focused on you and not on the back of their eyelids.

Sales Prospecting Insights Using The Rapportive Gmail Plugin

Larry Prevost — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:18:32 +0000

One of the biggest challenges facing sales reps performing sales over the phone is gaining insightful information on their prospects. With the Rapportive plugin added to your arsenal, you will always have a wealth of relevant information at your fingertips allowing you to open your sales call effectively.

Open Your Sales Call with Control by NOT Asking This Question

Larry Prevost — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 07:55:04 +0000

Back when I first started training to be a Dale Carnegie instructor, I took the opportunity to sit in on every class I could and observe as many different instructors as possible...

Sales People Need to Move Beyond The Email Blast

Larry Prevost — Thu, 19 May 2011 05:07:04 +0000

It seems that the concept of the “Email blast” is still very much alive and doing as much “van Damme-age” as possible. Think about what you are doing here–blasting out your product-centric message to everyone in your database in an attempt to generate interest from your potential clients. Sometimes, we see this process from sales people and sales managers who, at any other time, will go out of their way to hold a conversation with their prospect or client. But put these savvy sales people behind a keyboard interfacing with an email server and suddenly all sales acumen goes out the window. All of their prospects look the same and no one on the sales team wants to “converse” with the prospect. They just want to “blast” their message out to as many contacts as possible. Every opportunity turns into a chance to send out another “Email Blast”. If you are in sales, your message needs to generate interest. To do that, it needs to be client-centric in its focus. You really want to facilitate and encourage the conversation with your prospect or client, especially when using email. And you can only do that when you get specific with your [...]

3 Google Voice Voicemail Tips That Will Make Your Calls Standout

Larry Prevost — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:59:30 +0000

Tips for leaving voicemail messages on Google Voice that get your outbound calls returned instead of marked as spam and blocked.

How Google Voice Will Impact Cold Calling

Larry Prevost — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 05:20:46 +0000

About a week ago I came across this insightful piece of information from my Facebook account that could have a major impact on how sales people approach cold calling and leaving voicemail messages. I was reviewing some of the accounts that I’m following when I pulled up the Google Voice page. That’s where I discovered two interesting developments that all sales people need to be aware of. The first development was that Google Voice now allows you to port your current cell phone number over to their service. It’s no secret that Google has been slowly but steadily stepping into the Telco space with a number of new acquisitions and technologies. I’ve been using Google Voice for over a year now and in that time I’ve been able to: Redirect incoming calls to ring my cell phones and landlines in any combination I choose. Ask for identification from unknown incoming callers before I respond. Get enough calls from people with “fat finger” syndrome calling to find the next party and you’ll think this feature is the best thing since sliced bread. Hold and manage all voicemail online. Tie Google Voice to my Gmail account and make outbound calls from Gmail, [...]

Firefox Setup Runs Multiple Google Apps Accounts

Larry Prevost — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:43:29 +0000

A few days ago, I received a tweet from Sean Malarkey regarding a worrisome observation: After pulling up the security post and reading it, I was naturally concerned since I make extensive use of Gmail, Twitter, and sometimes Facebook. And now that Google Apps email has been changed to behave more like regular Google Gmail, I had more reason to be concerned. What this blog post reveals is that with a little programming knowledge, someone can create a web page on their site and exploit the standard status codes that make the Internet run. Using those codes, they can determine if you, the visitor, are logged into Gmail, Google Apps email, Twitter, Facebook, and possibly other sites as well. But here’s the kicker—I wasn’t seeing the behavior that was outlined in the blog post. I was on the site and after reading the post, I came to the part where their code checked to see if I was logged into Gmail. The program recorded my status as not logged into Gmail, in spite of me having one of my Google Apps accounts opened in another window. Turns out that the way I have Firefox setup limits the impact of this [...]

Creating Blog Comments That Get Seen

Larry Prevost — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:20:41 +0000

I use Disqus to moderate comments across my Blogger and WordPress blogging platforms and, along with Akismet, it has pretty much kept things in line. But I have to say that every time I login to Disqus, I feel like a kid at Christmas. I never know what to expect. My guess is that most of the spammy stuff is robot generated, but it still makes finding legitimate comments difficult. And sometimes, in my review, it’s hard to tell the difference between someone who has a real question or comment, and someone who just wants to generate a link back to their site selling cheap, knockoff handbags, questionable sales and marketing software, or even worse, hijacking malware. After digging through my Disqus archive and reviewing the patterns, here are three tips for sales people to leaving comments that stand out from the spam: Avoid Spam Grammar I’m not a big stickler for using strict grammar rules when composing conversational comments, blog posts, sales copy, etc. Above all, your writing has to emulate your voice and engage your audience. Most of the people online don’t want to read an academic treatise, they want to be entertained, engaged and they want to [...]

The Simple Way To Get More Twitter Followers

Larry Prevost — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:56:15 +0000

There’s been a tremendous amount of attention given to copywriting and composing compelling messages when marketing and selling to your Twitter followers. However, even the most accomplished sales people will have trouble selling if their appearance doesn’t inspire confidence and trust. The same principle applies to the Twitterverse. With malicious code transmission on the rise, we need to remove every potential obstacle to establish a working relationship with our Twitter followers. Who Would You Introduce Yourself To Now imagine this: You are attending a friend’s cocktail party and the people there are from every walk of life. Some people are dressed in jeans, others are dressed more elegantly. Some, even brought a change of clothes. You got students with backpacks, women with handbags, men with European shoulder bags, and they all seem to be having a good time. Suddenly, a really big dude walks in wearing a Jason hockey mask and carrying a big dirty sack. And he brought his Halloween buddy wearing a Micheal Meyers mask and carrying a big, bloody bag. And then there is his friend wearing the Freddy Kruger mask and he has a big black garbage bag over his shoulder dripping… something out of it. [...]