by Bob Schmidt

Created on: May 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 21, 2007

Having success in getting prospects to return sales calls is limited, at best. Waiting for return calls can leave a salesman sitting on his thumbs unnecessarily, while he hopes that a busy potential client will avail himself for a sales pitch. The following approach might produce better results by allowing for more efficient time usage by the salesman, and not depending upon an unpredictable variable.

On your next sales call, leave a friendly message that invites your prospect to return your call. With a positive attitude, and a friendly approach, you can hope to receive return calls from your better "suspects". Customers appreciate being remembered, even if they are not necessarily ready to buy. A good salesman leaves no stones unturned.

Any of your prospects who do return your call can be considered to be good prospects with whom you have a good chance of doing business. You should not be discouraged if a return call does not come in a reasonable length of time. Selling is a game of numbers in the sense that your sales will correspond with the number of actual sales pitches you deliver. To that end, returning a call to the prospects that did not respond makes a lot of sense. Vary the timing of your calls until you have managed to have a conversation with him, and then proceed accordingly.

As a consumer, I receive countless telephone call messages which are originated by automatic dialing machines. They leave messages which I generally ignore, inclusive of solicitations and sales calls. My attitude is that if it is important, they will call back. I find the constant barrage of telephone solicitation to be very annoying, so most messages which are sales calls fall on deaf ears.

On the other hand, when a real person instead of a tape recording catches me answering my telephone, I will communicate in a civil manner. A good salesman who is adept at selling will get his chance to "pitch" his product, and the game of numbers will apply to the odds of my purchasing his product.

Successful professional salespeople do not leave anything to chance, and they can ill-afford to wait for buyers to come to them. Within the realm of his organized approach to selling, telephone messages should only communicate the desire to have a conversation without asking for an overt effort by the potential customer to initiate a telephone call. The odds are, it won't happen.

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