The first step to anything that you’re doing professionally is to make sure that you’re tracking your progress. Before we get into that, it is important to mention that there are some objections you might have to overcome, and some decisions that you may have to influence someone to take the next step. Naturally, as humans, we may make some mistakes and forget things because we’re humans not robots. It is important to get committed to learning the tools that you have, learning the CRM that you’ve invested in, and making sure that you’re tracking all of your progress in the CRM. There’s a lot of people that you have to get through to find those little flakes of gold. That’s where we derived our company name from, a rokrbox. A rokrbox is a tool that you sift sand, gravel, and dust through and eventually, flakes of gold are uncovered. The attitude that we push here at rokrbox is that all of the laborious work is productive and there’s flakes of gold at the end of this pipeline.
Now, let’s get into some scenarios where you are making those phone calls, or door knocking, or whatever it may be. In these interactions, there are some things that we use as human cues whenever we interact with someone on a face-to-face basis that are going to tell our subconscious mind whether or not we should trust this person and conduct business together.
1. Eye contact
Have you ever felt really good eye contact with an individual when you first meet them, or when you’re having a conversation with them or you’re sitting across the table with them? Eye contact is incredibly important. I’m sure you can probably remember a time where you were talking with someone who didn’t have great eye contact. Maybe they were looking around the room, or maybe they were distracted and kept looking down at their phone or their laptop or something in their hand. Don’t forget to make a great first impression through intentional eye contact!
2. A firm handshake
A lot of people were saying that a handshake has gone away forever, but you can tell a lot from someone’s handshake. It creates a trigger in your brain that tells you if you might not want to interact with that person or if you are naturally drawn to them. Showcase your personable nature through a firm handshake when first meeting someone!
3. A smile
When someone extends their hand confidently and securely, they’ve got a great smile, ear to ear, with a great presence, you’re bound to feel more comfortable around them. It feels very warm to be in the presence of a person who has a great smile. Think about the opposite of that. How many times have you ever met someone who has a blank stare on their face or a flat expression? It doesn’t really evoke a state of wanting to know this person better. Be sure to have an approachable persona with a smile on when you meet someone!
4. Physical Appearance
It’s important to take ownership of your physical appearance and to put thought into your presentation. How does it come across to other people? You at least need to make sure your clothes are clean and ironed! These subconscious cues have been programmed for generations and iterations to indicate if we should trust one another or not. Put some effort into your physical appearance and it’ll surely go a long way!
At the end of the day, most of these things are tough to understand through the phone.
You can’t see a smile and you can’t feel a handshake, and you can’t see what they’re wearing, and you can’t tell if they’ve showered in a week. The only thing that we have is energy and enthusiasm. You are either engaging with this person or you are repelling this person. So you need to ask yourself: Do I have the right:
1. Attitude
2. Mindset
3. Energy
4. Enthusiasm
The right way to go about this happens in the first few seconds of a virtual call. As soon as that person picks up and you start engaging with that lead again, you’re either in, you’re pulling them towards you, or pushing them away from you.
You are in the profession of helping people solve problems, and your income is a direct correlation of the amount of value that you add to other people’s lives. If you’re prospecting or you’re following up with a lead, you know that your goal is to hopefully find someone and help them solve a problem.
Here at rokrbox, we’ve put all of our ISAs through similar training when it comes to mastering the introduction, overcoming awkwardness, having the right mindset, having the right attitude, because that’s what we’re doing every single day on a daily basis, making thousands of thousands of phone calls from coast to coast. It’s very important for us to have the right attitude, and the right approach.
Let’s talk about some of the ways that we’ve accidentally gotten into some awkward conversations, and how we can avoid those. Here are two of the most popular experiences that we would like to share to hopefully help you avoid them:
1. The Name of the Lead
How many times have you ever had to name, you know, come through your dialer, come through your CRM, or come across your desk and you just don’t know how to pronounce it? What a lot of people do is they start off that conversation by just butchering the name.
That’s going to lead you to an awkward conversation. And again, if you strike out in those first couple seconds and you repel, if that lead wants to repel from you and leave and go running the other direction, you’re going to wind up having less conversations. If you have less conversations, that’s going to lead to less conversions, that’s going to lead to less people that you can help out, which is going to lead to a lower income.
2. The Point of the Conversation
“How did you get this number? What do you, what are you calling here?”
Just move past that and get to the point of the conversation. Don’t allow for long pauses. Don’t allow for someone to get all stuck up in that part of the conversation. Just move right on past it. Again, a lot of this has to do with your attitude and your mindset and your approach to the calls.
At rokrbox, these interactions are studied with our time during huddles, Masterminds, and one-on-ones. These conversations are important to learn how to prospect like a pro without being pushy and awkward, and we are constantly trying to search for opportunities to sharpen skills and move leads further along the funnel. Remember to push past the gravel and dust to land your flakes of gold!