You hear about disruptions in industry, in tech, in art. Something or someone who comes along and makes the world abruptly shift, seemingly overnight. Well, there are disruptions in sales calls, too. Questions, actions, and behaviors that have the power to change the conversation and how the client sees you.

In any sales engagement, the groundwork before the call can be decisive. Chris Brewer, Co-founder at OMG Commerce, shares his pre-call preparation strategy, primarily for inbound lead generation, with insights adaptable to outbound leads. Chris sees Google as more than a search engine; it’s a vital tool in his research arsenal. By Googling a brand, he uncovers essential information like legal issues or consumer dissatisfaction. This helps him anticipate red flags that might surface during the call.

Objections are unavoidable on sales calls, but encountering one doesn’t necessarily mean an end to the conversation. If you’re able to anticipate what your prospect’s objections will be, you stand a better chance of overcoming them. At Trellus, their AI sales coach detects objections, provides real-time suggestions to guide reps during the call, and measures the effectiveness of those suggestions based on different metrics.

Objections are unavoidable on sales calls, but encountering one doesn’t necessarily mean an end to the conversation. If you’re able to anticipate what your prospect’s objections will be, you stand a better chance of overcoming them. At Trellus, their AI sales coach detects objections, provides real-time suggestions to guide reps during the call, and measures the effectiveness of those suggestions based on different metrics.

Schools probably don’t do this anymore, but when I was in elementary school (GenX-er here), we were taught how to use the telephone. The telephone company donated a dozen rotary phones, and we paired up to practice how to answer the phone, take a message, call a neighbor, and call 911. It was a room full of 8-year-olds running through call scripts like pint-sized sales reps. Then we had to do the role-playing exercises in front of the entire class (!), and the teacher critiqued and graded us.