APPROACHING FRIENDS FOR REFERRALS: I by Bill Cates How do you approach friends, and others, about the work you do to get referrals? One of the challenges is that they haven...

APPROACHING FRIENDS FOR REFERRALS: II by Bill Cates How do you approach friends, and others, about the work you do to get referrals? How can you go back to clients who have given ...

Many readers have been asking me for scripts that cover the first phone call to a new referral prospect. Obviously, this first call will vary greatly for a number of reasons: The nature of your business, the circumstances of the referral, and whether or not your client introduced you in some way — just to name a few.

After an automated sales center is up and running, it's up to producers to act on the qualified leads that the sales center coordinator, assistant, and support staff have worked on.

Prospecting is an old term; replace it with "business development."

Business development requires a positive attitude, confidence, and discipline. The business development mind-set can be picked up by anyone who has a desire to step to the front line and just do what must be done. Commit to a business development plan of action, then organize and follow through.

ESTABLISHING A TELEMARKETING DEPARTMENT You need to make two more decisions once you have definitely decided to set up a telemarketing unit within your agency. The first is whether your ...

GOOD SCRIPTS SELL MORE (A good script can make your phone marketing campaign. A bad one will destroy it. So get a qualified person to write a script, and make sure it's written in a way...

HIRING, COMPENSATING, AND TRAINING TELEMARKETERS Hiring Telemarketers What do you look for when setting out to hire a telemarketer? Your first thought might be to go out and hire an experi...

LISTENING TO CUSTOMERS by Troy Campbell To find out how the agency is perceived by customers requires continuous monitoring. Detailed perceptions can be obtained from a complaint log, a compli...

REACH OUT AND SELL SOMEONE by Gregory Jordahl Think of your telephone book as a roster of almost every potential prospect in town. Flip to the white pages and pick a name. You may h...

First, I'll give you the bases to cover and then I'll give you a sample conversation (script) to show you how you can touch on all the bases. Don't worry too much about the words I use. If you like a turn of phrase, then, by all means, use it while also making this approach genuine by using your own words.