Sales training ideas – 5 rules to follow with regard to your sales references.

One of your best sales tools will be a list of sales references that prospects can call to get a third party opinion of your product or service. Ask your best customers to be sales references for you. With this step, you are getting the customer’s okay to receive phone calls from prospects you’re working on. Ultimately, you want to have about ten solid references for each product you have. 

These are five important rules regarding sales references: 

1) Make sure a sales reference is not inundated with phone calls.

Remember, these people are important and they’re busy. If you have twenty people call them in a week, not only will they call you and say, “Take me off your reference list!” but they’ll be angry too. On average, one call per month per reference is the maximum number you want to be at. 

When a prospect asks for references, ask if three will suffice. Most will say yes. If he wants more, ask how many he is looking for. Very few will come back with a number even close to ten. Pick the references that you feel will be the best for that particular prospect. By having to use only three at a time, you can rotate your references quite nicely so that none get bothered with excessive frequency. 

2) Inform your sales references of when your prospect may be calling, make sure they’re willing to take the call, and let them know the exact nature of the call.

If Joe Schmoe from ABC Bank calls your sales reference and he is not expecting the call and/or doesn’t know the prospect at all, he may not take the call. If he does take it, he won’t be as prepared as he might have been and likely won’t provide as good a sales reference.  

Simply give your sales reference a quick call and ask if it is okay to have Joe Schmoe from ABC Bank call. Once the reference agrees, inform him of what Joe is looking to purchase and what the reference may want to focus on. 

3) Reward your active sales references.

Give your active sales references some sort of perk, such as tickets to a baseball game, a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant, or something similar. Be sure to let them know what the gift is for. 

If you have a sales reference who goes above and beyond, you need to go above and beyond in thanking that person. Perhaps your customer has invited the prospect to visit his place of business, or does some training with the prospect, or otherwise goes way out of his way to truly assist your prospect rather than simply giving you a glowing review. In this case, you should give him an expensive gift certificate or something else that says “thank you very much” instead of just “thank you.” And you need to do it immediately after the favor. 

4) If you have several different types of products, have sales references for all of them.

If you sell software, hardware, alarms, and video surveillance, try to have ten sales references for each. 

5) Have your sales reference lists with you on all sales calls.

Being prepared with references will help you build credibility with prospects.