Sitemap for Unlock The Game

Home

About Us

Mastery Program

Free Test Drive

Success Stories

Contact Us

Sales Blog

Unlock The Game Inner Circle

Articles:

4 Lessons About Connecting With Others
Just this past week, my father-in-law Peter invited me to join him for a concert at the Sydney Opera House.

Seven Steps to Cold Calling Follow-up
Let’s say you’ve had a great conversation with a prospect. They’ve shared their problems and seem genuinely interested in what you are offering. You’re excited about following up with them – but your calls aren’t returned. What’s happening?

No More Selling Scripts? 5 Ways to Be Yourself Again 
If you’ve been selling for a while, chances are you’ve been asked to use sales scripts to make cold calls. And even if you feel scripts are unnatural and impersonal, you’ve probably used them anyway because they were the only way you knew to start a conversation with prospects.

7 Ways to Cut Loose from Old Sales Thinking
Sooner or later, we all backslide into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients. Learn how to break away from your old selling habits forver.

7 Cold Calling Secrets Even the Sales Gurus Don't Know
More and more e-mails are arriving in my in-box from people who hate cold calling. Cold calling the old way is a painful struggle. But you can make it a productive and positive experience by changing your mindset and cold calling the new way.

Are You Risking the Relationship for the Sale - And then Losing the Sale Anyways?
Losing a sale can be disheartening, especially if you lose it for reasons you
aren't even aware of.

How to Use E-Mail "Cold Calls" -- Without Falling into the SPAM Trap!
"Spammers have just about destroyed e-mail as a legitimate selling tool, but there are still ways you can use it to open communication rather than shutting it down right off the bat. E-mail is still a totally appropriate way of communicating with someone -- as long as you use language that doesn't trigger the "salesperson" stereotype."

Throw Out Your Selling Language - Unlock Your Natural Voice
It's ironic that most of us take it for granted that spontaneous, natural communication is the right way to relate to our friends, spouses, relatives, and others in our personal lives -- but, when it comes to selling, our language becomes, almost robotic.

Sales Therapy 101: Breaking Your Fear of Cold Calling
Most of us have at least some resistance to cold calling, and some people I talk with have such a paralyzing visceral and emotional fear of cold calling that they can't even consider doing it.

7 Ways To Sell and Retain Your Integrity
Eliminating traditional sales thinking and tactics does take effort, because the messages of the sales "gurus" you've read over the years can continue to bubble up in your mind, especially when you're in the sales process.

7 Ways To Stop Selling & Start Building Relationships
Sometimes we can all use a friendly reminder to keep us from backsliding into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.

7 Pitfalls of Using Email to Sell
Sad but true, these days most people who sell for a living spend 80% of their time trying to communicate with prospects via e-mail instead of actually picking up the phone and speaking with them.

7 Ways To Get To The Truth: When The Sale Disappears
You're close, really close, to making a sale. Your  potential client is in the market for your product or service and you've had a couple of good meetings. But what do you do, when it comes time to make a decision and what seemed like a certain sale, all of a sudded dissappears?

Dead Silence From Your Prospect: The Worst Sound Of All
You may have done all the "right" things throughout the sales process, but,
somewhere along the way, he or she has never felt truly comfortable enough
to tell you the truth about where they really stand with the decision to buy
or not buy your solution. Find out the low pressure way to bring out the truth in your prospects.

The Wall of Defensiveness: 7 Ways to Tear It Down
Have you ever gotten frustrated when you realize that your prospects keep stereotyping you as a "salesperson"?

Do You Have to Be Aggressive to Make Sales?
A few weeks ago I was onsite at a company that had hired me
to train their sales team on how to stop using traditional selling
and start using the Unlock The Game™ sales approach.

The Truth Behind Linear Selling: Why It Can Make Prospects Run The Other Way
Linear selling says that you have to impose a predetermined structure on building a relationship -- but that's by definition an unstructured process!

Selling Online, Selling Offline: What's The Difference?
Ever since I created Unlock The Game™, one of the first questions people always ask me is,"Does Unlock The Game™ apply to online selling?"

Why Trying To Get The Appoinment, Can Be a Recipe for Dis-Appointment

Hidden Sales Presssure: 7 Ways To Make It Go Away
If you're skeptical about being able to eliminate subtle sales pressure, you're holding yourselfback from making a breakthrough in your sales life.

How to Genuinely Enjoy Cold Calling
Most of us dread our days of making cold calls.  We take a deep breath, pump ourselves up, and prepare to talk with a perfect stranger.  Is there any wonder a gray cloud sometimes hangs over our desk? 

Diffuse Cold Calling Pressure
Sales pressure is a mighty saboteur. And it comes in all shapes, sizes, and flavors.  Beginning any conversation with the anticipation of a sale puts the whole conversation under pressure. This doesn’t normally create good outcomes.  It usually triggers pressure, resistance, and tension. 

Great Relationships Through Cold Calling
Sometimes the finest solutions are the simplest. Focusing on relationships when making cold calls is one of them. It keeps us genuine, and eliminates our dread of making cold calls. We’re real people talking about real things.  We’re interested in the conversation, and it shows. 

Stop Cold Calls From Feeling Intrusive
Most people sense that cold calls are self-serving to the person calling.  You can almost hear the unspoken thought, “You want something, right? Otherwise why would you be calling?” This triggers almost immediate resistance. 

How to Cold Call Without a "Pitch"
In the old way of making cold calls, we offer a sales pitch to a perfect stranger, cross our fingers, and hope for the best....isn’t that right? 

How to Make Your Cold Calling Problem-Focused
We rarely think about our prospect’s problems when we cold call.  It’s just easier to focus on our product or service.  Naturally, it’s really tempting to make cold calling all about us and what we have to offer, rather than about the other person. 

Should You Use Sales Letters Before You Cold Call
If you don’t know how to make a call from scratch and build trust, it seems to make sense to rely on a letter, brochure, or e-mail to do the job. But once you learn how to cold call the right way – with the new mindset – you’ll realize that sales letters really aren’t any help at all. 

Four Ways to Make Your Cold Calling Stress Free
From the traditional point of view, cold calling conversations should constantly lead towards making a sale. We’ve been given only one path to follow, and that’s getting a “yes.”

How to Cold Call Without A Script
Linear step-by-step sales scripts have done a lot to give selling a bad name.  Not because they don’t “work”, actually some people who use cold calling scripts actually do make some sales.  The problem is even if you’re a good-hearted businessperson, scripts make it almost impossible for you to avoid sounding like a “salesperson.”

Make Fewer Cold Calls and Get Better Results
Cold calling, the old way, has to be the most painful form of sales work you can experience. There’s a lot of rejection, fear, and deflated hopes. 

4 Classic Cold Calling Mistakes
Have you noticed that the old “tried and true” cold calling techniques which were once successful have completely lost their effectiveness over the years? They just don’t work anymore. 

Trust is Better than Selling in Cold Calling
It’s much better to build trusting relationship into your cold calling process.  When the other person feels that you’re relating to them from this place, there’s no need to be suspicious and defensive. There can be a pleasant, productive, truthful dialogue about whether what you’re offering makes sense for them. 

3 Cold Calling Mistakes that Trigger Rejection
In the old traditional cold calling mindset, you expect a lot of rejection, and unfortunately you usually get it. You probably make hundreds of calls, and out of those you make a few sales. You’ve come to accept that rejection as a normal part of cold calling.  

Confident Cold Calling? A Reality Check On Positive Thinking
Before you make a cold call, do you “gear up” first? Do you get excited about your product or service, and try to anticipate making the sale?

Taking Off Your Sales "Blinders" and Focussing on the Truth
It’s important to keep in mind that the idea of mentally letting go of focusing on the sale doesn’t mean you don’t have a goal and just wander aimlessly through a conversation with your potential client.

The "Sales High" -- Where Did It Go?
When Michael called me from my website last week, he asked me if I could help him think through something that’s been bothering him more and more over the past few years.

How to Diffuse Cold Calling Pressure
Sales pressure is a mighty saboteur. And it comes in all shapes, sizes, and flavors.  Beginning any conversation with the anticipation of a sale puts the whole conversation under pressure. This doesn’t normally create good outcomes.  It usually triggers pressure, resistance, and tension. 

How to Build Great Relationships Through Cold Calling
Sometimes the finest solutions are the simplest. Focusing on relationships when making cold calls is one of them. It keeps us genuine, and eliminates our dread of making cold calls. We’re real people talking about real things.  We’re interested in the conversation, and it shows. 

How to Stop Cold Calls from Feeling Intrusive
Can’t you tell when somebody wants something from you? I certainly can. And it usually feels inconvenient and intrusive. So you can understand, then, why potential clients will often run for cover when your cold call is only about “making the sale.”

How to End Your Fear of Cold Calling
Most of us really dislike cold calling. It’s probably the most dreaded of all sales activity, and causes the most rejection.

How to End The Cold Calling Game of Chasing The Sale
Our thoughts are always at the basis of our behaviors. If our thoughts are fixed on the goal of making a sale, then we’re not really being forthright. We’re not focused on the conversation or the truth of a situation. We’re chasing people -- or at least chasing the sale. 

How to Cold Call with Integrity
You probably never tell potential clients your real goal in calling them, but you don’t need to. They’re already aware, because we’re all sensitive when the phone rings and it turns out to be someone we don’t know. 

How to Make Cold Calling Opportunities Out of Voice Mails
Most people who still use the traditional cold calling mindset look at voicemail as a dead end. They say to themselves, “Oh well, I may as well leave a message and hope he calls me back.”

How to Make Your Cold Calling Effective
How can we make cold calls “work” when we’re talking to someone we haven’t met, about something they may not need? Well, it’s really simple. First we look at how to relate to them rather than hoping they’ll relate to us and our solution. 

Every Cold Call Needs a Problem to Solve
In the old way of making cold calls, we offer a sales pitch to a perfect stranger, cross our fingers, and hope for the best! 

How to Break Old Cold Calling Habits
It’s always a little scary to try something new when an old formula (even if it doesn’t work very well) is familiar to us. But remember that the definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results.

How to Avoid Cold Calling Burnout
Old-school traditional cold calling can take a toll on a person’s self esteem over time.  It’s just not natural to have somebody hang up on us, or to experience rejection over and over each day. 

The 3 Cold Calling Phrases That Get Results
How can we possibly avoid rejection and still stay “real” while cold calling? Well, the truth is that the more genuine we are, the less likely we are to be rejected. 

How to Take the Suspicion out of your Cold Calls
Why do cold calls based on the old-school traditional mindset break down so quickly?  Because we usually start with a predictable introduction and a mini-sales pitch. Right away the other person puts up “The Wall” and we’re trying to scramble around it.

5 Keys to Humanize Your Cold Call
It always feels artificial when we shift into our “salesperson persona” in order to make a cold call. It’s a dehumanizing process that -- unless we’re a born actor -- feels really awkward. And yet the old-school traditional sales mindset almost guarantees that role playing is a part of every cold call we make. 

How to Take the Frustration out of Cold Calling
Why do we avoid cold calling more than any other selling activity? Because we dread the experience of rejection that it often carries. Each time we pick up the phone, we hope it will result in a sale. And so we naturally experience pain and frustration when we are rejected. 

The Surprising Truth about Cold Calling
Haven’t you noticed that the old "tried and true" cold calling techniques that were once successful in cold calling have now completely lost their effectiveness? 

How to Throw Out Your Cold Calling Sales Scripts
Recently you may have received a cold call from someone using an old-style linear sales script.  You probably recognized it as a cold call because the person sounded a bit robotic and kept talking without allowing the conversation to “breathe.” 

How to Use Your Right Brain When You Cold Call
Do you struggle with the process of cold calling?  For many of us, it’s a grueling experience. That’s because we try to carry on a conversation from a rigid, linear place.  We’re trying to follow a strategy or a script.  Thus, when it comes to having a relaxed and enjoyable cold calling conversation, it just doesn’t work very well. 

4 Forms of Sales Pressure that Sabotage Cold Calls 
If you’ve been trained in the old traditional sales approach, your cold calling strategy is probably one of persuasion. That is, you use a variety of way to try to persuade another person to buy your product or service. You point out the benefits and features of what you have to offer, and use strategies to convince them to make a purchase.

How to Recognize and Diffuse Hidden Pressures in Cold Calling
Wouldn’t you like to make cold calling pleasant for both you and the other person?  The best way to achieve this is to completely eliminate sales pressure. 

New Ways to Open Your Cold Calls
Most of us design our cold calling around scripts and strategies.  Isn’t that how we’ve been taught by the sales gurus?  Scripts are linear and systematic so you can move calls in the direction you want them to go.  Sales strategies do the exact same thing. 

4 Keys to Making Your Cold Call Stress-Free
From the traditional point of view, cold calling conversations should constantly lead towards making sale. We’ve been given only one path to follow, and that’s getting a “yes.” 

3 Ways to Better Understand Cold Calling Prospects
Most salespeople who are trained in the old way of making cold calls rarely think about the people they’re calling. They’re too busy thinking about their product or service. But really, this is backwards. If you’re only focusing on what you have to offer, you’re not relating to the other person. And this means that that most of your prospects won’t find your cold call particularly interesting.

How to Avoid the "Cold Calling Wall"
Let's say you're at your office and you're working away. Your phone rings and someone says, "Hello, my name's Mark. I'm with Financial Solutions. We offer a broad array of financial solutions. Do you have a few minutes?" 

How to "Surrender" Your Cold Calling Agenda
All the sales gurus have been teaching for years that we must be enthusiastic and aggressive in our cold calling tactics. We’ve been trained to focus on the sale and move our cold calling conversations toward a sales conclusion. 

Using a "Sales Pitch" Kills Cold Calls
The moment you use the old-school cold calling approach – the traditional pitch about who you are and what you have to offer – you trigger the negative “salesperson” stereotype. And that usually means instant rejection from your prospect. 

4 Key Reasons to Surrender Your Cold Calling Agenda
If you follow the old traditional cold calling approach, as soon as you dial the telephone your focus is on acquiring a sale. And you’re probably using different techniques and strategies to guide your conversation towards that goal. 

How to Cold Call Without Focussing on Yourself
The sales gurus teach a “questioning technique” in cold calling that’s designed to get potential clients interested in your solution. It seems like a good idea. But to your prospects it can feel staged. I’ve seen countless cold calls shut down by people saying, “Enough already!  What have you got?”

Make Cold Calls More Successful & Stop Foussing on the Sale
All the sales gurus have been teaching for years that you must be enthusiastic and aggressive in cold calling tactics. You’ve been trained to focus on the sale and move cold calling conversations toward a sales conclusion. 

How to Cold Call Using Core Problems
We rarely think about our prospect’s problems before we make our cold calls. So to make this process easy for you, let’s look at three specific examples of how to help clarify the problems matched with specific products or services. I think you’ll see that this new way of thinking can make your cold calling much more effective. 

How to Avoid “Getting Off Track” When You Cold Call 
Let’s say you’re on a cold call, and it’s going well. You have a strong connection with your potential client. But the conversation starts to wander off the topic. And you’re not sure how you can regain focus without the other person feeling pressured.

How to Unlock The Cold Calling Process
Let’s say that you’ve been having ongoing conversations with a potential client, and your cold calls seem to be very successful. People are showing interest and want to continue the conversation. But then all of a sudden your calls aren’t returned. Are they evading you?  

4 Ways to Avoid Making Pressure-Filled Cold Calls
In the old traditional cold calling mindset, we’ve been trained to be in kind of an attack mode if someone back-pedals. We panic a little and start to press for a sale.

How to Handle Objection When You Cold Call
We’ve all had the somewhat startling experience of thinking things are going really well during a cold call, and suddenly someone pulls back on us. They give us an “objection,” or just say something to end the conversation.

How to Cold Call With Respect
What happens when you’re talking with a prospect during a cold call and you start to realize there isn’t an honest “fit” for your product or service?  Your prospect doesn’t have a problem, hassle, or challenge that your product or service solves. 

How to Find a "Fit" When You Cold Call
Sometimes we put in a lot of time creating relationships with prospects who seem interested in what we have to offer. We’ve “qualified” them. And we’ve also given a great presentation of our product or service. But it doesn’t go anywhere, and we just don’t understand why.  

How to Cold Call After You Send a Letter
When you send out a sales letter, brochure, or email, you usually follow it up with a cold call. And most of the time you start out the conversation by referring to the sales letter. But the truth is that almost no one reads sales letters anymore.

Why Inbound Calls Are Really Cold Calls
We all think that incoming calls and “leads” should be easier because they’re not cold calls, right? Well, when you think about it, why aren’t they? Most of the time the other person is just looking for something and isn’t ready to make a decision yet. But we get so excited that we begin to “sell” anyway because it seems so much easier. 

How to Stop your Cold Call From Loosing Steam
We’ve all had the experience where everything seems to be going well during a cold call, and suddenly the person we’re talking to “hits the brakes.”  They raise an objection and we start to panic, thinking we’re about to lose the sale. 


Newsletters:

Aikido Selling

Begin Your Cold Call

Break Cold Calling Fear

Break Free From Any Old-School Sales Thinking

Change Your Objective

Chasing Decision Makers

Closing Sales

Cold Call Success

Cold Call With Integrity

Cold Call Without a Pitch

Determine a Fit

End of Sales Scripts

Follow Up

From Leads to Warm Calls

Gatekeepers

Getting The Appointment

Great Relationships Through Cold Calling

Hidden Sales Pressure

How To Be Different

Identify a Core Problem

Integrity Selling

Jump Start Your Cold Calls

Lessons From Toby

Lost Sale or Lost Truth

Moving Out of Your Sales Comfort Zone

November Newsletter

Numbers Game Shift     

Pain-Free-Cold-Calling

Peter's Story

Reactions From Tobys Friends

Replace Sales Scripts Ben

Sales-Closing

Sales-Ethics

Sales-High-Where-Did-It-Go

Sales Ethics

Selling and Being Humble

Selling Ethics Sliding Scale

Selling Online Selling Offline

Seven Steps to Cold Calling Follow-Up

Start With a Dialogue

Stop Chasing Decision Makers

The Call That Changed Everything

The End of Sales Scripts

The Elephant in The Room

The Myth of The Inbound Lead

The Silent Treatment

The Story

The Story2

The Trust Factor

Toby and Nathan

Throw Out Your Selling Language

Trust Is Better Than Selling in Cold Calling

Turn-Cold-Calls-Into-Warm-Calls

Turning Leads Into Warm Calls

Understand Their Mindset

Wisdom From Tobys Friends

Other Pages:

Articles

Cold Calling

Cold Calling Aus

Cold Calling Live Help

Cold Calling UK

Cold Calling Canada

Cold Call

Consultation

Insurance-Sales

Insurance-Selling

MasteryProgram2
The next level on deeping the mindset, and mastering the art of cold calling without pressure.

MasteryProgram
The core program for how to cold call and sell, with invoking rejection from your sales prospects.

MasteryProgram1and2
The complete program on how to make cold calling painless from the start.

Mortgage Cold Calling

PhoneMarketing

Phone Marketing Break Your Fear

PhoneProspecting

Phone Sales

Phone Sales Break Your Fear

Phone Scripts

Phone Selling

Phone Selling Break Your Fear

Proposals

Real Estate

Review-My-Script

Sales-Strategies

Sales-Techniques

Speak With Ari Now

Telemarketing

Telesales