By Erica Christoffer

How are you on the telephone? Real estate professionals use the telephone practically every day to reach out to clients and prospects. Sales coach and author Dirk Zeller wrote a book, Telephone Sales for Dummies, on how you can improve your telephone skills (read a mini book review and get 5 tips to improve your phone presence). The Weekly Book Scan spoke with Zeller recently to get more insights.

What motivated you to write Telephone Sales for Dummies?

ZELLER: I saw a real need for skill building in the telephone sales arena. To me, if anybody is a sales person, they have to use the phone. The phone is still one of the most important mediums of communication in this world. Especially for sales people, because in selling you have to inject emotion, you have to inject energy, you have to inject enthusiasm, you have to inject assertiveness, confidence and conviction. That’s pretty hard to do in an e-mail. E-mail is a communication method that functionally doesn’t translate into selling very well. You’re basically using words on a page that communicate at 7 percent efficiency.

A number of studies have been done on what communication is and how communication is broken down. Seven percent of communication is the words, 38 percent of communication is the tonality, 55 percent is body language. You don’t have tonality or body language engaged in words on a printed page.

But do you think electronic communication – e-mail, text messaging, etc. – has overtaken the telephone in many workplaces?

ZELLER: I think it’s a more universally used method of communication – e-mail and text, but it is not as effective in selling.

What would you say are three bad habits real estate agents do while prospecting on the telephone?

ZELLER: I think the biggest mistake real estate agents make in terms of calling a prospect or a Continue reading »