Is This a Good Time

Selling well is about making effective choices. It doesn’t make sense to open a phone call to your dream client with “Is this a good time?”

If you are calling your prospective client to ask them for a meeting, you don’t need much time. You simply need to tell them who you are, share with them the value you intend to trade for their time, and ask them for an appointment. If you believe that you are going to call, interrupt your prospective client, and conduct a discovery meeting over the phone, then your expectations are out of line with what should be your goals.

Worse still, you have asked a question without defining what you want. Is this a good time for what? Is it a good time for a call to discuss your company and your product? Is it a good time for a chat to see if you can build enough rapport to make an ask? Is it a good time to demo your service? If someone says yes to this question, it is likely that you are not speaking to the person you really need. Most of the people you need to meet with are too busy to stop to take an unscheduled meeting. Even a phone meeting.

The truth of the matter is that this question is a bit of a tie down. By answering yes, your prospect has agreed to speak to you. That’s the intention behind the question. It isn’t that you are trying to be polite. It isn’t that you are trying to sell in a way that engenders trust. And it isn’t the best of choices when you are prospecting. Even though everything works sometimes, and even though there are a lot of ways to get to yes, you should make the best choice available to you, and this isn’t one of them.