If you have the sales skills to bring on new business for your company and are able to get to the decision makers in a company, as a salesman, you have little time to implement a successful first contact with this person. Decision makers are being sold every which way on roughly an hourly basis.
Like clock-work, companies or potential vendors reach out to these individuals with all different types of product offerings ranging from SEO services to mass email software and who knows what else.

Therefore, as a salesman or saleswoman, you have to be able to differentiate yourself in a split second upon getting these individuals on the phone. Here are some ways to do so and ensure that your telesales campaign is a lucrative and fruitful one. How do you ensure this? Below you will find some explanations and telesales tips in doing so.

The 7 Second Rule
Telesales has what I refer to as a "7 Second Rule." This means that upon telesales a new prospect you, as a sales professional, have about 7 seconds to differentiate yourself from every other company or competing sales individual who is contacting this person on a daily basis.

How is this done?
There are several ways in which a cold-call, from the onset, can lend itself to a high success rate and could capture the attention of the targeted party.

1. Get down to the person's level - People hate being sold to. Therefore, as a sales professional, you must come across as a human being and connect personally with the individual. How can this be done? First: when telesales somebody, act as if it is not a cold-call at all and don't have an objective of selling the product. Instead, you should have an objective of establishing a relationship to begin the sales cycle.

2. Understand that the secretary is very, very important - As a sales representative, it is imperative that you become friendly with the secretary or assistant of the individual whom you are attempting to contact. Not many sales representatives do this and subsequently lessen their odds of telesales success tremendously.

A secretary, most of the time, is a cold-call themselves and to be able to get to the decision maker involves the implementation of a sales cycle. Consider this a sales cycle of a sales cycle. A secretary or assistant of a decision maker is not going to embrace you the first phone call or two. Instead, use the first two phone calls as a precursor to asking them to make the formal introduction.

3. Be mentally prepared to lose the business - When telesales, you have to understand that you are "rolling the dice." If you treat each call as if it was the Super Bowl, you're not going to do well. Allow yourself some room for failure and, when talking to the prospect, don't let him or her get a get a sense that you are nervous. Once a prospect sniffs this out, you don't stand out from the other 100 companies attempting to sell them and you're not going to start the sales cycle and, subsequently have a chance at driving revenue via this avenue.

Simply stated, take chances with your pitch as if everybody is playing it safe, you have to be the one to attempt different tactics that will lend credibility to both yourself and the product or service.

4. Be mentally prepared for a lot of rejection - When starting a telesales campaign, you must be mentally prepared to endure a good amount of harsh rejection as not everybody is always welcoming to a sales call. If you project one rejection on the telesales prospects that you're going to call, and subsequently expect rejection, your campaign and pitch will not be on target.

Source: Ken Sundheim link