By Larry Prevost

He was the vice president of an architectural firm that I called once a week for six months. I always managed to either get his voicemail or his administrative assistant. When I reached the assistant, she was cordial and polite when she took my information and told me that she would relay my message. But on this fateful day in August when I called, she let me in on a little secret.

"Mr. Prevost, he really doesn't want to talk with you, ever."

It's extremely disheartening to get this kind of response.

What do you say to something like this?

One of the challenges with prospecting on the phone is knowing what to say to a prospect when you get them on the phone, or what kind of message to leave when you get their voicemail.

Knowing absolutely nothing about them or their business only exacerbates the challenge.

If you find that you are light on details about your prospect and you are like most sales people, then you probably start talking about the things that you are very familiar with--like yourself, your company, and your products.

Which is exactly what I did for six months and why it ended the way it did.

What can you do to head off events like this?

If you are getting responses like this from your prospects, or they are responding with statements like "We don't have any money" or "We aren't interested", then it's a sign that you're not focusing on their interests during the opening stages of the call. You need to take another look at your sales process and rethink your calling strategy.

We've touched on some of this in the past. Your biggest asset in overcoming these initial challenges is gathering knowledge about your prospect and their problems. Once you know something about your prospect and what they are facing, you can use your language to redirect the conversation to address their wants and needs.

However, once you've made the transition from focusing on yourself to focusing on their challenges, there's something else to keep in mind. Words do have power.

We use words all of the time to help guide our audience's mental awareness. And when we are using the phone, words are all that we have.

So if you have started focusing more on your client's needs, there are some words and phrases that can mean the difference between success and failure. And as sales people, we really need to make our words count towards the end goal.

Next Page: These Words and Phrases May Be Killing Sales

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