There is a crisis of discipline in the recruiting profession. Your biggest challenge is not just
learning how to sell and recruit over the phone, but staying on it. And the longer you are in recruiting, the harder it is to stay on the phone.
This brief guide is designed to get right to the point...to give you concrete tips that can help you become more effective and focused in telephone selling. This is a nuts and bolts guide to give you an immediate impact that will also be a long-lasting impact.

Follow these ten tips and watch your effectiveness on the phone skyrocket.

1. Expect to get the business.
If you don't expect to get it, they won't even talk to you. Act as if you deserve to get through the gatekeeper and that the executive is so lucky to hear from you. This is critical, and if you don't start thinking this way, you might as well quit your sales job and go back to doing whatever it is you were doing before. Senior level executives can sniff out a phony on the phone and just like a dog, they can smell fear from a very long distance. If they smell it on you, they won't take you seriously and your call is over before it ever started.

2. Stand up with your hands on your hips, feet at shoulder width.
Your physical presence comes through on the phone. Have your best Mr. T "I pity the fool" face on and be aggressive. Be aggressive. Be aggressive. (Note: This does not mean aggressive with other people. In sales, if you want to do it right, you are never a pressure builder. You are always a pressure valve. Seek ways to relieve pressure in the lives of others. Your aggressiveness is only displayed by you hitting the phones aggressively and staying on the freaking telephone.)

3. Record your phone calls.
I am not a lawyer, so check with yours to see if this is legal. In most states, as long as one person knows the call is being recorded, then it is legal. You record your calls so you can hear how you REALLY sound...not how you think you sound. (Or on your initial recording state that calls may be monitored to ensure quality). I started doing this five years into recruiting after I started to achieve some great success...and I was horrified to hear how amateurish I sounded after all those years. If you're a veteran recruiter, you really need to consider going back to the basics and listening to how you really sound. You'll be shocked and amazed. Just go to Radio Shack and tell the geeky sales clerk you need a device to
record phone calls, and when he's done putting you on their perpetual mailing list, he'll get it for you.

4. Use a script or a guide
I don't care how experienced you are in the business, you need something to keep you on the phone. You will be distracted by the sound of another line ringing, or someone walking past your desk, or an email that you see pop up on your monitor. You are only human and need a security blanket, even if you are a big boy or girl. It always helps to have something on hand to make yourself sound like a polished professional. Here's an exercise to help you create scripts that work: Do it in a group of your peers. Sit down with your peers over a beer on a Friday afternoon, and create your best sales scripts. First, diagram the sales call.
What is said first out of your mouth, what are their responses, and what are your reaction to each of their possible responses. There will probably be only five or six objections that your prospects will ever tell you. Come up with the best rebuttals you can for each of them as a group. Then, create a document of scripts that you and your colleagues can refer to when you're on the phone. If you hesitate when you are on the phone, it will cost you a sale. And any sale that you don't get will go to your competitor, which makes it twice as worse.

5. Plan your day at the end of the day.
Before you end your day, plan your next day. Plan out each series of calls, and group them together. If you are going to be calling executives in Chicago in the morning, group those calls from 8:00 am to 10:00 am. If you are calling clients for follow ups, then schedule those calls from 10 am to 11 am. And if you are calling customers for customer service calls, then call them from 11 am to noon. You get the picture. You want to group each type of call into a series of the same type of call. Each process has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every time you shift your efforts from one activity to another, you lose effectiveness. Don't do that to yourself. Keep yourself focused on one singular activity at a time. Otherwise, you become scattered and ineffective. Stay on the phone by staying focused on one task at a time, one series of calls at a time, one type of call at a time.

6. Set a goal for the number of people you wish to reach each day.
Simple concept, but most sales people are directionless when it comes to their daily goal for the number of people they want to reach. Write it down at the top of the telephone discipline tool that is available on the free download section of my site, It's a free tool and it can help you stay on the phone. It's an incredibly simple tool, but very effective. At the top of the tool, write down how many people you wish to reach and let that be your goal.

7. Set a goal for the number of people you wish to reach that hour.
On the tool, highlight the number of boxes representing the number of people that you wish to reach for that hour. By doing this, you are creating an hour by hour goal for yourself, and that's all you need to keep yourself on the phone. Focus just on the next sixty minutes. Forget about the next seven hours. Just the next sixty minutes. Sometimes we become overwhelmed with all we have to do in the course of a day, so if we just break it down a bite at a time, we can eat the whole dang elephant.

8. Work on your voice.
Drink warm water, never ice water or cold drinks when you're on the phone. Leave the sodas in the soda machine because they are so cold they make you sound tense. You want your voice to be calm, low, and relaxed. Try lowering your voice an octave to warm it up for the day.

9. Have a mirror in front of you.
Smile on the phone when you are engaged in a relationship-building period of your conversation. See yourself smile and you'll actually sound like you really are. Put some flirt in your voice once you have rapport with people. It helps you build friendships with people on the other end of the line. People want to do business with people who they like, so start smiling and people will be attracted to you.

10. Make a series of ten dials at a time.
When you're on the phone, take the handset out of the receiver, and keep it out of there for ten dials at a time. Don't worry about connecting with anyone. Just focus on dialing. Who cares if you reach anyone. You don't have much control over that. You have more control with your focused energy of staying on the phone, so make that a priority. And you can do that by focusing on dialing ten dials at a time. Once you make your ten dials, then put the handset back in the receiver and stretch for thirty seconds. Then pick it up and do another ten dials. Then take another stretch break. By doing this series of ten dials only ten or
eleven times, you will find that it is now the end of the day and it's time to go home.
Remember, the whole point of staying on the phone is to make it fun. Use these simple tips to make each hour a contest of you verses your previous hour. I know this is incredibly simple, but I guarantee it to work for you. Try it for thirty days and tell me it doesn't work...I dare you. If you follow the above ten tips, you will see an immediate and a long-lasting improvement in your ability to stay more focused, more discipline, and spend more time selling on the phone.

Copyright (c) 2009 Scott Love
Scott Love improves recruiter performance by getting recruiters to think at a higher level, to develop a better strategy, to master recruiting tactics, and to develop better work habits. He has created a simple step-by-step system of recruiting success that is replicable. Nearly 2,500 search firms and staffing agencies from sixteen countries have invested in his training tools. Visit his website for free videos, training tools,downloads, and recruiting tips

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