In today's competitive world, having a great product isn't sufficient. Businesses need to connect with their leads and persuade them to buy them. Efficient telemarketing through phone calls improves the chances of breaking the ice with your customers. However, aggressive pushiness in sales turns off customers and hurts your business reputation in general. Maintaining a delicate balance between aggressive persuasion and relationship building should be every telemarketer's priority.
Did you know that it takes five follow-up calls after the initial meeting to convert 80 percent of leads? Roughly 44 percent of sales reps give up after the first call and thus, lose this opportunity.
We hope our tips help you prevent losing sales due to avoidable issues.
Important Tips to Win Customers Over the Phone
1. Prepare for the Call in Advance
Every good sales rep knows how important it is to understand the customer's point of view. Knowing about the client's business, market, issues they're facing, their key employees, your receiver's background, and their product details is critical. Before going into the call, your salespeople should conduct a thorough research about their leads and use this information as initial talking points to relate to the customer. Ease your lead to open up about the issues their company faces. Then, when your client describes their products, you can correlate to their product and offer a meaningful solution. Almost 60 percent of buyers want to connect with sales when they've considered their options carefully. Hence, ensure you know about the right time to discuss business as well.
2. Be Respectfully Firm on The Call
Please select your customer service teams carefully because they represent your brand to the customers. Ensure their behavior reflects sincereness, courteous, and trustworthy from the get-go. Then, train this talented staff to control their etiquette levels according to the sales situation. By training your staff to remain courteous while being firm with the client, your employees should understand their responsibilities as the sales staff and portray a professional and confident image of your business.
3. Personalize your Messaging
31% of buyers desire a more exceptional personalized shopping experience. Hence, personalizing your messaging to cater to your user's needs gets them interested in your service. After the sales process, consider targeting those customers who openly share positive reviews of your product on social media. By doing this, you maximize your conversions by retaining an active brand lover.
Customize their experience by answering the following questions honestly: -
- What aspects appeal to your customer's buying choices?
- Does your product meet their needs well?
- What barriers stop them from buying your product? How can they be tackled?
Understanding your buyer's sources, social media platforms that provide the highest conversions, and client loss reasons help you adjust your marketing accordingly.
4. Listen to your Customers
The reason why most telemarketers seem pushy is that they spend more time talking and less time listening. They aggressively promote their products while understanding little about the consumer. This ineffective tactic creates an unfavorable impression of a hard sell that reduces the conversion rate. Instead, if your staff listened to your clients, they'll genuinely like to hear about your brand's services. A productive way to pitch your product is to simply hear what they say about your product and answer any questions diligently.
5. Manage Conversations with Gatekeepers Well
When you approach an organization, you may encounter receptionists and front-desk employees first. Your staff should speak to the gatekeepers respectfully and with authority. Making them feel like you have the right to call and talk to the person-in-charge helps a lot. If you're unable to get in touch with the person, request for their voicemail to leave a private message. Leaving a voicemail is a much better reaching out strategy that's hard to ignore. In 2012, the overall response rate of voicemails was 4.8 percent. So, ensure you follow up with a call after an appropriate time. While experienced gatekeepers can keep you at an arms-length, you will come across newer gatekeepers who'll not question your tactics.
6. Maintain a Positive Attitude throughout the Call
Your staff should focus on either making the sale or making an appointment with the client to discuss further. Leading with positivity and optimism helps the reps generate better sales for the brand. By setting call counts as goals and being enthusiastic and determined on the call, you can easily win customers. Your closing ratio improves with all these positive factors. So, smile, laugh, and enjoy connecting to your lead in every call.
7. Know When to Redirect
If you don't want to answer a question, redirecting it is a great strategy. You may leave a negative impression by failing to solve their doubts correctly. We recommend that you think carefully about how long your answers will be. Many novice callers talk endlessly about an unfamiliar topic and lose the client's attention. So, ensure your staff focuses on shortening their answers and diverting to a different issue altogether. However, if you do have accurate information that you think the client will find useful, feel free to explain it. By understanding your strengths and weaknesses, your sales staff can build trust and convert better.
8. Engage your Clients throughout the Purchase
By simplifying the buying process, you truly encourage clients to prefers your services over your competitors. Hence, assisting throughout the sales process and addressing all concerns builds customer trust and loyalty towards the brand. Long-term customer loyalty is what successful businesses are based on. Focusing on creating a great experience promotes the organic growth of the brand by turning your clients into brand ambassadors. You can achieve greater success by investing in a customer-centric sales process.
Conclusion
"The golden business rule is to put yourself in your customer's place." – Orison Swett Marden
Customer centricity is the strongest pillar of successful businesses. Without serving the clients well, you don't have a business. So, consider our tips as a starting point to evolve your customer acquisition strategy.
