Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Aug 16, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
One of my blog correspondents has been raving enthusiastically about the diversity of employees at her new inside sales job, where the manager of the department has loaded the team with people of a myriad of ages and ethnicities. These differences of backgrounds and cultures has created a very strong team that seems to be energizing everyone, and she says it’s elevating the concepts of Best Practices and team communication to a high level, as the inside reps bring their diverse experiences into the dialogue as to how best present and sell the solutions the company offers. Some of the most effective and efficient teams that have gone through our inside sales training courses have had this type of diversity, too.
A while back, I blogged about concerns over age bias in inside sales teams, and this past week, the San Jose Mercury had a front page article describing a lawsuit that’s now moving forward against a major Silicon Valley company because of an alleged age-bias issue. The worker is claiming, among other things, that he was told he was not a good “cultural fit,” a term I’ve heard used several times in the past year as an excuse for not hiring an experienced inside sales rep. In each case, the rep was an exceptional one, was very successful in previous inside sales roles, and would have been a formidable contributor to the success of the company. This will be an interesting case to watch, as the concept affects, or will potentially effect, virtually everyone reading this post.
So what’s texting got to do with this? Texting has become a standard method of communicating, especially among younger inside sales reps, and recently I blogged about using mobile phones in creative ways to engage prospects and customers. If you’re a texter, be careful about assuming that your prospects are actually receiving your texts, if you choose to communicate that way. Recently, someone texted my landline, so assumed I got the message. I didn’t because it was on a landline. My colleague Trish Bertuzzi is fond of saying the inside sales business is not the “pen pals” business, and there’s still no better way of communicating information over distances, where KPIs (key performance indicators) dictate large numbers of qualified prospects and sales. So if you do like to text your prospects, ensure that they like communicating that way, and that they’re using mobile devices and will be amenable to receiving them and responding to you.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Apr 05, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
Many of the companies with whom we work in our inside sales training classes are making increasing use of online chat with sales prospects. Much of the time, they're not maximizing the full benefits of chat, either because they're not collecting all the data they might have, or not attempting to engage the prospect in a telephone conversation as soon as the chat session has finished. That second situation is what I'll discuss today.
Although chat has the real benefit of engaging a prospect through your website, nothing works as well to increase sales as having a real conversation. During the chat session, the prospect controls the communication, and the rep is essentially in response mode. In most cases, reps give far too much information, enough that the prospect doesn't feel a need to talk with anyone. This is akin to sending a prospect to your website, or sending sales literature through the mail.
The remedy for this is to break the chat by finding a clue in the discussion that will lead to an opening for you, and responding by writing "that's a question that I can probably faster answer on the phone, because there are several variables that are easier to explain if we talk for a moment. I'm free for a couple of minutes right now. If you'll give me your number, I'll call you within 30 seconds." By telling the prospect that it will only take "a moment," you'll appeal to the immediacy that is a characteristic of the chat experience, and it makes it easier for the prospect to agree and actually have a conversation with you. Then you can make the call right away, do some qualifying, and learn a lot more about the prospect's business. You also have more control over the conversation, and might be able to make a sale or move the prospect more fully into your sales pipeline.
This is a great way to accelerate the sales cycle when using Sales 2.0 technology. Add it to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 30, 2009 @ 12:57 AM
Probably the question most often asked in my telesales training courses is "How can I get more people to answer the phone in the first place?" With the proliferation of Caller ID, virtually everyone at every company can see who's calling, and they do make judicial decisions about which companies they're going to take calls from. If you've made a couple of calls and your party never picks up, go ahead and leave a good voicemail (what's a good voicemail? I'll cover that in a separate blog article within the next week or so). If your interesting, efficient, and brief voicemail isn't returned, call again, but this time manually disable your caller ID, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how often your party answers the phone.
How do you disable caller ID? Every phone switch has its own system, so talk to your internal IT folks to figure out how to do it. I use AT&T, so I hit "*67" prior to making the non-caller ID call. I then get a second dial tone, and I'm off to the races. I have been amazed at the rate my contacts have increased. Your own IT people will be able to either do a global override, in which all outbound calls are masked, or give you a code that you can use with discretion. I don't recommend global override, as your company will have many customers and prospects that will want to take your company's calls. Use the individual override code instead, and you'll find that you'll reach more people, thereby leaving fewer voicemails and emails (I'll be writing about emails in the next few weeks, too). To sum up, here's the formula I recommend:
1) Make two "normal" calls. After the second, leave a brief voicemail.
2) If no response after a day or so, call again, overriding your caller ID.
3) If no response after 3 "override" attempts, send an email.
And don't forget to listen to your prospect's outgoing voicemail message all the way through, as he or she will tell you if he or she is out of the office, on vacation, or if there's someone else you can talk to. Through this 3-step approach, you can accelerate the process of having conversations with prospects fairly dramatically. Add it to your Best Practices playbook, and let me know how it works for you.