Why did you end your call so quickly?
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 21, 2011 @ 10:02 AM
I’ve been coaching a lot of reps lately, many of them quite experienced. One thing my inside sales courses do is correct old habits and bad habits, and one of the worst is ending the call before the rep has met his or her call objective. When I ask reps why they terminated the call, the most common reason given is “the person sounded like he didn’t want to talk.” In virtually all these cases, the prospect was actually giving great information, but the rep felt uncomfortable, so terminated the call. Let me give you two examples, to ensure that you’re not making the same mistake.
Example 1: The rep had been trying to reach the prospect for weeks, and actually had a proposal in front of him. The prospect hadn’t returned any of his voicemails. The call objective was to ask for the order, or determining the status of the proposal if no order was pending. When he answered, the prospect sounded like he had just woken up (maybe it had been a long night), so within the first 30 seconds of the call, the rep asked: “Sounds like this isn’t a great time to talk. Would you prefer I called you back later?” Naturally, the prospect said “yes,” and the rep terminated the call. Without asking for the order, or what the status of the proposal was. We’re inside sales reps, not health care professionals, so going into “health diagnosis” mode isn’t going to help you make your call objective. Ask your “sales objective” questions early in the call, and let the prospect talk.
Example 2: The rep was talking to a prospect that was very terse, giving one and two word answers, but providing great data, with tons of clues on how he might consider using the rep’s solution. The rep ended the call prematurely, and didn’t address the clues. The rep’s reason for terminating the call? “He wasn’t very communicative.” Actually the prospect was communicative, but wasn’t effusive. Sometimes we make the mistake of not actively listening when prospects communicate differently than we do. We’re all natural talkers, that’s why we’re in this profession. But not everyone talks just like us.
In both cases, I recommended that the rep call the prospect right back, and in the second case, I was there to hear the results. And the rep had a great conversation the second time around, and uncovered a huge opportunity he’d completely missed on the earlier call. It’s going to go into the pipeline.
Ending calls prematurely is fairly similar to what we call “call reluctance.” In both cases, we’re operating in a psychological framework of having this innate feeling that the prospect doesn’t really want to talk to us. And be assured: it we have something important to contribute to his or her work situation, the prospect will want to talk to us. So here are three tips:
1) Always have a sales objective before making the call. “Following up” isn’t a valid sales objective (read my blog post on that). If you focus on what you need to get out of the call, you’ll have a better chance of achieving it.
2) Don’t become preoccupied with what you think is the prospect’s state of mind. Guessing wrong will put you in the hole, and remember, you’re calling for business reasons, not social reasons. If the prospect wants to terminate the call, he or she will tell you. When that happens, you can always get one last question in. In the first example above, a rep could say “Before I let you go, let me ask you this: I haven’t heard back from you on my proposal. Is it still on the table?”
3) Don’t be afraid to call back immediately, if you realize you forgot to get one or two pieces of important data. This commonly occurs after you’ve entered your notes in your CRM database. You know the prospect’s still in, and he or she won’t think you’re stupid for calling back. Instead, he or she will usually give you more time, because you’ll be referring to something that he or she said in the conversation, and want clarification.
So go ahead and add “not terminating calls prematurely” to your Best Practices Playbook.