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Performance Management for Sales and Marketing

Performance Management

The Most Important Part of Your Sales Phone Conversation May Not Be What You Think

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Words can only say so much – it is the way in which your words are said that really matter, especially over the phone.

The tone of someone’s voice tells us a lot about them. For example, we can tell if they are having a good day or a bad day, and if they are annoyed or happy to be a part of the conversation. More or less, we all do this type of assessment on a daily basis, and researchers have noticed. There are volumes of work relating to the importance of all sorts of communication avenues, but here – I am focused on the role of tone.

Albert Mehrabain’s original experiments dealing with communication of feelings and attitudes found that people use three resources to determine likeability and trust: Body Language, Words and Tone.

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Now, the exact percentages vary depending on the research, but the trend is the same: Body language dominates communication of attitudes in a face-to-face environment. Tone plays a large role also, and surprisingly, words mean very little when assessing someone’s likeability and trust.

The resources change in a telephone communication – you do not have the luxury of visual input, so tone skyrockets to become the key factor in our decision to like and trust the person on the other end of the line. Words gain some importance, but not enough to become the deciding factor. The tone of someone’s voice is what we use to decide if we like them, if we trust them, and ultimately, if we want to do business with them.

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Think about this scenario: Thousands of dollars have been spent on advertising. The internet and five neighboring cities have been blanketed with the best ad campaign ever. Your phones are finally starting to ring. Staff is in place and ready to go…and then you hear it. The entry-level call handler just answered the phone for the first time. Sure, they followed the script, but that’s not how it sounded when you wrote it.

Even the simple greeting that your call handler uses when answering the phone, which are the first words that your caller will hear, can have vastly different implications all dependent on the tone of your call handler’s voice.

“Hello, thank you for calling Company XYZ. My name is Sarah. How may I help you today?”

Imagine hearing someone answering the phone this way with a cheery tone, smiling as they speak. You want to talk to this person. Now imagine hearing the same greeting from someone who sounds blasé, like they just woke up. You’d probably think that despite their words, they actually couldn’t really care less about helping you. It’s not what they said, it is how they said it!

The difference? Their tone.

Remember to spend a little time listening just to tone when reviewing your call handler’s recorded calls. Yes, you have to use the right words, but the way those words are spoken truly makes all the difference. Tone is the determining factor when your potential customers judge your company for likeability and trust during that first phone call.
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Forget 5 – use these 4 steps to enhance your call conversions

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It just takes putting in a bit more effort continuously over time to become great – start with these 4 easy tips.

Customer service is a significant part of any business today. When your phone rings, the person on the other end is likely suffering from a problem. This problem disrupts his/her life; it is terribly inconvenient and potentially expensive.

As consumers, we all know how impactful a positive call experience is when looking for service. Our conversations influence our buying decisions and have both immediate and long-term consequences.

Here are four ways to help your call handlers have the conversations that transform callers into customers.
 

1. Ask for the Appointment

It is imperative that call handlers see themselves as sales people. Call handling is not simply a reactionary role, and the goal isn’t just to answer questions. A call handler’s goal is to sell the appointment and get it booked. Even though a caller may get off the phone feeling satisfied that all of their questions were answered, the call handling process would not be complete without a concerted effort made to book an appointment.

If you had just ten words to explain why people should buy from you instead of the competition, what would you say?

 

2. Communicate Your Value

A business’ value is the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. Customers not only want to know “What’s in it for me?” but “Why buy from you?”

If you had just ten words to explain why people should buy from you instead of the competition, what would you say? Crafting a value proposition requires reflection on what is unique about your company and your products and services.

Having a powerful value proposition is not enough; it must be communicated effectively to achieve optimal results—book the appointment. The goal isn’t to provide a laundry list of the business’ value, but to create a strategy for presenting value on calls. If you just read the caller a list about the value of your company, they may or may not see it as relevant, of interest or value. You need to refine your value proposition until you can articulate it in a single, instantly credible sentence.
 

3. Address Objections

When it comes to overcoming objections, remember to stay focused on how to help the caller rather than how to make the sale. If the caller gives you an objection, reflect back on the caller’s needs and concerns, so they remember why they called, to begin with.

Uncover those hesitations by asking questions. It is up to the call handler to find out what it is that the caller values and, in turn, to explain how your business’ services align. In doing so, your company is filling a need. Your business now becomes the solution, not an expense.
 

4. Offer Proof

Customers will likely be educated about your offerings before even picking up the phone. Expect conversations with customers that have already researched your products, interacted with your content, and more. It’s safe to assume they already know something about your company and they want to find out if you are the right fit for them.

Use customer testimonials during your conversations to provide additional authentication. People who used your products verify your value. Social proof is a powerful tool for the quick decisions needed in today’s business world.

Have any other tips that you use internally to improve your phone conversations with potential customers? Drop us a comment below! And don’t forget to subscribe for more insight like this to improve your business.

6 Ways to Incentivize Sales When You Can’t Use Cash

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Sure, cash incentives are great—but what are some more out-of-the-box incentive ideas for employees?

Whether trying to reach a new goal or maintain a current goal, an incentive motivates people to achieve higher results. This is especially true in the workplace. When employees feel their efforts are noticed and appreciated, they are driven to perform at their best.

Incentives not only motivate employees and boost morale, but incentives provide an opportunity for your employees to care and be more invested in your business. People care more about a situation if the outcome affects them; incentives allow people to have skin in the game. Let’s face it; work is more exciting when given an extra perk here and there!

An incentive does not necessarily mean extra money or cash payouts. Creative incentives can be equally effective as cash. Since these out of the box incentive plans don’t cost as much, you can give them more frequently—and frequency is key to creating excitement for team members.

So what are some non-cash incentives that can be implemented in your office?

No Cost Incentives

Best Parking Spot – While this may not work for everyone, if your office has limited parking (or a huge lot to traverse early in the morning), giving an employee the best-reserved spot for a certain amount of time is a nice perk. For example, the team member with the highest prospect call to appointment set ratio in a given week could receive the coveted parking spot for a designated amount of time.

Schedule Flexibility – Another no-cost incentive is to allow a team member to choose their schedule for a given day or week. Obviously, the schedule they pick should be within reason; if they prefer an earlier shift over the later shift, this could go a long way in recognizing an employee who has met their goals.

Employee of the Month – Awarding an employee of the month is an easy way to recognize top-performing employees. A monetary award can be given along with being named Employee of the Month, but even just being recognized for their efforts can improve employee morale. According to an article published in Harvard Business Review, one study found that simple recognition not only has “a powerful effect on those being called out, [but] it also has a significant impact on peers who see great work is rewarded.” An easy act of recognizing employees can have a big impact in the office.

Low Cost Incentives

Extra Time Off – Who wouldn’t love a little extra PAID time off? This could be anything from an extra vacation day, getting to leave two hours early (or come in two hours late for those non-morning people), or getting a long lunch.

Gift Cards/Coupons – Giving $20 to the local coffee shop, 50% off a house cleaning service, a free carwash, or tickets to a local event such as a county fair or concert are all great options. The possibilities are endless! If utilizing this type of reward, it is best to let the individual pick from some options. What motivates one person may not motivate another. For example, a gift card for a dog walking service may be exciting for a dog owner but not so much if the person doesn’t have a dog.

Catered Lunch – A catered lunch is a great reward when setting a team goal. Group incentives promote collaborative efforts and employees push each other to perform at higher levels. Team members begin to feel a sense of camaraderie when working together towards a common goal. Rewarding them as a group rather than individually strengthens their bonds.

Things to Consider

Before implementing any incentive program, conducting a needs analysis of the office is key. Below are a few items to ask yourself.

• What are you trying to achieve?
• What are your business goals?
• What is your team struggling with?

The plan you create should help address these questions/concerns. Also, the reward given should reflect the effort needed to meet the goal. Lastly, have fun with it!

For more incentive ideas and help achieving other business goals, subscribe to our blog, reach out to your dedicated CallSource representative, or contact us to get your own personalized business plan.

Overcoming Patient Appointment-Setting Reluctance in Audiology Offices Requires a Sales Mentality

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You’re in the industry of helping people – but applying some sales tactics to your inbound calls will help your patients and potential patients get over internal hurdles.

Out of all the people that visit a hearing healthcare provider and who have a treatable hearing loss, only about 30% already wear hearing aids. Many healthcare providers face pricing objections on top of patients who are reluctant to admit hearing loss.

The front office staff in your hearing office most likely does not see their job as a sales position; the truth is that they do need some sales-type mentalities—as author, motivational speaker and all-around sales-whiz Zig Ziglar has taught us, selling is nothing more than finding out what someone wants and then showing them how to get it.

If someone calls an audiologist’s office, they need help. Your office has the solution. You would think in this case that 1+1=2, but it is not always easy to convert a call for help into an appointment. It is then even more difficult to convince a patient to purchase hearing aids that will benefit them. The question is then, how do you help your patients and potential patients get the help that they need?

You, the audiologist and the front office staff need to overcome patients’ reluctance and objections.

When potential patients believe front office staff and call handlers are trustworthy, they will engage with them like asking a friend for advice when making an important decision.

The hearing space is full of hesitant patients. Hearing loss is often a taboo subject. Studies shows it takes an average of seven years for someone suffering from hearing loss to take action. So, if a call is mishandled and an appointment isn’t set for the potential patient to come to the office, it may be another six years before they seek help again.

After finding out what the caller wants/needs (most likely help for their hearing), and you can show them how to get it (making an appointment with your office), your front office staff are becoming “assistant buyers” instead of hearing aid salespeople. When potential patients believe front office staff and call handlers are trustworthy, they will engage with them like asking a friend for advice when making an important decision.

Providing information to the caller that they did not directly ask for is not using pressure. In fact, if the patient did not want information, they would not have called in the first place. As the call handler of your audiology office, you are the first impression and also now the expert. By answering the caller’s questions and overcoming objections, you are merely solving for why they called or came to see you.

CallSource has been analyzing phone calls for over twenty-five years. We have heard just about everything. Below are two separate responses that phone handlers have given a patient who is reluctant to set an appointment due cost of hearing aids and insurance coverage concerns.

Response 1

“Well, even if they don’t, you should still come in. You obviously called our office for a reason.”

Response 2

“I will check your insurance for you. The worst case is we will provide you with alternative options if hearing aids are not covered. Insurance isn’t required for a hearing test; you can come in to do that for free, and once we have results the audiologist will discuss options with you.”

It is easy to see which response will overcome the patient’s initial reluctance to set the appointment.

Response 1 could lead down another whole path of conversations and arguments. Just as “but everyone else at school has one!” was not and will never be a successful argument from children convincing their parents to buy them some new gadget, this type of unsympathetic response will also get you nowhere. Don’t focus on the negative, or what you have no control over. Rather, discuss the benefits and reasons behind how your solution makes sense and is truly the answer to the patient’s needs.

With Response 2, the call handler is acknowledging and agreeing with their objection, but overcomes the objection by demonstrating the value of why the patient should come to the office. It is difficult for patients to get mad or upset when you are agreeing with what they are saying. As the call handler, you need to help the caller get to their need—whether they are aware of that need or not. Subconsciously, patient wants you to point out things that they may not understand or have considered.

CallSource has helped many hearing offices increase their front office staff’s performance in many important areas of the phone call – including overcoming objections to set the appointment. For more information on how to work on overcoming objections for appointment setting for your business, subscribe to our blog, or contact a CallSource representative today.

How One HVAC and Plumbing Company Added Over $40,000 to Their Bottom Line in 3 Months with Call Coaching

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Just because your call handlers may already be good, doesn’t mean they don’t have room for improvement.

We Care Plumbing, Heating Air and Solar, is a Nexstar member and an award-winning Heating, Cooling, Solar Power and Plumbing Contractor serving Southern California homeowners. Based in Murrieta, California, We Care provides furnace, air conditioner, solar power and plumbing services to their primary service areas.

The business opened in 2000 and currently has roughly 200 employees, about 20 of these being in the call center. Although We Care has been in business for 17 years, when CallSource’s call tracking and performance management system was introduced to them at a Nexstar event, it was evident that CallSource provided solutions that they needed.

We Care signed up with CallSource in late 2016 in order to get further insight into their marketing performance, recapture money from missed opportunities and, most importantly, utilize our employee performance tracking tools – CallSource’s Telephone Performance Analysis (TPA) report and Call Coaching services.

Challenge

We Care set a goal in 2017 to have more training-enablement tools to gain better insight into their call handlers’ performance, as well as grow their call center. With their new Call Center Manager, Shannon Woolson, joining the team in January, there were lots of changes to be made.

Without a proper performance management tool in place, they couldn’t quite benchmark their current performance and set clear goals and expectations for the current call center team members.

We Care also wanted to create team unity – there was a want and need to bring everyone together to work on call handling skills and behaviors, encourage team rapport and build a collaborative environment.

A universal problem We Care had was that enough incoming leads were coming in, but there were too many missed opportunities. Their motto “Do not let the customer go” was shared from management with the call handlers. They had enough installers and sales team members to go out to homes, but weren’t setting enough appointments internally to even get to capacity.

Solution

In January of 2017, just a few months after onboarding with CallSource, We Care implemented Call Coaching for their current 12 call handlers.

Time management was one of the deciding factors for Woolson, who has over 25 years’ experience in call center management. She noted that even if a manager somehow thinks they have time to sit and listen to employees’ recorded calls, it would be a lot of work to listen to every call for even only five handlers. This time can be used much more effectively elsewhere, and in reality there isn’t enough time – there are other tasks to concentrate on. “You can’t do that,” she said, “so [coaching] gives you an opportunity to focus on the business and on your team and have somebody else take care of that piece for you. [They] give you a snapshot of what’s really going on and who needs better improvement.”

New to her position with We Care, Woolson didn’t have too much input or knowledge on her call handlers to see what areas they needed extra help in, or where they were making or missing the mark. Call Coaching allowed her to focus on important managerial tasks, while enabling her to quickly identify improvement opportunities. Woolson used CallSource’s Telephone Performance Analysis (TPA) score cards and their coaching sessions.

Shannon was very pleased with the level of tools available to her from CallSource. This was her first experience with CallSource; as a senior call center manager, she had used other call tracking companies in the past. Shannon noted that they didn’t have any type of coaching available – only basic notifications and recordings. “It wasn’t to a level of coaching and training that we’re offered [with CallSource]. I love that piece of it.”

Metrics Evolution

Employees began scheduling and attending their Call Coaching sessions in February 2017.

Shannon makes sure to be involved with the team’s coaching sessions as well, since coaching is not completed with each session, but must be followed up on and engrained in the employees on a day-to-day basis as well. As the call handlers’ manager, she knows that it is also a part of her duties to guarantee that the call handlers are retaining and following through with the skills they are being coached on during their sessions in the office.

She says, “Yeah, you could save time if you just never listen to any recordings and hope that your agents are doing the right thing on every call, but the reality is, everybody gets in a hurry.” Empathy is lost, along with skills for overcoming objections, which Shannon noted her team did not have when she took over at We Care.

“This (Call Coaching) helps shed light on those areas of opportunity for development. Also, it helps fix the problem and save time down the road versus ignoring the problem and things are going to take more time.”

Shannon not only has her CallSource advisor at her disposal to help set goals and stay on track, but she has open communication with We Care’s call coach as well. Shannon takes the time out of her schedule to sit in on every team session and listen to the calls that Mary, their call coach, has coached on. This way, Shannon can continue coaching within the office in the interim between sessions and make sure her team is able to maintain their skills and call quality that they are working on.

Results

After only three months of Call Coaching, We Care improved their overall conversion rate from 74% to 78%. With an average of 151 calls per month while on coaching, this means that based on CallSource’s average blended ticket price of $450, they booked an average of 118 appointments per month, adding over $14,000 per month to their bottom line (over $42,000!).

Of the progress so far with their Call Coaching program, Shannon says “they seem to be better agents because of it.”
“Overall,” she says, “people are sometimes loaded up with their appointments and [think], ‘Ugh, it’s something else to do,’ but once training is concluded, they’re glad they did it.”

For managers who think that their employees are already performing at the best they can, Shannon says “That’s not the case. There’s always room for improvement.” She and her employees proved already within 3 months of coaching that there is room for improvement, and they plan on continuing at this same pace in the coming months.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Adding Upsells to Your Sales Call

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It may not always seem like the right timing to try to squeeze in an upsell when answering inbound calls, but if you follow the right steps, you can upsell like a pro.

Learning the art of upselling to your customers can give you great challenges, if not done correctly. We all know that upselling can mean a great deal of revenue for your company, not only in direct sells but also in building customer trust for returning business.

So let’s talk about that!

Often in my training and coaching sessions during my 14+ years as a call coach, I hear things like “I am not comfortable with upselling,” or “I feel like I sound too pushy!” As a good coach, I always ask, “why does it feel that way?” and the answer is almost always that the phone handlers don’t know if the customer needs it or wants it. And there it is. There is the answer to how to effectively upsell to your customer: get to know them!

Getting to know your customer can be quick and effective with these simple tips.

Questioning

With an upbeat and curious tone, ask your customer open ended questions to get them to open up about their situation; questions starting with, who, what where, when why, how and tell me are open ended. These types of questions invite conversation and help you to determine the caller’s needs and other needs that maybe even the customer has not thought about.

Listening and Restating

In order to have a meaningful conversation with the customer, you have to be actively listening by restating back their needs. Restating back the customer’s needs not only helps in clarifying, it builds trust with the customer as you want to get their needs correctly. You also get the customer to say “yes”! And remember, the more times you can get the customer to say “yes,” the more likely they will say “yes” when asking for their business!

Personalized Recommendation

Now that you have a complete understanding on what the customer’s need are, you can make a confident, personalized recommendation of other products and services you offer. A personalized recommendation not only gives you the confidence to upsell, it also helps the customer to see the value of what you are offering and how it applies to them. Once they know how it applies to them or how it can help them, they will be more likely to buy the additional services you are offering.

Remember: ask questions, listen to your customer and make a personalized recommendation and you will be on your way to more effective upselling in every call!

Want more tips like these? Be sure to subscribe to our blog, or contact a CallSource Representative today to see how call coaching can benefit your business.