TONE

Your voice inflection and how you carry yourself tells the customer more than your words. Your customer is probably not aware of your tone but will always react to it. It has been said that you can hear a smile over the phone. If that’s true, can you hear if the person is slouching, if their shoulders are low or high, if they are leaning on their hands or if they are standing and have a fast heart rate and a head held high?

Surveys indicate that 86% of all communication over the phone is tone of voice. Only 14% is the words we choose. Tone conveys our confidence level and communicates how we feel and what we believe.

GREETING AND GATHERING INFORMATION

The first 20 seconds of any call leaves a lasting impression on your customer. This is the time frame in which the customer makes the decision to view you as a professional or as an order taker. Combined with Tone, the Greeting is designed to begin a real relationship with the customer, gather valuable information and establish control of the call.

QUESTIONING, LISTENING AND BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP

Questioning is about learning or “qualifying” the customer in order to provide the best service possible and then recommending as much product as is appropriate. The goal of asking questions is to help a customer make a wise decision based on their needs. When using this consultative sales approach, you look after your customer's best interest. Once you know what matters most to your customer, you can sell based on the values they care about. Understanding your customer’s needs and wants allows you to better “personalize the offer”. Skilled and successful sales people that use a consultative selling approach build rapport and long term relationships with their customers.

BUILDING VALUE, PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE & UP-SELL

Building Value is an essential step as sales consultant. This is your opportunity tell your customer what is in it for them! Using this skill you are able to position yourself, first and foremost in your customer’s mind, as the authority; the expert; the industry leader; or the company with the best solution. Any value-building competitive feature and benefit statements you may make, personalizing the features and benefit of your product to your customer, is essential to showing your customer how your service or product is their best option.

TRIAL CLOSES – THE TEMPERATURE CHECK

Trial Closes are designed to check the temperature of your customer by asking questions to determine how close the customer is to making a purchasing decision. This powerful sales technique enables you to determine your level of rapport with the customer and the customer’s overall receptiveness to the value you have described. Use of Trial Closes consistently and confidently helps you know what the customer is thinking and how you should modify your communication in order to hit their hot button. Effective use of this skill enables you to create buy-in and move the process along so that when you get to closing most of the heavy lifting or hard work has already been done.

ASK FOR THE BUSINESS

You don’t get what you don’t ask for! The best sales presentation imaginable generally will not yield the desired results unless the salesperson asks for the business. Too many salespeople forget to ask the customer to buy. They may be afraid of getting a ‘no’, afraid of feeling ‘pushy’ or other various reasons. Your customer is talking to you because they have a ‘problem’ that they need fixed, and you have provided a solution. So ask for their business.

OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS

Objections are a given in sales. The mindset you bring to an objection will determine the ultimate outcome of that encounter. Overcoming objections is one of the most essential skills a sales rep can learn. If our job is to help the customer solve their problems and meet their needs, then objections provide critical information that is absolutely essential to our accomplishing our goal and earning their business.