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Index
7
Super Easy Steps for Building Relationships by Phone
by Narelle
Stratford & Dennis McMahon
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Smile
Answer your phone with a smile on your face. Believe it or
not, when you smile, your facial muscles and that includes your
jaw and your throat, will relax. When all those muscles
relax, your voice will sound relaxed as well. You will sound
much more attractive, and if you are feeling stressed, then the
simple act of forcing yourself to smile will help you to calm
down.
-
Be
nice!
Answer your phone by
giving thanks to whoever is calling, and stating your name.
Then, ask how you can help the person. It goes like this:
"Hello, thank you for calling Sales Champions. This
is Narelle speaking. How may I help you?
Answering the phone with a smile and helpfulness will make the
person who called you, feel good! And feeling good is
what sales is all about.
Everyone buys on an emotional decision. Even if they are
after the best price, people will then feel great about getting
the best price, and that triggers him or her to make a
purchase.
Helping someone else to feel good now, may not be seen as part of
your job description. On the other hand, taking someone by
the hand and leading him or her towards a purchase, probably
is. So, make them feel good while you do it. A sale
made when both of you feel terrific, does feel
terrific.
-
Follow-up.
Do what you say you will do.
When you are conducting business by phone and email,
follow-up. You've made a call and then you send an
email. Phone and ask, "did you get that email I sent
you?"
Alternatively, someone orders something from you and says, I
will send you an email with the information you
require.
If it doesn't arrive, don't assume they changed their mind and no
longer want to go ahead, call the person back and check. Ask
the question, "you said you would send me an email, but I
didn't get it. What address did you send it to?"
Why should you follow up like this? Firstly, I'll assume you
want the sale.
Next, I'll assume you would like to have a long-term relationship
with this customer, so that the lifetime value of your client
looks like this: Purchase 1 = $x, Purchase 2 = $x, Purchase
3 = $x and so on.
Want to continue reaping the rewards of this customer who comes
back on a regular basis, and examples follow of the types of
events, be it daily (food outlets) weekly (dry cleaning, gym and
health memberships, entertainment, sports pursuits) monthly
(dinner out, birthday presents, office consumables), and three,
six or twelve monthly events? It will easily make you a lot
of money in the long term.
Then look after your customer from the word go. Stop
assuming and start helping him or her to achieve their goals.
Do what you say you will do!
By the same token, if you say you'll pay someone, or send a
cheque, then do it and do it promptly. Don't cause
embarrassment for yourself and distress to someone else when they
have to chase you for money, or graphics or documents or whatever.
It's simply unprofessional behaviour.
-
More
follow-up
When someone gives you a deadline for work, and you haven't heard
from him or her by phone or email, then phone and check what is
going on.
Sure, they might have changed their mind, but they might not and
could have simply forgotten and be sitting in ignorant bliss that
their deadline is now looming. Sometimes people get so busy
they forget what has been done and what hasn't.
Sure, nobody likes it, but by the same token, we are none of us
perfect.
-
Give
your phone away
Hate the phone with a vengeance? Then get someone else to
answer the damn thing. For heaven's sake, in this day and
age of technological wizardry and outsourcing of staff, you don't
have to answer the phone if you don't want to. Use an
answering service instead. In fact, the way some people
answer their phone, I'm surprised they are still in business.
How do you feel when you call someone and they answer with a tone
of suspicion and a question in their voice, "Yes?"
I can tell you right now, it makes me think they are sucking on a
lemon and haven't taken their medication today. You, who
were all keen a moment ago on making this inquiry, were expecting
to be welcomed as a potential customer. Instead, you now
feel that you've been caught sneaking up and wonder if you are
speaking to the right person.
So you say, "Is that XYZ business?" and the person
responds, "Yes?" and now you almost have to read a
script because they are not helping you at all. You can
barely stammer out why you called because they do not sound
helpful and friendly. In fact, you probably wish you didn't
have to speak to this person at all.
Why does anyone answer the phone like this? Because there's
some block or barrier about the phone, and only a psychic or a
psychologist will be able to get to the bottom of it. (Help
is available, so if this is you, please call Narelle immediately!)
-
Be
concise!
Ever been caught by
someone who just wants to chat on and on, with inane repetitive
chatter? Ask them to get to the point (nicely) or get them
to ring up some other time. You can say, "you know
Max, I'm really busy right now. I think we've got that
covered, so if anything comes up, I will be sure to call
you. Bye."
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Give
Value
When you do call people
up, give them something of value to help him or her feel good
about taking the call. Get to the point quickly, and make
your offer so that it spells out the value of the service or
product in benefit driven and persuasive language. Start,
with the persuasion and move into the benefits, with something
like this, "simply, saving money and hours of your time
will...."
The sooner someone says, "no thanks, not
interested", the sooner you can call someone else
up. People who say no quickly, are great people to talk to,
because they let you get to those who can see value in your call,
so much more quickly.
Who wants to spend half an hour on the phone explaining something
to someone, only to have him or her say, "you know, I
don't think it's really for me." Mind you, if you
have been on the phone for 30 minutes, I expect you to overcome
any objections. Otherwise you just have to ask yourself why
you needed a friendly chat that was going nowhere.
In
summary, love the phone as if it were your best friend. Do a
survey of how you answer your phone, and listen to others answer
theirs. Note what appeals to you, and what you can do to
improve. Then take action quickly because your sales and your
friendships depend on it!
I
hope this
article has
given you some
useful tips to
improve your
business.
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What's been happening at Sales
Champions
Hi [firstname]
Life
just seems to get more hectic! This weekend we will be manning our
Compare-Franchises stand at the Brisbane Franchise Expo at the Convention
Centre at Southbank in Brisbane.
Talk
about a whirlwind preparation to get ready for it, but we are almost
there. This month also saw us visiting the New
Water offices in Melbourne and catching up with family in !brrrrr!
Hamilton in western Victoria (but a beautiful Bed & Breakfast Mourilyan
House eased the pain).
FREE
TICKETS - but be quick!
If
you are local to Brisbane and want a free ticket to the Franchising,
Property and Investment Expo, send
an email because the first 15 people can collect a free ticket valued at
$14 each. The Expo starts Friday August 4, runs from 10am to 5pm each
from Friday through to Sunday.
If
you make it there, make sure you pop in and say hello to us at the
Compare-Franchises Stand at K12.
Regards,
Narelle and Dennis
Use a winning tone of voice!
Take
this Advice from
"Master"
the Tabby Cat
"When
you speak
put a little smooch into your voice
and a smile on your dial.
The results are amazing, most of
the time!"
Mt Gravatt Homemaker Centre
1230 Logan Rd Mt Gravatt
Call Nikki or one of the team NOW
to book in for your Consultation!
Ph:
07 3420 4233
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