Sales agents that take inbound calls are often looked at as having an easier role than outbound sales agents, due to the fact that in many cases they are accepting calls from potential customers and not going blindly into a conversation with a person who doesn’t know who they are and what they are trying to sell. Despite this, there is an art and skill to being a great sales agent when taking inbound calls, and you can learn to be a better salesperson that turns a higher percentage of calls into cold, hard sales to add to your successful statistics.
Let’s take a look at the different ways in which you can boost your sales skills, and convert more potential sales into full on sales. This can be achieved through practice, honest feedback and training, as well as by taking training courses with professional training providers.
The first thing to tell anyone working in a sales environment is to make sure you are prepared to be rejected. On average every single salesperson will be rejected a lot more than they are accepted. It is just the natural way of the world. The best salespeople understand this and can quickly move on from one bad call and take the approach that the next incoming call could be a sale. What you need to focus on is the process and putting into practice everything you have been taught, including the correct way to approach each call, as well as in-depth knowledge of the product or service you are attempting to sell.
Always maintain simplicity with any call, as the more complicated you make it, the more likely you are to lose an interested potential customer. Someone calling you will have a few questions that they want answered, and it is your job to do that quickly, and succinctly, whilst steering them towards purchasing from you during that call (or directing them to another channel if that is the team directive).
If you are faced with difficult and awkward questions, don’t try to move away from it. Always face up to it and try to give an answer as quickly as possible. If you do not know the answer to a question, be honest to the caller and ask for a small delay whilst you speak to a manager to either gain the answer to a question, or ask them to take over the call on your behalf. This is acceptable, and all any potential customer wants is honesty, rather than deflection and deceit.
Whatever you do, and whatever you say, remain confident in your voice at all times, and remain positive throughout the call. Any sort of dithering transmits through a call and can be off-putting to a potential customer. It is your job to get the potential customer into the next stage of the process, whatever that is, so stay confident, clear in your actions, and honest in your approach. Over time this leads to success.