Telephone Skills – How to Polish Them and Increase Your Sales?
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Current market situation has made it tough for the wholesale businesses to flourish. These suppliers work hard to build their brand and capture some portion of the saturated market. The formula for ensuring repeat sales is best presented by Dr. Janelle Barlow, “Reinforcing a brand through every customer touch point, therefore, can provide the repetition necessary to inspire repeat purchasing decisions.” Those who realize the importance of this are among the top 20% of the wholesale market gurus who are making more than 80% of the sales.
Telephones are still in practice!
Although it is a digital age and customers prefer getting their queries solved online, telephone is still widely in practice. I have seen many wholesale suppliers losing big clients just because they did not lay enough focus on having a trained staff for telephone support. On the other hand, around 30% of suppliers boost their revenue by implementing some basic telephone skills.
Phone rings annoy! Don’t they?
Ringing phone causes interruption and we get annoyed at being disturbed while dealing with over scheduled routine. Due to large number of spam calls, businesses are often not eager to have a phone support. However, wholesale suppliers must not forget that there can be potential customer on the other end of the phone. Phone calls are an opportunity to set stage for establishing long term rapport with the customers.
How to polish Telephone Skills?
Just like you invest money in launching a business venture and sourcing wholesale products, training customer service staff is also an important part of business planning. Every representative who is assigned to answer telephone calls must understand his/her role clearly. Not only they should be courteous and polite but also know the primary purpose behind satisfying the customer through phone i.e. increasing business sales.
Some smart tactics that can encourage callers to purchase wholesale products from you are discussed here.
Before you pick the call!
Never let the phone ring for long, always answer it at second or third ring. Take a deep breath before picking up the phone because if you would sound tired or board on the phone, the caller will be pissed off right away. Make sure to have a welcoming and pleasant tone on the phone while maintaining a professional dignity.
Greet with a positive note!
Greet the caller with a positive, short and warm welcoming note. You can say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good afternoon’ followed by the name of the company, your own name and a note like “May I help you”. If your regular customer is calling you, it s better to use his name to make the call more personalized.
Listen to the caller carefully!
Listen to the customer’s query or problem carefully and make notes if possible. Your words should also reflect that you are listening to him attentively so use verbal nodes like, ‘I see’, ‘I understand’, ‘No Problem’,’ Sure’ etc. Don’t involve in multi-tasking while dealing with the phone query as it diverts attention and sound highly unprofessional.
Handle the query politely!
After listening to him in detail, summarize and repeat his query, since it not only sounds professional but also leads the customer to believe that you have listened to him with interest and attention. Try to sort out his query and suggest best solution to him by using polite, courteous and definite words.
End with a courteous note!
In the first thirty seconds customer builds up his positive perception about the business while in the last 30 seconds he makes a final opinion about you and the company. Always close the call intelligently with a positive note. Even if something goes wrong in the middle, end the call with the positive words like, ‘I appreciate your time’, ‘Thank You’, ‘Kindly let us know how we can help you in future’ etc.