How to do a good job in sales management

Since telemarketing became popular in the United States in the 1970s, there are now more than 5 million telemarketing employees in the United States. If you live in the United States, you know how pervasive telemarketing is. This year, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to restrict telemarketers from making sales calls to registered households. Despite this, it has not affected the development of the telephone sales industry that has received much attention in the country in the past two years. Enter the largest recruitment website in the country and you will find that telemarketing has become a popular profession. In a company I once coached, the maximum monthly income of its outstanding telemarketers exceeded the annual income of an average college student in an inland city. This is not uncommon. Telephone sales have the natural advantage of being extremely efficient. For example, the annual sales per person of Dell Computer Company's telemarketers exceed 5 million yuan.

The following is a reference to the recording of a telemarketing skills training course I conducted to introduce some key telemarketing techniques.

Training Start

Telephone sales skills training requires many simulated sales calls between students and teachers or between students. Based on my experience in many trainings, students will be very unnatural at the beginning. After all, there is no phone and you can see the other party, which is very different from the real situation. So at the beginning of the training, I told everyone that in the training of telephone sales skills, there will be a large number of actual case analyses, and you can improve your telephone sales skills by listening to the recordings. At the same time, some role plays are also conducted to consolidate the skills learned through live simulations. Next, I have to arrange a small game to activate the training atmosphere to greatly increase the participation of students. This is the key to the success of subsequent training. At the same time, in order to understand the level and focus of each student's telephone sales skills, I then conducted a small survey. I asked students who only made sales over the phone to raise their hands for statistics, and I also asked students who rarely made sales on the phone to raise their hands for statistics.

Why is this? It is very important to distinguish the main functions of telephone sales in students' sales work. Generally speaking, telephone sales are divided into two categories in the entire sales activity: one is to make an appointment by making a cold call first, then visit and negotiate in person, and finally close the deal in person. The other is to sell directly through cold calling, and tracking until the transaction is completed is all done through the phone. In this training, one-third of the students were purely in the first and second situations, and about one-third were in the mixed type. Therefore, I arranged the course in a balanced manner and divided it into four parts:

1. Adjustment of telemarketing mentality

2. Quick cold phone interview

3. Sales Skills on the Telephone

4. Telephone Sales Self-Management

Telephone Sales Mentality Adjustment

The turnover rate of telemarketers in enterprises is usually very high. The most important thing is The reason is that I am increasingly afraid of making phone calls. When I asked students who were often rejected by customers during sales calls to raise their hands, everyone raised their hands without hesitation. When I then asked if anyone here liked making cold calls, everyone immediately put their hands down. I call it "kicking the iron plate" here. This is inevitable for all telemarketers. It is a common occurrence. A common situation among telemarketers is that after making an uncomfortable call (that is, being rejected rudely), they always want to do something else to delay the next call. If you cannot maintain a good attitude when making calls, the efficiency of telephone sales is extremely low. During one course, a salesperson from a logistics company told me that he made 20 cold calls every week, which surprised me.

When making sales calls, they encounter a lot of rejections, some of which are even rude, which causes the salesperson to have a strong sense of frustration, making him reluctant to continue making phone calls. There is no doubt that this is a normal psychological reaction. Psychiatrists often use electric shock to correct patients with mental illness. When the behavior that needs to be corrected is triggered, they will be shocked by electric shock. Naturally, it is uncomfortable, so a conditioned reflex is formed. When the behavior occurs again, the feeling of electric shock will appear, so The behavior was voluntarily terminated.

When we are rejected by a customer and we experience an electric shock, we will associate it with our sales call behavior. After repeating this feeling many times, we will naturally be afraid of making phone calls.

After analyzing the psychological roots of students’ fear of making phone calls, we conducted a simulation training to understand the customer’s psychological reaction when answering the phone. I asked one student to play the role of a customer, and four students to play the role of telemarketers. Set the following scene: the customer has just returned from a meeting and is ready to pour some water. A student calls to sell a product. Suppose that after three minutes, five minutes, and two minutes respectively, the other three people call to sell their own products or services. Finally, I asked the student who was playing the role of a customer: Ao Leng Yuan 谝 Huang ǖ缁 Ang Tou Ye Nai ǖ Mu Xing Yi Xie Wei Huang? Jun Bei Yuan Gan Qiang? How many cores of mash Huangtou Shen Shu E Yuan Zhang Nan г Bi Clam Juan Lan paddle Miao Shusi steal difficult г狋 from Ψ straight 闗垝谝huangū Ranxia push?鸩drop drop 谒谒resistantǚ shallow 2豢TUI?＞　glucoside 駧苋qiao?Miao Chuntuan?Mechanical evasive?Play?Also? г Pump cavity therefore owes ⑾ swollen appointment defending travel cooking resentment silk stealing male mu 碜thorn? 鉉? げ猓?虼 Songci Xianyuanyuan stir ⒊± stupid 斫馄馫shaped? BRgt; The first step to adjust the mentality of the phone is To understand the customer's refusal, if it were the telephone salesperson himself, he would probably be very impatient. I emphasized that telemarketers compete for the customer's limited attention and time, so it's critical to think about how to arouse the customer's interest in the first 10 seconds of the call. Of course, these skills are something to talk about later, so I didn’t start immediately. Then I asked the students to use the second method of mentality adjustment when they encounter rejection on future sales calls, which I called "repaying evil with kindness." If the other party refuses or even has a bad attitude, before hanging up, please smile and say to the other party: "Thank you, I wish you a happy work, and goodbye." I emphasized that this sentence is actually said to myself, and it has a strong psychological suggestion effect. When we hang up the phone helplessly, our mood will be greatly reduced. If we say this sentence, we will have a magnanimous posture and our mood will not be easily affected. Many students started laughing when they heard it halfway and already understood what I meant.

The third way to adjust your mentality is to focus on the problem rather than the person. I told a true story about an insurance company. The telesales staff of an overseas insurance company had low morale and high turnover. The sales manager thought about it for a long time and introduced a new system, which stipulated that every time he made a failed call, he had to fill in a form. When 250 were filled, a bonus of US$1,000 would be given. Not long after, morale improved a lot and sales performance began to rise, and the overall bonus paid by the company was not adjusted for the increase. Why does this happen? Telemarketing is actually a numbers game, and there is a certain percentage of success. Assuming that on average you have one successful deal for every 50 calls you make, then when you fail 49 times, you are pretty close to success. The failure rate of telemarketing is very high, which makes telemarketers focus too much on failure without a sense of accomplishment. Once salespeople realize that numerous failures are a necessary prelude to success, they become more comfortable with failed calls. Therefore, I ask students to count their phone numbers every day. After long-term accumulation, a more reliable ratio can be obtained. Understanding this ratio will greatly help improve your sales mentality.

Quick cold phone interview

After introducing some methods of self-mentality adjustment, I also taught voice training through simulation training. The training soon moved into the second part—a quick cold phone interview.

For most sales activities, a phone interview is the first step to success. If you can't successfully get your foot in the customer's door, the sale is over. However, getting busy or disturbed customers to agree to spend time meeting is not that easy. In a training class, a student who sells high-end computer servers told me that he had to make 1,300 calls a week to get an appointment with a customer. This was also his job task. That's the lowest ratio I've ever heard.

In fact, making an appointment by phone is very simple. Just follow six steps.

The first step is to say hello. As mentioned before, the first 10 seconds of a call are very important to grab the customer's attention.

Then a warm and polite greeting is the best strategy to attract attention. I emphasized three key points: name, passion, and confidence. I asked two students to say hello like this, just like the first sentence to a very important customer: "Manager Wang, good morning! I am Li San from Universal Company." A simple sentence, if expressed Being powerful can make people feel different. As a result, other students did not give them high evaluations, indicating that few people really paid attention to the first sentence. Please recall your actions. Did your greeting meet the requirements of name, enthusiasm, and confidence?

The second step is to introduce yourself. The concept of USP is used here. USP is the unique selling proposition, that is, what is the most attractive difference between you and your competitors. It should be summarized in a short sentence. This is the most effective way to generate initial interest and build initial trust. I introduced to the students that our company’s USP is “the only company in Shanghai that provides a full range of Taiwan experience retail management training courses.” Finally, I asked the students to write down their company’s USP, and then analyze it together (telephone sales Skills training classes generally have no more than 20 people, so there can be quite a bit of interaction).

The third step of business introduction requires the use of the herd principle to strengthen customer interest and strengthen trust relationships. The herd principle is the psychology of following the herd. The movement of the herd is determined by the movement of the majority, and the individual is not aware of it. Likewise, everyone making purchasing decisions is afraid of making mistakes, so they are willing to go with the flow. Therefore, I require students to list some relatively well-known typical customers in the customer's industry when introducing business, in order to strengthen customers' interest and trust. For example, I gave an example: "Our company has provided retail management training to dozens of clothing companies such as Shanshan Group, Luomen Group, and Jinlilai, which has greatly improved their performance." This kind of business introduction is undoubtedly very convincing. . Assuming that the student's company is not particularly well-known, digital or analog methods can be used to achieve the same effect.

The fourth step is to get straight to the point and ask for a meeting. I remind students that the purpose of a phone interview is to make an appointment, so don’t get too entangled and go straight to the goal as soon as possible.

The fifth step is to describe the benefits to the customer after making the meeting request. No one wants to sell at a loss. Who does the customer think is better off by spending time interviewing someone he has never met before, giving you the opportunity to sell to him? Therefore, we must emphasize what benefits the interview will bring to customers in order to impress them. My advice to students is to tell them that they will introduce some of their cooperation experiences. Everyone is very interested in what their peers are doing and they want to know how others are doing it. So this is the best strategy to impress the other party. We do not put pressure on customers and say that we want to sell things to customers, but only introduce some experiences. This can effectively reduce customer resistance.

The sixth step is to give the time in a suggestive manner and look like a professional. Remember not to ask questions that are easily rejected, such as: Are you available? The customer’s knee-jerk reaction must be that they are not available.

I practiced while speaking, and asked students to design a complete set of dialogues based on their own characteristics. After explaining the techniques for handling objections and bypassing the front desk, I will give you five minutes to perfect your phone interview script, and then select two students to role play. After a series of exciting performances and selections, everyone unanimously selected the best student, and I presented him with a large dictionary as a reward.

After playing a short game, everyone was in high spirits. Soaring, the afternoon training began.

The telephone sales skills training in the morning taught mentality adjustment, voice training and quick telephone interview skills, while the afternoon course focused on teaching sales skills on the phone and self-management of telephone sales.

Telephone sales cycle

There are many similarities, but also many differences, between selling on the phone and visiting customers. Each sales format has its own sales cycle, and it is very important to understand your own sales cycle. By managing your own sales cycle, you can effectively improve sales efficiency, speed up the closing of transactions, and predict the success rate of each sale.

After introducing the various aspects of the general sales cycle, I then showed the telephone sales cycle:

Looking for potential customers

The first action of telephone sales is to find potential customers, which includes two Two aspects of content: First, find out the customer groups who are likely to purchase, that is, determine the list of calls to be made; second, find out the people on the phone who have the authority to decide on purchases.

As the saying goes, a good start is half the battle. Before making cold calls, finding a high-quality phone list is the most important basic task in telemarketing management. If you can pre-screen the phone list before selling by phone, it will determine whether your phone closing rate is 1 or 50 (one student told me that her best telemarketers can achieve a closing rate of 50). You know, this The difference is at least 50 times. In the Telemarketing Self-Management course unit of the training I introduced several ways to research screen or directly obtain a quality call list.

After making a cold call, the first step to success is to find the right person. As the saying goes: Find the right person and do the right thing. No matter how good your sales skills are over the phone, it's all in vain if you can't find the right person to make the decision. Therefore, the first key step for a telemarketer to make a cold call for the first time is to confirm that the person you are talking to is the key person you are looking for. According to my previous investigations into corporate telephone sales team consulting cases, at least 70% of the cold calls failed to find the key person. If this ratio can be increased to 50, the phone closing rate will be greatly improved. How to judge that this person is your key person? Key people generally have three characteristics, which can be represented by the English MAN: M means money, the key person must have the budget to purchase your product; A means power, the key person must have purchasing decision-making power or have an important influence on the decision-making; N means there is a demand, which I will introduce in detail in the following training. In the course, I conducted simulation training on how to find key people. From the simulation training, everyone can learn how to identify and contact key people.

Need benefits

After finding the key person, what is the next action? During the course, I asked the students a question: "How many people started introducing the product at the beginning of the sales call?" As a result, most of the students raised their hands. I then asked: "So did most people refuse immediately?" At this time, all the students raised their hands. I asked students to start reflecting, is there a direct connection between the two? I then asked the third question: "Why do customers want to buy?" Everyone on the earth knows this answer, and the students all answered - "demand". Yes, customers will buy when they have a need, but this mistake often occurs on the phone: proposing the features or benefits of a product or service before discovering the need. So it’s no surprise that we are often turned down by customers initially. I ask everyone to copy down a sales principle: 70% of sales activities are listening, 20% are asking questions, and 10% are telling, and the content of the telling is definitely only what the customer wants to know. Although everyone knows that customers buy because of needs, few salespeople use this information to improve their sales behavior. In the following training, I worked with the students to analyze the reasons for customer demand, so that the students can conduct more targeted sales based on the different psychological sources of customer demand.

Requirements are divided into two categories: explicit requirements and implicit requirements. I asked the students: "Have you ever had a particularly happy sales experience in your sales experience?" Everyone smiled and nodded. It can be seen that sales staff sometimes detect gold ingots. The customer has a clear need, you just meet it, and your product or service can meet the customer's needs, and the transaction is quickly concluded. It's like meeting a hungry child, taking out a pair of bowls and chopsticks and shaking them, and the child becomes excited. The easiest way to generate sales is to find hungry children and shake dishes in front of them. However, this ratio is too low. Maybe among the 1,000 customers you find on the phone, only 1 will have clear needs and immediately agree to buy. The important difference between good telemarketers and poor telemarketers is their ability to convert customers' potential needs into clear needs.

How to effectively turn customers’ potential needs into clear needs? The key is to ask timely questions on the phone. In the following training, I introduced in detail the questioning skills in telephone sales. Excellent questioning skills will enable telephone sales personnel to win the initial trust of customers, thereby giving them the opportunity to further understand the customer's needs on the phone, thus promoting sales progress.

Negotiation

Telemarketing has taken a big step forward when discussing with the customer his needs and informing the customer of the benefits that will be obtained. Telemarketers will next encounter customer objections. Customer objections in telephone sales are more difficult to deal with than face-to-face sales calls. You cannot see the customer's expression and it is difficult to distinguish the customer's true intention. There are generally two types of objections from customers: one is objections, such as "your price is too expensive", which is the most common type of objection. The other type is procrastinating objections, such as "I want to report to the manager and wait for his reply." This is also the most common procrastinating objection encountered. After telling the students in detail how to effectively handle various objections, I showed a still from Schwarzenegger's "The Terminator" to illustrate that procrastinating objections are the real terminator of the telesales journey. A sales manager of a financial training company once spoke to us and told us that about 80% of the failures of her telephone sales team came from this kind of objection that was difficult to deal with.

Few telemarketers have the habit of asking procrastinators directly to communicate with their bosses, for fear of offending the customer on the other end of the phone. But this is a critical step in dealing with procrastinating objections. First of all, on the phone, we understand that the other party has to wait for the decision of the superior, for example, "Manager Zhang, a company of your size needs to report to the superior." After expressing understanding, we must immediately make a request to communicate directly with the superior. . Procrastination is mostly caused by the intention of your sales target to pause the sales process. They may not want to be disturbed anymore, but they are too embarrassed to reject you directly. Therefore, when you make a request for direct communication, it can be used as a basis for you to judge the other party's purchase intention. Of course, in most cases, it is still difficult for you to talk to your boss directly, but if you can, your chances will be greatly increased. If not, students need to develop the people on the phone into their own salespeople, selling for themselves in front of their bosses. Therefore, at this time, the telephone salesperson needs to summarize with the customer *** on the phone the customer satisfaction from this or previous phone calls, for example, "Manager Zhang, we have discussed..., I hear you are satisfied with these... "I'm quite satisfied, am I right?" Using this method will deepen the customer's good impression of the products or services you provide, and you will have the opportunity to turn him into your sales agent and sell to his superiors. The key to handling procrastinating objections is to immediately determine whether the other party is truly interested in purchasing. Otherwise, you will waste a lot of invalid time. It is better to make the next call quickly.

At the end of the objection handling process, remember to obtain some kind of commitment from the customer. The commitment referred to here is the specific agreement reached with the customer to advance the sale to the next step. For example, "Manager Zhang, let me call you this Friday morning to see how your situation is going." Don't make the mistake: "Manager Zhang, let's contact you again. Goodbye." This most common concluding sentence of telephone sales does not promote the progress of telephone sales. Please remember that the process of telephone sales may involve multiple calls, and each time must be able to promote sales progress. Without the customer's commitment, it cannot be regarded as sales progress, which will be very dangerous, because the customer on the other end of the phone will be fickle.

Close the deal

On the phone, the salesperson aroused the customer's interest step by step, presented the value of the product or service, and solved most of the customer's questions. Now it has reached a critical stage. Telemarketers should seize the opportunity and demand a deal as soon as possible. During telephone sales, opportunities are fleeting, so telephone sales personnel must adopt a very flexible approach to requesting transactions, that is, they must not put too much pressure on customers, nor let the opportunity pass. Here are two basic techniques: one is to assume a transaction. During the phone call, you do not ask the customer to sign the order, but assume that the transaction has been completed and directly request the specific actions after the transaction is completed.

For example, "Manager Zhang, are you in the office this afternoon? I will arrange to deliver the goods to you." However, if the transaction is completed, it can only be used after the call is warm. In the course, we also used case analysis to understand under what circumstances this technique can be used. Another method is to design reasonable incentives to speed up the transaction. During the course, I asked students to give examples of promotions that students can often see when they go to department stores to buy things. These commonly used promotional techniques can actually be used in telephone sales as inducements to prompt customers to make transaction decisions. During the course, I worked with the students to transform the listed promotional techniques into transaction inducements in telephone sales.

Telephone sales self-management

In the last unit of the course, I discussed the self-management of telemarketers with everyone.

Master your numbers

To be honest, telemarketing is a numbers game. In addition to basic skills, persistence is the key to success. In every course, I ask the students three questions: The first question: "Does anyone know the number of phone calls and the ratio of transactions?" In many courses, almost no one can answer this question. I remind the students to record their own records carefully. Telephone sales data, so as to ensure that you can achieve your performance goals. The numbers are recorded based on your own telephone sales cycle. How many calls you make every day and how many enter each stage of the telephone sales cycle must be recorded. Next, you can get a handle on your phone transaction ratio by making monthly, quarterly, and annual statistics. What is the use of this number? Then I asked the second question: "Can anyone list five ways to double your income?" Everyone thought about it for a long time, but couldn't name it. In fact, after mastering your own numbers, the answer is very simple: you can achieve it by doubling the numbers at any one of the four sales stages, and asking each old customer to introduce a new customer. The third question is: "If you made 30 cold calls every day and could earn 100,000 yuan a year, would you do it?" Every student agreed to do it, but most people couldn't insist on it. Therefore, after mastering your own numbers, you must set yourself a decomposed numerical goal. Decomposed numerical goals are very important and telemarketers must work hard to achieve them every day. Super high income will no longer be a dream. These questions are all about the number of calls you make, and the reality is that the more calls you make, the more sales you will make, the more money you make, and the better your telesales skills will be.

Prepare, prepare, prepare

Which three tasks are the most important in telesales self-management? The first is preparation, the second is preparation, and the third is preparation. The sales process of telephone sales is short, and only with sufficient preparation can you seize the rare opportunity. In the first 10 seconds of a sales call, you must grab the customer's attention and arouse his interest. Within 30 seconds, the fate behind is decided: whether to end or continue. I have conducted many public telephone courses and internal training courses, but I have never seen a complete telephone sales preparation list, nor have I seen satisfactory telephone communication skills. The most common thing is to hear telephone salespeople complain that it is easy to encounter customers. reject. Without adequate preparation, rejection is a common occurrence. During the course, I divided the students into groups and assumed a scenario: After understanding the customer's needs, I submitted the product specification, and now I want to understand the customer's decision-making process and their views on the product specification. Each team is required to design a complete sales call preparation sheet. During the group discussion, ask one student from each group to come out and introduce the telephone sales preparation form completed by the group, and then ask all students to evaluate it. Through this kind of training, trainees will be able to design appropriate telephone sales preparation forms for the products or services they sell after the training.

Phone call progress and customer relationship management

In the course, I showed the students a customer relationship management database and introduced the connection between phone call progress and customer relationship management. Many products and services require multiple continuous sales calls to be finalized, so call progress and customer relationship management can help you track sales calls until the sale is completed. There are three basic tasks here: The first is customer grading, which can be graded by referring to the telephone sales cycle.

The significance of customer grading is to remind yourself of the customers with the highest priority, and to reserve the most suitable time to call and the time in the best mood for the highest-level customers. The second is to ensure that the key content of each valid phone call is summarized and recorded. An effective call refers to a call process that has been completed through a sales call or can be listed as a high-level customer. In addition to recording the brief content of the call, the summary record must also list the follow-up time and next target. Finally, all the phone records of a certain customer are associated with the customer, which can be quickly queried. Use CRM software with these functions or a self-built database to manage phone calls and customer relationships, prompting you to continue to make strange calls, track phone calls in priority or agreed order, and greatly increase the sales rate of phone calls. Even if the number of sales calls per day is as high as 200, you can still manage your sales calls efficiently.

There is a lot of content in a whole day of telesales skills training, and it is difficult to introduce it in detail in just one article. I hope to have the opportunity to discuss each part with readers in depth in the future. All training is not a panacea, the most important thing is execution. After the training, I gave all the students a "Telephone Sales Skills Self-Diagnosis Form". After the students rated themselves, they set an improvement plan. We made an appointment to rate it again after two months to urge the students to implement it seriously. I also hope that readers can truly persist in applying the skills and experiences introduced in the article, and I wish everyone success.