Leveraging Inbound Calls to Improve the Sales Process
Inbound calls should serve as an integral component of the sales process. When a potential customer is reaching out to you, this is your chance to strike while the proverbial iron is hot! Don’t allow your inbound calls to fall short, treat them as the leads that they truly are. In today’s post, we’re going to take a look at one way you can leverage inbound calls to not only drive sales, but improve your overall sales process.
Sales Training 101
If you’re like most dealerships, all inbound calls are ‘recorded for training and quality purposes.’ While it can serve as a reference in the case of a customer complaint, these recordings are a sales training gold mine. Role play is one of the oldest and most effective forms of sales training. However, it’s often difficult to find time to complete these exercises. Additionally, role play training sets the stage for a not-so-organic conversation. In many cases, the sales trainee will be nervous or overthinking their responses.
If you instead take the time, once or twice a week, to listen to recorded inbound calls from each of the members of your sales team, you can gain an understanding of several things:
- Strengths: If you can identify a sales person’s strengths, you can better leverage their talents. Perhaps they have a strong close rate on the lot but are ineffective in converting inbound calls. Or perhaps you find that they are highly effective on the phone. Once you identify a sales person’s strengths you can use those skills to the advantage of the entire team.
- Weaknesses: By recognizing weaknesses, you can identify areas of opportunity for improvement. This will help you to deliver more impactful training sessions and make a larger impact in a shorter amount of time.
- Sales Style: By identifying a person’s sales style, you can again use the information to provide highly effective training sessions. You may very well find that one of the team members you consider to be a very high pressure sales person, actually takes a more laidback approach while in an organic conversation.
Now What?
So you’ve taken the time to sit down and listen to several sales calls, how do you take your learnings and put them to use to train your team? Rather than taking a group approach, sit down with each team member individually. Take 30 minutes, once a week, or once every two weeks, to sit down together. If you find an example of a great win or a glaring mistake, have the recording ready to listen to together. If the call is an example of a win, ask them if they can identify what it was they did right and how they feel that they can repeat the behaviour in future conversations. If you’re sharing an example of a mistake, once again ask them if they can identify where they went wrong and how they can avoid similar situations in the future. This can serve as a great opportunity to groom your sales team and can help you create a rapport with your staff.
By taking the time to complete this exercise with your sales team, you can deliver fast, effective training that will improve your overall sales process. Take the time today to leverage the insight that is already available to you!
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