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There are two keys to telephone sales that will make or break your ability to be successful. Unfortunately, both of these subjects are mostly if not completely ignored by most telephone sales skills trainers. When they are touched on it is often so lightly that telephone salespeople rarely gain competency with them. For additional data see The Inside Sales Training Solution.
The first barrier is Lack of Vision
In a normal telephone communication the ability to see provides over half (55%) of the communication. When we talk to someone in person we get all kinds of visual clues about our conversation via what we observe in them. The very popular use of NLP techniques is heavily based on this vision and observation.
Not only does one loose the visual clues about the individual but they also loose the clues in the environment. Even if your product doesn’t sit on the desk or in plain view there will likely be visual clues in the environment that are very helpful to the telephone sales effort.
To be really successful on the telephone you must be aware of the obstacles and challenges this lack of vision creates. Not only so you can avoid problems but so that you can leverage your telephone sales efforts.
The second barrier is “Telephone Sales Presentation Skills”
This second barrier to telephone sales success is a derivative of the first barrier.
Because of the fact that all vision is gone in a telephone sales call, the whole call and relationship with the prospect becomes highly dependent and focused on the “audio” part of the exchange.
In a normal face-to-face conversation the audio part of the communication is about 37 percent of the communication. This jumps to over 75 percent in a telephone sales call.
When we talk about telephone sales presentation skills we are talking about tonal and communication delivery aspects of your conversation with the prospect such as volume, speed, and other factors.
If you haven’t mastered the various aspects of your vocal presentation and learned how to use your voice for effect you are missing one of the very keys to telephone sales success.
Summary
As a telephone sales person you should study and investigate these two barriers as they will make a difference in your effectiveness on the telephone.
The key thing that happens to telephone sales people is dropping into what I call “causal voice.” Your casual voice doesn’t contain the energy, enthusiasm, and passion that is necessary for a successful telephone sales call.
If you are a sales manager you need to know that the only way to really address these two skills is consistent and regular training and coaching of your people. These are both things that are very subject to “lazy” habits by your telephone sales people – without regular coaching they will become non-optimum behaviors. For more help and information on how you can solve this issue, check out the new page on this blog site. The link to the page is in the upper right: “Inside Sales Training Solution.” Or CLICK HERE.
