Sales & Service Overview

• How to Communicate Effectively - The Four Principles behind effective telephone communication: Audio Only, The Summons, Commanding Attention, and Dialog.

• Everyone Sells - From combing one’s hair to getting dressed to meet the world, we are all involved in being advocates for ourselves and selling our ideas each and every day. Selling skills are life enrichment skills that, if they are learned correctly, can make our lives more interesting and rewarding. This is a beginning motivational module designed to show that we are all involved in the sales process and how it’s in our personal interest to be excellent sales practitioners.

Greeting Customers

• Introducing Yourself - The first 15 seconds of every call should include critical elements that help to establish early rapport. You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Learn the important elements that must be included in your introduction.

• Prepare: Anticipate Needs, Get Organized, Get Focused - all professionals, whether athletes, actors, lawyers…etc, prepare and get organized before they perform their best work. This segment covers all the things you need to do before you meet your customer on the phone. Topics include pre-call planning, time management, setting primary and secondary objectives for your day.

• Building Rapport - Easy-to-follow, illustrated steps that help to develop and maintain rapport and build relationships with both customers and prospects.

• Professional Voice Techniques That Create a Positive First Impression - Voice technique depends upon appropriate pacing, diction, proper inflection, and speaking in an enthusiastic tone.

• Understanding: Asking, Listening, and Restating - A consultative approach requires you to truly understand your customer/prospect. Define each of these important steps and discuss why they are essential tools when working to establish rapport and “real conversation”.

• Understanding Customer Needs - Probing is a process that starts with the discovery of a need (or needs) that the customer/prospect may be unaware of and leads to a desire for a solution. Reps will also learn that they must earn the right to ask questions.

• Selective Hearing, Hearing without Understanding, and Active Listening - Everyone hears… but no one really listens. This section contains great practical advice on how to listen effectively on the phone. Topics include how to avoid being judgmental and how to focus on the customer/prospect after your 90th call even when you think you’ve heard it all before.

• Asking open-ended questions to build rapport - How to ask effective, open-ended questions that uncover needs and lead to strong, proactive conversations vs. one-sided, interrogatory monologues.

• Paraphrasing the customer/prospect’s needs - An important active listening skill that helps build rapport and identify which features, benefits and solutions to present.

Presenting Solutions (Service Situations)

• Responding with a Choice of Options - Everyone, your customer/prospect included, wants to feel in control of all situations. This segment is designed to help you and your customer/prospect arrive at several options to resolve a need or handle a difficult problem. Through role-play exercises the trainee is encouraged to think creatively and help customers come to appropriate solutions resulting in loyal, delighted customers.

• Setting Expectations - Taking charge of each telephone call and setting the right expectations of outcomes is one of the keys to being a professional on the phone. This segment shows how to set appropriate expectations and get positive reactions.

Presenting Solutions (Sales Situations)

• Identifying Customer/prospect Needs - Probing skills are key elements in establishing rapport, gaining control, uncovering needs (qualifying), and identifying present and future opportunities.

• Linking Features to Benefits - Important to the prospect/customer only if they are based on needs that have either been expressed or implied in the probing stage.

• Power and Action Words - In an audio-only environment, words take on heightened meaning. There are several words you can use to capture attention and get customers/prospects to focus more effectively on what you are trying to communicate. There are also several emotionally charged words that should be avoided because they could get in the way of establishing rapport and communicating your message. This segment covers the best words to use.

• Recognizing Buying Signals - Learn to recognize buying signals and bring the customer/prospect to a successful close by using questions that elicit “yes” responses.

Closing

• Up-selling and Cross-selling - The link between probing, listening, and the opportunity to offer additional products and services that might meet a customer/prospect’s needs. We encourage proactive attitudes that will help reps overcome a prevalent fear of being pushy.

• The C.A.R.E. Method: Clarify, Ask questions, Resolve, and End with a trial close.

• Types of “Closes”: Choice, Assumptive, Direct - Learn to recognize different types of objections and several successful methods for overcoming each type. All possible objections that might be raised about your product will be covered.

• The Importance of Reassurance - Learn how to make the prospect feel they have made the right decision.

Handling Challenges/h3>

• Anticipating and Viewing Objections as Opportunities - Learn how to overcome your fear of objections, and even welcome them as a natural part of the buying process. Use the “Feel/Felt/Found” technique to keep the customer/prospect involved and listen to and acknowledge their comments.

• Reliable Techniques for Handling Objections - Learn to recognize different types of objections and several successful methods for overcoming each type. All possible objections that customers might raise about your product will be covered.

• How to Handle Challenging Customers Using S.E.R.V.E.™
Techniques for handling challenging and irate customers and resolving their complaints and upsets. Depersonalize trying situations while resolving customer needs amicably, empathetically, and professionally. Learn how to remain upbeat, motivated and “not take the call personally”.

• Getting Agreement - Learn to recognize solution and satisfaction signals and bring the customer to a successful resolution by using questions that elicit “yes” responses.