The sales department is the engine of any business, it is the sales department that sets the pace for the entire company. High sales guarantee a steady growth of your profits and a guarantee in the future. Therefore, building a sales team is the most important task for a business owner.
What is a sales department
Not everyone understands what a sales department is and how it works. Most do not even understand what actions must be taken to ensure the sale of products. Often an entrepreneur will come up with a good product, bring it to perfection, and wait for customers, but they still don’t come and don’t go. Other entrepreneurs will hire a head of sales (ROP) and managers and demand results from them, but they still don’t. In fact, you should be puzzled with the issue of organizing sales even before you start producing or purchasing goods.
The sales department is an organized system for marketing products, which allows you to provide predictable sales. A sales department can be called one head of the department, and a retail outlet and a whole department consisting of a dozen departments that sell goods in various ways. It doesn't matter what your sales force looks like, it's important that it be a system you manage.
For example, if you are, you cannot be called a sales department. Since your sale was of a random nature, but if you put sales on a stream, then you can be called a sales department.
Functions of the sales department
The main function of the sales department is to organize the sale of products to customers, both new and existing. To ensure its functions, the sales department must solve several tasks:
- How will your company position itself in the market?
- Which satisfies the product sold by the company;
- What does the profile of a potential client of the company look like;
- Where is it easier to offer your product to a potential client;
- How to offer a product;
Finding answers to these questions is the task of the sales department. It doesn’t matter what the name of the department that will solve these problems in your company is, but in the end, the answers to them will allow you to organize a full-fledged sales department. Remember that building a sales force from scratch is an investment and often a very big one. In order not to throw your budget down the drain, think about how best to organize sales, immerse yourself in this process to the maximum.
Building a sales system is a phrase you have heard hundreds of times from the lips of consultants and business coaches.
There are many articles and information on the Internet on the topic of building effective sales systems. On the one hand, this is good, but on the other hand, it makes it even more difficult to understand what a sales system is, how to build it, where to start, and in general - is a sales system needed in a company?
In this article I will try to explain in simple terms what a sales system is, why a business needs it, what elements an effective sales system consists of.
Of course, I will only express my opinion based on the experience of building sales systems in companies of various levels (from small businesses to TOP-30 banks). Many authors have their own branded "components of the sales system", but the essence of the system remains approximately the same as I will describe.
Sales system: why?
The goal of building any sales system is to increase the company's sales.
This is obvious and simple, but often the process of building a system drags you into a routine, and the built system does not give the expected results. Or, at some stage, the manager leaves the idea to build a sales system and it turns out such an “unfinished business”.
Just for the sake of increasing sales - such a global and obvious goal - it makes sense to create a sales system, make the business more manageable, transparent to management, increase conversion at every stage, and invest in employee training.
In my free course "" I said that "systematic" is the most important component of success. Working systematically, you can not fail to achieve results. Even if you are the most unlucky person on Earth 🙂 . Just build the system work correctly and you will get an increase in sales.
How to create a sales system?
I highlight 5 main stages in building an effective sales system in the company.
I will cover each step in more detail in the article “How to create a sales system: 5 main points”
Stage 1.
Make a product (service, offer) that will really solve the client's problems and provide you with the necessary margin.
I deliberately include the formation of the right offer in the sales system. I believe that with the right system of sales and building relationships with customers, you may have to adjust the product itself, its packaging, the target audience of customers, and much more.
Stage 2.
Make sure that as many target customers as possible learn about your product (service, offer).
In other words, to improve the flow of leads to your company.
The purpose of the stage is to determine sales channels, build a promotion system.
Stage 3.
Get as many leads as possible to buy more, more often, and for more (or at a higher margin).
The purpose of the stage is to convert potential customers, leads into real buyers who bring you money. After that, motivate customers to further cooperation, repeat purchases.
Cross-sell, up-sell, down-sell technologies will help you to make customers buy more, more often and more expensively.
Stage 4.
Create a sales control center.
Each stage uses its own sales tools: scripts, technologies, and so on. To understand which tools are more effective and which ones should be abandoned, you will need a sales control center.
What can be attributed here, I will tell in the article "How to create a sales system: 5 main points."
Stage 5
Create an employee management center.
It depends on your staff how effectively all the tools you have implemented will be used: scripts, presentation models, objection processing, and so on.
Therefore, it is important to build a system for hiring employees, motivating, training, and so on. This will allow even beginners to fit into the working rhythm of the company in a matter of days and quickly reach payback.
If you have any questions - write.
If the topic of increasing sales, building sales systems is relevant for you - get into contact with me and we will discuss possible projects for your situation. If we see growth areas, we can agree on further cooperation.
Sell beautifully and easily!
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Against the backdrop of an economic downturn, a 37% increase in sales in three months seems fantastic. However, these are real average statistics of our clients. About 50 companies introduced new technologies aimed at improving the sales system during the year, and did not fail. What are these methods and how do they affect the effectiveness of the commercial service? Let's talk!
Effective sales system with the use of modern technologies, it is able to increase turnover by 30% in just 12 weeks. We study "smart" business parameters and reproduce effective sales methods.
Obviously, in a recession or crisis, the effectiveness of a commercial service directly depends on focusing on what really benefits the company and customers. At the same time, an effective sales system must be transparent, controlled and work like a clockwork, each element of which operates "on autopilot", with minimal involvement of the manager.
However, plunging into operational processes, we lose the opportunity to evaluate and understand why certain methods no longer work, and the system is far from perfect. Using the example of our clients, I propose to analyze which business indicators are the most relevant, and to analyze modern sales technologies that will help achieve growth by 30% within three months.
Best Article of the Month
We have prepared an article that:
✩show how tracking programs help protect the company from theft;
✩ tell you what managers actually do during working hours;
✩explain how to organize surveillance of employees so as not to break the law.
With the help of the proposed tools, you will be able to control managers without reducing motivation.
Why do we need "smart" business parameters
Managers are often overwhelmed with information, much of which is unnecessary and confusing to them. In fact, all that is needed is a few key indicators. In the process of building an effective sales system, as a rule, five main components are involved (Figure 1).
To combine them, we will use a well-known formula that allows us to understand which business processes need to be worked on first (Figure 2).
The process of increasing sales is the work on the growth of each of the parameters of the formula, and building a system is to establish processes for each of these areas.
Increasing each of the parameters by 15% will double the profit. If you work seriously and double each parameter, then the profit will increase thirty-two times. Of course, this task is by no means easy and may take more than one month or even more than one year, but the result is worth it.
Let's take a hypothetical example. Sales managers make an average of twenty-five cold calls per working day (which is about five hundred calls per month, or one and a half thousand per quarter). Of these, 2% of calls turn into a deal, the average amount of which is 120 thousand rubles. Let's say the average customer closes two deals per quarter. Substitute these numbers into the formula and get the following data per manager: N = 1500; C=0.02; H \u003d 120,000; T = 2; as a result, sales for the quarter will amount to 7.2 million rubles. (V = N × C × H × T). Provided that four managers work in the department, the sales volume of the entire department will be 28.8 million rubles. per quarter.
Suppose that due to additional staff training, the average conversion rate can increase from 2 to 3% - in this case, the company will receive an increase in sales per quarter by 3.6 million rubles, that is, by 50%. Thus, by increasing one of the indicators by one and a half times, you can increase sales by 50%.
Naturally, it is necessary to work with all indicators, but most often the management invests a lot of money in advertising and promotion (works on increasing the N coefficient). However, in this way we only increase the number of people who learn about your offers.
It is far from certain that all of them will turn into real customers and make a profit. There is an almost uncontrolled process of attracting a consumer, and it becomes problematic to understand where and why the buyer came from. But, according to statistics, it costs about seven times cheaper to sell something to an existing client than to attract a new one.
Many companies continue to pursue this strategy, despite the obvious cost of such actions, although increasing other parameters in the vast majority of cases turns out to be a less expensive option.
In each particular business, its own parameter may turn out to be “cheaper”, but there is a general optimal sequence for developing a sales system (Figure 3).
How to use key indicators
1. Profit share. One of the quickest and easiest ways to increase profits is to raise prices, but many merchants, despite inflation, hesitate to take this step for fear that customers will not understand them. In fact, the buyer often does not even notice the increase in the cost of goods. If the product cost 3,250 rubles, then the fact that you raise the price to 3,370 rubles will most likely not change the number of transactions. But with each sale you will receive an additional 120 rubles. arrived.
2. Average check. An easy way to increase the average check is to provide bonuses for a certain purchase amount. For example, as a bonus, we introduced free shipping in an online store selling "smart" toys. Previously, the average check was 1387 rubles; after the upgrade, the system began to automatically offer to add something else from the assortment to the order in order to increase the total purchase amount to 1,500 rubles, which would allow using free delivery. A month later, the average check grew by 8.5%. A small gift can be an alternative to free shipping.
3. Conversion. Capturing some more customers who would otherwise leave without buying anything often allows a special exit offer. If the client, having studied the assortment, did not choose anything, then another attempt is made to sell at the expense of a very attractive additional offer. At a minimum, this can be participation in a promotion or a gift in exchange for contact information. The company must surprise and do more than the consumer expects.
For example, the manager of a b2b-segment company for the implementation of software during the negotiations realized that the deal would not take place: the client promised to think, but in such a tone that it became clear that this was a refusal. After some time, the manager contacted the client again and informed him that in the course of a conversation with the management he obtained an additional personal five percent discount for him. Thanks to this simple technique, the company attracted 10% of customers who had previously refused to cooperate. However, this method should not be abused: the company is unlikely to be able to provide such discounts to all customers.
4. Repeat sales. Constant contact with the client is critical. Many of the potential buyers will not purchase your products and services right now simply because it is not very relevant for them. However, when they face a problem that you can solve, it is necessary that they remember you first of all. To do this, you need to build a system of constant customer touches: fax, e-mail, mailing lists, phone calls, and so on. It is important to create an information flow that will not only inform about updates (otherwise you will become a candidate for spammers), but also give advice and provide useful information.
5. Incoming flow. You can increase the number of potential customers with the help of a front-end product - an inexpensive or even free product that you use not to make money, but to increase your customer base. For example, at the next job fair, a recruiting agency organized a master class “15 Key Mistakes in Recruitment”, within which it not only provided useful information for the audience, but also described its own recruitment processes. After the end of the master class, five out of 32 listeners expressed their willingness to cooperate - a good result for such events.
We got acquainted with the key parameters and examples of working with them. However, before proceeding directly to the strategy and tactics of increasing key parameters, it is necessary to start recording and analyzing them.
A good analysis looks like this: one new method is introduced and the results of its use are measured, after which the effect obtained is examined. Then the same is done with the next method and so on. Implementing several tools at once is possible, but only if you are able to monitor their effectiveness individually, otherwise it will be difficult to determine the effectiveness of each of them. In the case of such control, it makes sense to combine techniques, because often they complement each other very well.
Seven Simple Techniques for Increasing Sales
Let's move on to examples of technologies that allow you to increase sales without significant costs.
Most merchants are aware of the up-sell, cross-sell, and down-sell techniques that sales managers use to significantly increase sales. To increase the effectiveness of these techniques, additional products are best offered at a discount or bonus. Detailed instructions should be developed for staff ( scripts): what and how to tell customers. This will reduce the role of the human factor in sales.
1. "Resuscitation" of old clients. These include those who have made purchases during the year, but have been "silent" for two or three months. "Resuscitation" allows you to return some of the customers. It is a call to an old client in order to find out the reasons for the lack of orders. In addition, you can offer a special discount, talk about new products. Thus, you can not only return some of the buyers, but also learn about the shortcomings in your own work.
2. VIP approach. This technique consists in the personal contact of the management with VIP customers, which account for the maximum sales volumes over the past year. It is this attitude that shows the company's interest in long-term and reliable cooperation, and also increases the loyalty and commitment of customers. For one of our clients, a toy supplier who adopted a VIP approach, the average check of the largest customers increased by 30% in a few months, which increased the total revenue by 9%.
3. "Emotional" bonus. A simple and effective method of sales is the formation of sets of products sold and "emotional" bonuses. It does not matter what the bonus will be, even if it is not directly related to the organization's products - the main thing is that it evokes positive emotions. The price for such a kit will be higher, but its value in the eyes of the consumer will be much more than the additional amount paid, and the buyer will consider such an acquisition beneficial for himself. One of our partners, a company selling cosmetics, made up sets of the most popular items and small gifts (umbrellas, jewelry, movie CDs). Their monthly revenue grew by 4%, and gross profit - by 6%.
4. Bonus to the amount. Another variant of the previous technique is linking bonuses to the purchase amount. It is necessary to calculate the average check and set a bonus for a purchase for a large amount. Thus, the consumer is stimulated to additional purchases, due to which the average bill increases. A retail chain of stationery stores calculated that its average check was 470 rubles, and developed a promotion: when buying in the amount of 600 rubles. a package of notebooks or an inexpensive set of writing instruments - as a gift. The company's monthly revenue increased by 13%, which indicates the high efficiency of the sales method.
5. Customization surcharge. Listen, listen and listen again to your customers. If your product has standard parameters (length, width, color, shape), but they can be changed at the request of the buyer, for which he is ready to overpay, this is also a great way to increase margin. You can offer standard standard product models and additional, individual options.
Nike implemented this technique very successfully: you can go to the site and order sneakers for yourself, choosing a lot of characteristics up to the color of all details, including laces, that is, literally ordering an exclusive model that you came up with yourself. Naturally, such a purchase will cost one and a half to two times more expensive than standard sneakers, but the goods will be made especially for you. And people are willing to pay for it.
6. Payment methods. Some consumers do not make a purchase just because they cannot pay in the most acceptable way for themselves. The purchase process should be as simple and convenient as possible, so implement all possible payment methods. So you can not only increase revenue, but also increase customer loyalty.
7. Price segments. Often companies operate in a certain price segment, missing out on the clear benefits of penetrating into other segments. The seller of orthopedic goods sold pillows for 4 thousand rubles; after mastering additional price segments, he began to sell pillows for 7 thousand and 15 thousand rubles. Against the backdrop of new high prices, the old one looks noticeably more profitable and stimulates buying. In addition, single sales of expensive goods are carried out, due to which the revenue increases significantly. In this case, the company's revenue increased by 21%, and gross profit - by 32%.
The use of these modern sales technologies and the organization of the effectiveness of the sales system on a pipeline basis / will help increase sales figures, which will bring noticeable benefits not only in the short term, but also in the long term. For example, the Forlife company increased the average check by 58% in a month, doubled the share of profit in relation to the price of the product, and almost doubled the conversion rate of potential customers into real ones.
“HOW TO BUILD A TELEPHONE SALES SYSTEM FROM SCRATCH: A SIMPLE STEP PLAN”
I have been professionally involved in telephone sales for more than four years: first as an ordinary salesperson, then as a head of sales department. Now, when selling the services of my agency, I also use this method.
Why is he so popular? The answer is pretty simple. The benefits can be summed up in three words:
1) fast;
2) cheap;
3) available.
These are not empty words. As a start-up entrepreneur and without enough cash for a big advertising campaign or even your first employees, you can still make your first successful sales using phone sales.
I would even call "cold" calls a method for beginners, since this is exactly the method that will help open your way to the world of big business. True, you should not use it where it should not be. The reasons that make this system ideal for start-ups are also an obstacle to business development. Too often, executives approach the organization of this sales system without much attention, believing that everything is obvious and does not require any frills.
Let's see why 99% of companies in Russia (first of all, let's pay attention to the b-2-b sphere) use "cold" calls? There are many reasons. We list the main ones:
anyone can make their first call without prior training;
from the equipment only a telephone set is needed;
the customer base is already in the Yellow Pages directory.
Naturally, guided only by these arguments, it is impossible to sell a lot. However, unfortunately, many companies do not move beyond this.
To make it clear to readers where the material below was taken from, I want to talk a little about my work experience. When I first came to a company where we used cold calls as a sales method, the system itself was simple and unpretentious: a newcomer was shown his place, given a personal customer base (still the same Yellow Pages) and told to get to work.
Despite the simplicity of the approach, we had clients. Of course, not as much as in the future, but still this approach worked. In general, the more I do sales, the more clearly I understand: the only thing that is not sold is that no one is trying to sell.
As time went on, we got tired of working the old fashioned way, and we began to modernize the system. First, against the background of common mistakes and achievements, a cold call algorithm was built. It was slightly different for each of the employees, but it already greatly facilitated the work of both experienced managers and beginners. Then we wrote our own sales book, in which we gave in summary form everything that might be needed in a sale: answers to objections, the most effective sales proposals, meeting layouts, secretary methods, etc.
All this led to the fact that sales increased by about two times. Then there was a harmonious system of training and hiring newcomers. I did not yet participate in hiring, but I often trained newcomers. In practice, we tested a system that allowed us to prepare a person from scratch to his first sale in a maximum of five working days. Oddly enough, the system worked despite the fact that we were selling a simple, but fairly new service for most people.
In addition, there was a standardized reporting system that allowed tracking of sales baselines in near real time and was not difficult to master.
As a result, when I left this company as head of sales and organized my own business, we were selling about 5-6 times more than four years ago. I believe that the experience that we have gained during that time is invaluable. Now the system we have built seems simple and unpretentious to me, but every time I analyze the business of my clients, I see that very few managers still use at least 50% of what we worked with daily.
I believe that this article will be useful for practitioners. Most likely, theorists have long been familiar with this information. The only question is whether everyone follows these tips in their daily work and how well they do it.
What will be discussed below? In this article, I want to give readers a blueprint for building a sales force from the ground up with cold calling. There are other ways, but they are not suitable for starting the practice. In addition to the scheme of the sales system, I will give some advice on a number of basic problems and talk about ways to solve them.
So, in the article we will pay attention to the following questions.
A step-by-step algorithm for building sales on incoming phone calls.
A step-by-step algorithm for building sales on outgoing phone calls.
Solving the underlying problems that arise.
So, we build sales on incoming phone calls.
At first glance, the system seems simple. You only need to do the following:
create an incoming flow of potential customers;
convert this flow into buyers.
Most executives and small business owners stop there. That is why the sales system works irregularly and unpredictably. You invest in advertising, and as a result you get 0.5–1% conversion. There are two main reasons for such failures:
2) inefficient customer conversion system.
STEP ONE: CREATE A SOURCE OF INCOMING CALLS.
Let's take a closer look at both issues. In order to build an effective advertising campaign, it is not enough just to have a sufficient budget. With money, you can just create a stream of incoming calls, nothing more. Who will call you? Are you sure that these are your customers - people who are interested in buying your product / service? If not, then all your efforts will only lead to the prosperity of the advertising department, advertising agencies, "inflating" the advertising budget. Everyone will be happy, except for the head and the owner of the business.
You pay money for advertising, and everyone else just masters it. It is this tactic that leads to the ineffectiveness of advertising. To build an advertising campaign that will “blow up” the market and bring hundreds of buyers to you, you need to have at your disposal:
a product that everyone wants to buy;
professionals who will "promote" this product;
specialists who will sell this product;
a budget that will cover the work indicated in the previous two paragraphs.
Our tasks are a bit more modest: we don't want to “blow up” the market. We just need to sell the product and make a profit. Leave the creative approach to giants like Microsoft or Coca-Cola. You don't have millions of dollars for a few commercials.
There is a common misconception that advertising sells your product. It is this illusion that makes many spend tens and hundreds of thousands of rubles to "feed" the advertising budget.
Advertising only creates a flow of potential customers, but does not sell to them. To make it effective, you need to define the task that it will solve. Here are some questions and answers you can use to build an effective campaign.
1. Who exactly is the audience of your advertisement?
social group.
Financial position.
2. What problem is your advertisement solving? 3. Who are you attracting?
Potential customers (never used a similar product).
Existing customers of your competitors.
your own clients.
4. What are you going to do with attracted clients?
Form a list of potential customers for further work with them.
Sale of front-end products.
Sale of back-end products.
The last two subparagraphs are worth considering in more detail. Depending on the complexity, popularity and cost of your product, you can choose two sales options: 1) the main and expensive product (back-end); 2) a small and cheap product (front-end).
Let me explain with examples. One of the owners of the pet store held an action: he took the local children on a tour and presented them with a goldfish in a bag of water. As soon as the happy children returned home, their parents faced a problem: what to do with this fish? If you do not put her in an aquarium, she will soon die, and the child will be upset. Thus, in order to remedy the situation, many parents had to return to this pet store and buy an aquarium, food and other related products. In addition, they most likely became regular customers of this store, because. the fish had to be looked after.
This is a clear example of selling a front-end product. The cost of the fish itself is low.
The main money the store makes on the sale of related products.
Another example. Sale of system integrated solutions costing from $10,000 to $500,000 is a complex complex service. This is a typical back-end. Such sales require many months of preparatory work with the client. In this case, your advertisement should be highly specialized, since 99% of consumers are not interested in it, and it is simply imprudent to spray your budget in this case.
So, we have decided on what and to whom you will sell. Let's move on to the next step.
In order not to resort to expensive services of professionals, use a simple method: divide the flow of incoming customers.
If you use the following methods, most likely, you will not have to spend a lot of extra money.
Give different ads different phone numbers that are not used anywhere else. As a phone number in your advertisement, use those numbers that are not on your site, in business cards, handouts - nowhere else. Ideally, this number should not have been used before. If you do not have funds for the permanent purchase of telephone numbers, use the numbers “8-800-…” for this purpose. You may well purchase such a number only for the duration of your advertising campaign.
Advice. When purchasing a number with the code 8-800 for a particular advertising campaign, try not to focus on its appearance ("beauty") - it's better to find out if it has ever been used. As practice shows, the type of number does not affect sales in any way, and the fact that it has not been used before will save you from incoming calls that are not related to your advertising campaign.
When creating handouts, use several templates (layouts).
Using a simple call "Bring this flyer to our office and you will receive ...", you can easily track the effectiveness of advertising simply by the number of flyers collected back.
Never use multiple flyer options at the same time. First, put into operation one, a little later - the next. This will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of the text of each template and not confuse your groups of potential customers.
Once you've created an ad performance tracking system, you can move on to the next step.
STEP THREE: BENEFITS AND BENEFITS.
The client is interested, but not yet ready to make a purchase, so he needs a little help - push in the right direction for you.
A very useful tool in this case is a pre-compiled list of product advantages and benefits for the client.
Most sellers in their practice focus only on the properties of the product and its benefits. How often do you hear advertising slogans like “We have the cheapest product”, “We have the best offer on the market”, “You will find everything much more expensive / worse at our competitors”? These are all the most common sales phrases, but none of them answers the most important question for the client: what exactly is good for me personally? Your product may be more expensive, have less colorful packaging, or be exactly the same as a dozen other offices in the city, but if the client receives an answer from you that clearly states how he can use your offer for his own benefit, then the purchase process can be considered completed.
To prevent improvisation on the part of your salespeople, the answers to such questions should be prepared in advance. Make a list, such as the one in the table.
The principle is quite simple and, I think, understandable.
In the first column, you write the properties of the product / service (physical characteristics, color, size, basic parameters, etc.). In the second - everything that will allow you to stand out from your competitors: you need to indicate the difference in the characteristics of your product and the products of the closest competitor. Then we take the benefits from the second column and transform them into benefits: what the client will receive by purchasing your product / service. As you can see, a single property can have multiple benefits.
When compiling a list of benefits, select as many factors as possible that will be useful, convenient and pleasant for the client personally. As you try to do this, be sure to ask yourself the following questions.
How much money will I save by purchasing this product?
Will I have more free time if I use it?
Will I have fewer responsibilities when using this product? Of course, there can be any number of questions. Expand the list as you see fit.
Example. “The new Turbo-2000 vacuum cleaner has a power of 150 kW. This means that it is 30% more powerful than all competitors in its class. What does this mean for you? In addition to making your carpets much cleaner (and your kids coughing and getting sick less often), you can save up to half an hour on each cleaning. Half an hour twice a week is almost four days a year that you can devote to your children and loved ones.
This means you will be closer to your family, instead of doing boring and hateful cleaning. From the faceless characteristics of 150 kW, we moved on to the values of the family and free time. Agree, imagining colorful holidays with children and loved ones is much more pleasant than comparing the power of different models and trying to understand what it will give in the end. Come up with a similar story ahead of time for your salespeople to use when a customer calls them.
Make a list of at least seven features of your product or service and write down the benefits and benefits associated with them.
How should the resulting list be used? At the very beginning of the conversation, it is very convenient to use a full-fledged offer. During the conversation, your client most likely will not want to listen to such a speech every time, so you should limit yourself to declaring benefits and facts: you mention any benefit that he will receive and reinforce your idea with the relevant fact. In this case, it will sound convincing.
In addition to the convenience of selling, such a list will greatly facilitate the process of training new employees. This, of course, is not a full-fledged sales book, but already a document that can be given to any beginner.
To optimize the sales process, create a complete call script.
STEP FOUR: INCOMING CALL SCRIPT.
What should be in a well-written script? Let's list the points.
1. Greeting.
2. Finding out what specifically interested the client.
3. Purchase offer.
4. Work with objections (in case of doubts on the part of the client).
5. Completion of the sale (the sale itself or the collection of contacts for subsequent calls).
Depending on the specifics of the business, you can decide for yourself whether you need to follow the call script thoroughly, or whether it will only serve as a mock-up for the sale.
In this case, it all depends on the professionalism of your employees: the more experience they have, the further they can retreat from the scenario.
Why is a script useful and why do it? Let's list the main reasons.
It is the ideal training tool for new employees. Just a couple of hours - and a new person can already participate in the sale process.
A written script will give your employees the ability to sell and not invent new sales methods on the go.
Working on an existing plan makes it easier to make decisions in the sales process.
Of course, it's up to you to write a call script or not, but I advise you to do it. Even if your salespeople don't follow this plan to perfection, you'll still have a great tool to pass on the experience. As my recruiting practice shows, it is easier to develop a good salesperson from a beginner than to find a sales professional in your particular market. There are few good specialists, their services are very expensive, and employers are trying their best to get such people. Thus, you can save even more.
STEP FIVE: RECEIVING INCOMING CALLS.
At this point, you have already completed two tasks: create an advertising source and a system for tracking the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
Of course, all this can be done at a more professional level, but for a start, this is good.
Too many small business owners, directors, and entrepreneurs don't do this either.
Now you should focus on receiving incoming calls. In order for the sales process to be effective, you need to remember the simple rules of selling this way.
Remember that you are taking calls from almost ready-to-buy customers.
Focus on the specific product captured in your promotional offer.
Now let's talk about this in more detail. The client who called you is interested and asks you to help you understand the benefits of a particular product / a particular service.
In the case of such an advertising campaign, you sell only one item. Don't try to offer the customer something outside of the promotional offer until the main buying process is complete. That is why you should abandon the standard questions “What interested you?” and “How can I help you?” If you followed our advice and allocated a separate phone number for your advertising campaign, then you will immediately know what your client is interested in. This will allow you to achieve several goals at the same time:
show your professionalism;
filter client requests;
focus on selling a particular product.
In this case, you can focus all your energy on selling. You will not need to try to find out from the client which product from your line he is interested in, build an offer, etc.
In order for the process to be even more successful, it is imperative to prepare. You already have a list of benefits and benefits, a cold call script that will allow you to start selling almost automatically. With benefits and benefits, and facts to back up what they say, your salespeople will be able to close many more deals than ever before.
If a person still did not dare to purchase your product at the first call, it is necessary to competently end the conversation so as not to miss a potential client, on attracting whom money has already been spent.
STEP SIX: END THE CONVERSATION.
At the end of a conversation, there are at least two things to do.
1. Once again, briefly describe your offer to the client. Do not make your speech long - 15-20 words will suffice. Otherwise, the person may simply hang up. Remember to focus on the benefits.
2. Indicate to the client a specific deadline for the completion of the promotion. He must understand that this promotional offer is strictly limited in time, and if he does not hurry up with making a decision, he may simply not be in time.
Try to make several variations of the "closing" proposal. Perhaps one will be more effective than the other. Do not forget to test them in practice: your ideas and opinions of customers can vary greatly.
During the sale process, do not forget to take the contact details from the client. Depending on the sales channels you use, these can be phone numbers, email addresses, and even physical postal addresses. If the client does not want to provide this data, offer some kind of bonus in return that will allow you to consider your transaction mutually beneficial.
STEP SEVEN: AFTER-SALE.
If there is no result in the first conversation with the client, you should not stop trying. Remember how much money you spent to attract him: the cost of advertising channels, employee salaries, etc. Leaving a client just because they refused would be the height of recklessness.
As soon as you have taken the customer's contact details, the post-sales process begins. Three to five days after his first call, contact him yourself. Find out what prompted him to refuse the purchase the first time, and make him a new proposal. You can give him a discount, bonuses, gifts, a package of services (attach something to the main product at a bargain price) - the possibilities are truly endless.
The cheapest option is to simply ignore his objections, but this is not always beneficial. As a rule, it is the "package" offers that work best.
Note that cold calls should never be made by inbound-only employees.
If there is no follow-up sale, move the customer to a special list (call it, for example, "1 month"). Call all clients who are in it at the end of each month. Usually 15-20% of the people on this list can buy something from you. In addition, make a list of "1 quarter" and transfer there those who refused again. Thus, not a single client of those whom you have attracted will ever be left without attention. Sellers will get a good base to work with, and potential buyers will regularly acquire the status of buyers.
In this article, I've shared seven simple steps you need to follow to start selling on incoming phone calls. The volume of the article did not allow us to consider each of them in great detail, but, in my opinion, the information is enough to start selling.
The tricks seem pretty simple, but that doesn't make them any less effective.
In my practice, I have rarely come across companies where all seven steps have been implemented.
Don't procrastinate on things. If you are interested in something, mark it in your plan and start solving the issue immediately.
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