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<\/a>more people interested in buying their services. But then when the phone actually starts to ring, they make the following fatal mistakes.<\/p>\nPhone Sales Killer Mistake 1 \u2013 Not answering the phone<\/strong> Imagine you were looking for a yoga class, or a new fitness trainer. You call a gym you\u2019re interested in and no one picks up the phone or you just get voicemail. What do you do? You move on, and you call a competitor, another gym.<\/p>\n Not having a live person answer the phone during normal working hours is fatal to your business. You\u2019re essentially handing your business to your competition.<\/p>\n In the case of the above client, Tom\u2019s concern was that it was going to cost him a couple hundred dollars a week to hire an answering service or make a staff person available to answer the phone. Which is true.<\/p>\n But by not having someone available to answer the phone, spending a few hundred dollars a week, Tom was losing between $2,000 and $4,000 dollars a week.<\/p>\n Is it worth it to pay someone to answer the phone and avoid losing your leads? You do the math.<\/p>\n Phone Sales Killer Mistake 2 \u2013 Directing prospects who call to your website<\/strong> Here\u2019s what happens when prospects call, ready to schedule a class (the first one is free). With the exception of one staff member, the people answering the phone, tell the prospect to go signup on their website and end the call. Which in essence tells the prospect they\u2019re not worth talking to. Nice!<\/p>\n Now if you\u2019re United Airlines or Continental \u2013 you can get away with degrading your customer experience and insulting your customers \u2013 because they don\u2019t have a lot of choices. You can make it more costly to book your flight by phone and force people to use your website to cut your costs.<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re a local service provider this kind of arrogance is bad for business, actually fatal to your sales.<\/p>\n Everybody likes the idea of using the web to handle all marketing and sales. But, unless you\u2019re an Amazon.com, the web isn\u2019t a sales tool \u2013 it\u2019s a lead generator.<\/p>\n The purpose of your website is to get the phone ringing so you can talk to prospects, ask them what they are interested in – and one-on-one on the phone you can help them sign up for the class or service they want.<\/p>\n To be fair, Sue had one staff member, who in contrast to the rest, excelled at talking to prospects on the phone. Instead of basically hanging up on prospects, Sandy took the calls and used them to sign people up right there \u2013 yes on the phone.<\/p>\n In one case, we heard Sandy talking to a client who was paying for a babysitter so she could come to the gym. Sandy, pointed out to the client they could save some money by scheduling her son for a class at the same time.<\/p>\n That was brilliant. And by doing so, they helped the client and sold her on two classes \u2013 one for herself and one for her son. Neither of which could have happened if Sandy had just told them to go sign up via the website.<\/p>\n Phone Sales Killer Mistake 3 \u2013 Telling prospects a sales person will call<\/strong> But like most companies \u2013 when someone calls and is interested in talking with them, they, in essence, throw away the leads.<\/p>\n When you call this equipment manufacturer the standard procedure is to take the prospects\u2019 information and tell them a sales person will be in touch. Big mistake!<\/p>\n As I mentioned before, when a person finally picks up the phone to make a call and expresses interest in your products or services, they want to talk with someone \u2013 right then. They don\u2019t want to get the brush off.<\/p>\n Ignore them and they\u2019ll move on to call your competitor or even if they don\u2019t \u2013 good luck getting them back on the phone. Typically when you try returning calls you\u2019ll be doing well if you get 10% of them back on the phone – which means you just lost 90% of the leads calling your office.<\/p>\n Instead, the smart thing to do is to have one of your experts available to talk with the people who want to spend money with you. You want to have the receptionist ask the prospect a few questions and then connect them, right then and there to someone who can get the conversation started.<\/p>\n Even if your staff person doesn\u2019t have all the answers, they can start to discover what the prospect is looking for, and start building the relationship.<\/p>\n Okay, what do you do if you get more calls than you have people to answer them?<\/p>\n Have the receptionist explain the situation, e.g. you\u2019re swamped with buyers calling in and all your staff is busy, and explain how much you value the prospect\u2019s interest and then schedule them for a follow-up call. Get them to open up their calendar, pick a time and schedule a time for them to call one of your product experts. And of course, after you hang up, send them a confirmation email.<\/p>\n By now you may be asking yourself how is it I know all this stuff about my clients? How do I know how they answer the phone and what they say to prospects?<\/p>\n At ClientsDelivered we use tracking phone numbers and we record all incoming calls to our clients. Then, once a month, our staff actually listens to the calls and scores them. And more often than not, what we find out is shocking to us and to the business owners \u2013 at least the first couple of months before we train them on how to answer the phone.<\/p>\n How about you?<\/p>\n Does your company record and review incoming phone calls?<\/p>\n With just a few changes, using proven phone answering formulas and systems you could easily increase sales next month by 30% or more.<\/p>\n Comments?<\/p>\n Questions?<\/p>\n To your success,<\/p>\n Charlie P.S. I\u2019ve only mentioned 3 of the fatal phone mistakes most people make above. There are dozens more but you probably knew that.<\/p>\n
\nWe have one client who is eager to sign up more people for his gym in San Diego. But he\u2019s a busy person (we\u2019ll call him Tom) and rarely able to pick up the phone when prospects call. The result was that 50% or more of the calls went to voicemail.<\/p>\n
\nAnother client of ours, again a fitness center owner – (we\u2019ll call her Sue) \u2013recently opened her facility in Chicago and wanted to sign up new members, get fitness buffs in the door.<\/p>\n
\nAt one company we work with, their primary product (industrial machinery) goes for around $50,000. It\u2019s a big order and each prospect has the potential to be worth a lot to the company.<\/p>\n
\nMarketingForSuccess<\/p>\n