10+ Tips to Build a Human Connection on Sales Calls [“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
10+ Tips to Build a Human Connection on Sales Calls
[“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
[“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
Ready to bring the “human” back into sales calls? Join us for a special “Double Shot” featuring our friends at #GirlsClub and BombBomb. You’ll hear best practices and tactical tips on how to build a connection with your prospects and customers, from utilizing storytelling to incorporating videos in your outreach to letting your personality shine on sales calls.
Ready to bring the “human” back into sales calls? Join us for a special “Double Shot” featuring our friends at #GirlsClub and BombBomb. You’ll hear best practices and tactical tips on how to build a connection with your prospects and customers, from utilizing storytelling to incorporating videos in your outreach to letting your personality shine on sales calls.
[“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
Using a story to prove a point can be up to 20x (yes, you read that right) more effective than just delivering facts. By crafting an engaging story about your experience, company, and solutions, you’ll have your prospects and customers leaning in and wanting to know more.
In this session, you’ll learn the components of a great story, plus actionable tips you can apply on your sales calls. We’ll go beyond building rapport to creating customer engagement on every call!
Bonus: You’ll also gain access to our cheat sheet that’ll help you become a better storyteller!
Using a story to prove a point can be up to 20x (yes, you read that right) more effective than just delivering facts. By crafting an engaging story about your experience, company, and solutions, you’ll have your prospects and customers leaning in and wanting to know more.
In this session, you’ll learn the components of a great story, plus actionable tips you can apply on your sales calls. We’ll go beyond building rapport to creating customer engagement on every call!
Bonus: You’ll also gain access to our cheat sheet that’ll help you become a better storyteller!
Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Customer Referrals + Relationships
Did you know that 83% of customers are willing to offer a referral after a positive experience? It’s true! So, why aren’t reps getting more sales referrals? Honestly, many are too afraid to ask. It’s time to change that!
Let’s start out by covering the 3 key benefits of a referral:
Okay, now that we understand WHY referrals are the golden goose of the sales world, let’s talk about how to prepare for the ask! There are 3 things we need to have ready before we ask for a referral…
Next, now that we’ve discussed the benefits and we’ve prepared for the ask… it’s time to make the call. Let’s talk about the 4 steps to a foolproof referral!
Step 1: Bring it Up
Step 2: Get a Rave
Step 3: Repeat the SWIIFT Value
Step 4: Ask for a Specific Referral
One little bonus tip, if you ask for a name you will only get a name… so ask for more!
Once your client has offered you a name, the final step is to confirm with your client what their level of comfortability is when referencing them to the referral.
Level 1: Permission to use the contact’s name as a lever
Level 2: Would they be willing to e-introduce you, copying both you and the new contact?
Level 3: Would they be willing to call the new contact personally and tell them about you, prior to your reach out?
Level 4: An in-person meeting or live joint introductory call!
Okay, I know this is a lot of information. But once you put these rules into practice, I PROMISE you will see amazing results. Now let’s go out there and start raking in those referrals!
Join one of our upcoming Virtual Sales Training Masterclasses! We offer 4 different classes for BDRs, SDRs, ISRs, account executives, and account managers all focused on areas like prospecting, objection handling, gaining referrals, running virtual sales demos, closing, and more!
[“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
Have history in your accounts? Maybe even relationships? We’ll teach you how to leverage past success straight into your next win—an order, a partnership, or a referral.
Referral business closes faster, stays longer, and spends more. This workshop will give you the framework and the confidence to get more!
Need help adapting to the new remote selling world? Request a demo of Outreach, the #1 sales engagement platform that closes more deals faster — so your reps can achieve revenue goals from anywhere. Companies that choose Outreach can expect a 387% return on the investment over three years and an 11% increase in sales productivity (valued at $6.9M). See what the #1 sales engagement platform can do for your business today.
Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Customer Referrals + Relationships, Cross-Sell + Upsell
Sometimes an upsell is obvious. The kid at the movie theater register (MAN, I miss the movies) has obviously been scripted to say, “How about some Red Vines or nachos with that?”
That’s NOT what you want your customer care agent doing. To keep the analogy going, a great customer care agent might instead ask, “What are you seeing today?” and engage the moviegoer in good conversation while the kids are picking out candy or while the (always slow) popcorn machine is working.
This may lead to a conversation about whether or not they’ve seen a similar movie now playing, an upcoming special throw-back feature, or a kids’ summer movie pass. All great cross-sell upsell opportunities. She may ask the kids about their favorite type of candy and share hers – uncovering an unstated need for chocolate and now we have an add-on opportunity. You get it.
From a sales perspective, your care agent has nearly unfettered access to your buyers, your users, your influencers. They have unguarded conversations about the user experience, the chance to solve problems, the chance to CARE. If a sales rep called into the moviegoers with these questions after the movie, the buyer is wondering why the theater is calling them and they’re preparing their defenses for the pitch.
There are four major ways to add revenue to an install base:
Not all of us have all four opportunities in our install base, but most of us have at least one. Our job as leaders is to:
It might go like this in a technical care opportunity:
The customer is calling in with an issue with their internet outages/bandwidth now that they are homeschooling (this MIGHT be fresh in my mind). The customer care agent identifies they are using an outdated modem and begins to troubleshoot.
OR
Seems simple right? Be clear, I still don’t understand why my son just lost connectivity during virtual band (VIRTUAL BAND!?!), but I did buy more bandwidth, a new modem and router and these pod deals in the past month, and I was infinitely grateful that my care agent suggested them.
Does this seem like a big lift for your care agents? Try the workaround where you stop at #2 and the care agent enters a potential opportunity for sales to call back. CRM says:
“Customer has frequent outages, modem fixed, may need more bandwidth or pods.”
Now our job as sales leaders is to work with the sales team. At this stage, a call to an internet customer who just spent an hour with tech support could go either way, right? See which scenario you’d appreciate as a home internet user:
This is how you maximize every touch. Remember, making suggestions to clients is true selling. It’s how we become that trusted adviser and consultative seller. Unfortunately, our sellers have less and less opportunity to be in front of customers to identify opportunities to do so. Read more about customer touches in my blog on the 3 questions customer care agents should be asking to help generate revenue.
Not all your care agents will get it, excel at it, or even like it. Part of the training we like to provide here is a mindset shift. Solving problems is their job, your products and services solve their problems. The “Did you know we also?” conversation goes a long way and in our experience, they’ll get a few bites a day.
How many care agents do you have that could be funneling a few leads/day to your sales team?
Bonus: The agents that DO get it are a great hiring pool for your next sales position!
Fill out the form below to learn more.
Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Customer Referrals + Relationships, Cross-Sell + Upsell
In the past few years, the number of touches required to make a sale has more than doubled. In 2017 the number was under 4, and in 2020 we talk about 8+ touches. This is hardly a surprise to any sales, marketing, or customer success team. It’s also why top executives strive to maximize every customer touch.
What do we mean by maximizing a touch? Simply put, it means getting as much valuable information and opportunity from the customer every time we talk AND adding as much value as possible at the same time. What if every person that interacted with your customer could help mine more information, plant seeds for more opportunity, or even (allow a girl to dream) identify sales opportunities and seamlessly pass them or (gasp!) work them to a certain level? In short, the dream is that all sales leaders could consider their customer care and customer success teams as extensions of the sales team.
Seems logical and simple in theory, until you consider that these orgs often roll up to owners outside of sales, may have different systems, leaders, goals and KPIs. They also have widely varying hiring profiles. An inbound customer care agent performs well with a reactive personality, a high ability to multitask, patience, and a core need to help. Now let’s weave in the customer experience on top of this. A customer care or customer success team is goaled with solving customer problems, answering questions, and ensuring they are engaged and thrilled with their experience with our products, people, and services. And here-in lies the rub.
In fact, I’ve spoken with many Customer Success Leaders who adamantly refuse to include any type of sales objectives or goals for their teams in fear it would negatively impact the customer experience.
I hear you. I just don’t agree. When we have a live body from our customer pool engaged on a call with us, we just saved 8 calls. Let’s maximize it. Let’s also remember the incredible value of referral business. It closes faster, has higher annual spend, and retains longer.
Fun fact: Referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value & an 18% lower churn rate.
What if our customer care teams could help us leverage into additional referred sales?
Think I’m dreaming again? Perhaps. So let’s focus on an easy place to start:
Three questions every customer service, customer care, or customer success agent should ask on calls to help them become an extension of your sales team.
This question uncovers opportunities. It’s the question we all wish our actual sales account managers asked more often. When we know the problem our solution solves for the customer, we can identify what other solutions, add-ons, services, etc., can also help. The goal is to find the use-case AND any gaps. Want to take it to the next level? Conduct internal product training for customer care agents and map common answers to potential solution fits. For example: A customer uses your service to bridge a gap between two departments. We know that our new software offering does the same for different departments. You’ve just uncovered an opportunity. The final dot on the “i” includes a few follow-up questions for your agents. In this example we’d ask, what departments had the gap? How did it come to happen? What other departments experience this? Is it 100% solved? Great sales-focused product training helps map our products and services to the customer situation that needs them and then maps questions to uncover those situations. The Factor 8 course, “Mapping Solutions To Customer Needs” is an uber-popular custom course we’ve built for companies in many industries to help build these bridges.
Again, adding licenses and services is a common goal for any customer success agent. We won’t know about opportunities if we aren’t asking about changes in the business – especially growth. Rather than letting your rep make 8 calls to ask a sales-focused question (a “me” question”), why not get the information from your customer care or customer success team. Much easier to weave this into a conversation about product-fit and satisfaction while we already have them on the phone!
Not only does this rake in great testimonials and candidates for case studies, it leads to conversations about how we can make the experience even better. A smart question for the care goals, and even better for sales and product teams. At Factor 8, we use this information to help us build our curriculum development roadmap (I wish you had a class on “Having Difficult Conversations” helped us prioritize this webinar and e-learning content development). Learning that clients wanted to keep the “buzz” we created alive longer helped us add more consulting services and tools to help managers get more involved in coaching. This is the true “voice of the customer” for product and sales teams and when customer care agents know about add-on services and sales, at least 1 out of 10 conversations will uncover an actual opportunity nugget for something you already do.
Great feedback on clients’ favorite parts of their experience with you is also the fuel you need to “Leverage the Rave” to ask for referrals. Even if your customer care agents aren’t prepared to execute this skill yet, a great nugget is a perfect reason for an account executive to call, learn more, and ask for a referral to another internal or external buyer.
Want to learn more about training your agents to ask for referrals? We have a class for that in the Sales Bar. Just ask us about it here.
Not sure how to execute from here? A simple answer is a monthly touch point between sales and customer care where they bring answers and trends to these top 3 questions to help us pass the lead, queue up referral calls, and even brainstorm add-on products and services.
BONUS: It’s also a great way to find superstars in these organizations you’ll want to earmark for future sales openings.
Fill out the form below to learn more.
[Webinar Recording]
Join virtual selling expert Lauren Bailey, founder of award-winning training company Factor 8, and Mark Baird, Ascent Cloud VP of Sales, as they discuss surprising statistics and trends in phone sales and tactical virtual selling tips you can start using today to better connect with your customers, get more calls back, penetrate your market, and get more accomplished while selling virtually.
Come prepared to take notes, have a laugh, and get excited to learn more – and accomplish more during our virtual situation.
Join virtual selling expert Lauren Bailey, founder of award-winning training company Factor 8, and Mark Baird, Ascent Cloud VP of Sales, as they discuss surprising statistics and trends in phone sales and tactical virtual selling tips you can start using today to better connect with your customers, get more calls back, penetrate your market, and get more accomplished while selling virtually.
Come prepared to take notes, have a laugh, and get excited to learn more – and accomplish more during our virtual situation.
Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Customer Referrals + Relationships
Whether you’re an experienced virtual seller or just getting your “inside legs” after transitioning from face-to-face field selling, we all need more reasons to call our customers. This is because we don’t get to “bump into” customers in the hallways and because we tend to get less accomplished in sales phone calls (See this blog here on call goals).
So why do we need a reason to call? Because “touching base” is a mortal sin. Wait, too much? Nope, seriously not overstating that. Never ever, ever just call to check in. Your prospect’s time is valuable, and if you’ve nothing better to do than check in, don’t call at all. (You’ll notice I’m interchanging customer and prospect in this article. Treat them the same.)
And why do we need multiple calls? Because we’re fighting “out of sight, out of mind,” and because we have our own goals to accomplish. We may not have gotten all the information we needed in our previous calls, or we may just be trying to avoid the dreaded “gone dark” that happens more in virtual selling than face to face. Your goals for calling back are to get more information, get a status update, or just stay top of mind, but unfortunately, those aren’t great prospect-facing reasons to call. Doubt me? Try leaving a message like this and see if you get a call back:
“I’m just calling to get a status update and check in. Call me back…”
You’ll be waiting a long time.
So the goal instead is to call with a customer-value-add reason and then accomplish your goals. That brings us back to the topic at hand.