Archive for the ‘customer handling’ Category
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Questions really are the answer. It is true that good and effective questioning skills are key to building good relationships with your customers and prospects. And remember that everyone is a customer, it’s just that some of them haven’t bought from you yet !
Questioning skills are key to building good relationships with customers
I was with a customer yesterday who was talking about the fact that his sales team who deal with customers on the phone and on the trade counter don’t readily offer alternatives when a customer asks for a product which is out of stock. This is so important for a number of reasons.
First it is important to remember that a customer who calls you on the phone or in person really wants to go away with their problem solved. They don’t really want to have to try somewhere else or phone around. So in fact, by offering alternatives you are potentially solving a problem for them. Be proactive – it is good selling and good customer service.
Secondly a customer or client can often go away with a solution that they’re happy with, or in some instances happier with than what they thought they needed ! Use your experience and expertise to offer them other things they may not be aware of.
And the best way of offering advice and alternatives is by questioning. Only by using quality questioning skills will you be able to find out all you need to know about the customer’s application and their requirements. That is important as the advice you come back with, is likely to be more useful to them. They will also respect the fact that you’ve listened and shown some interest in them.
Questions then really are the answer, as they help you find out the things you need to know and at the same time it helps you build rapport because you show interest. It works for professionals such as lawyers, accountants, detectives and doctors. Let it work for you too.
To Market runs training sessions that include beefint up your questioning techniques across the West and East Midlands including Birmingham, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham, Daventry, Solihull, Lichfield, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, Leicester, Northampton and London
Tags: advice for free on telephone selling, free sales tips, sales advice, selling more on the phone, selling on the telephone, telesales advice
Posted in communication skills, customer handling, Customer Service tips, Field sales training, Selling advice, telephone techniques, telesales, Telesales tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Customer service training for your service desk is an important training topic at the moment it seems. Increasing numbers of companies are talking to us about customer service training for their after sales or service desk team.
Customer Service training for after sales is a hot topic
This is partly about making the customer enjoy the experience of dealing with you. Customers with computers, cars, fork lift trucks, floor scrubber driers have a choice of where they go to for after sales servicing. It is important they leave feeling cared for, that they’ve been treated fairly and they aren’t being ripped off.
There are many situations in your car dealership or service area that have to be handled sensitively. For instance how do you handle presenting a larger bill than the customer was expecting – in these trying times ?!
How do you also ensure that when your technician identifies some work that needs doing, this gets converted into business for your service team ? How do you avoid the person driving out and getting the work done elsewhere ? Many car dealerships are monitoring these figures now, and often conversion rates are poor. In fact less than 40% on 2 occasions we’ve been involved in recently.
Think what an increase to 50% conversion would do for your business. Talk to us if you’re serious about making a difference – with a strong desire to improve the experience your customers have of dealing with your organisation.
Finally – How do you deliver bad news ? Using positive language will make a big difference. A separate article has been added on this issue recently.
To Market runs customer service, telesales and telemarketing training in many service lead organisations including car dealers, fork lift truck dealers, industrial washer scrubber dryers, machine tool companies, computer software providers, I.T. support companies, car dealerships, agricultural machinery suppliers, motor factors, computer retailers as well as a wide range of business to business, and industrial sales organisations.
Tags: after sales, customer service training, customer service training programmes, excellent customer service, service desk
Posted in communication skills, customer handling, Customer service management, Customer Service tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
In the travel industry, holiday companies and tour operators frequently employ an army of homeworkers. This works well for a number of reasons.
Homeworkers gives more flexibility for your sales agents
You have access to a wider part of the job market, and the sales agent is motivated to perform. The slight difficulty is in arranging training for them. You know they need sales training, but often getting your home based team into your offices at the same time for training can be challenging !
Holiday Experts have announced (in Travel Weekly 23rd Oct 2009) that they expect to recruit another 100 home workers during the next two years after several of their existing team saw their commission earnings increased by more than 41% following successful in-house training. Alan Cook our travel industry training specialist has many years sales training experience having worked at Thomas Cook and Page & Moy, now part of Travelsphere. He has run many successful training programmes and can even offer home based one to one coaching and training for your sales staff. We can be flexible in how we deliver travel industry telephone sales training so you and your team don’t have to be !
Tags: travel agents training, travel industry, travel industry mentoring, travel sales training, travel sector training
Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, communication skills, customer handling, sales development training, Selling advice, telephone techniques, telesales, Telesales team assessment, Travel industry training | No Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Hiring top people is expensive – training them to be top people is more cost effective. I came across the following quote while rereading the One Minute Manager, a top business book from the 1980s. The advice is still as relevant now ……
“You really have three choices as a manager. First you can hire winners. They are hard to find and they cost money. Or second, if you can’t find a winner, you can hire someone with the potential to be a winner. Then you systematically train that person to become a winner. If you are not willing to do either of the first two (and I am continually amazed at the number of managers who won’t spend the money to hire a winner or take the time to train someone to become a winner), then there is only the third choice left – prayer.” From the One Minute Manager (Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson)
The case for training is clear, develop the people you have and turn them into winners. Whether you have customer service, internal sales, telesales or telemarketing people, they must be motivated and trained to be the absolute best they can be. Not only will they be more successful for you, but they will also enjoy being successful and will be more motivated. You know it makes sense !
Training is cheaper than recruitment
Tags: customer service training, effective training, leicester, management, northampton, telemarketing training, telephone techniques, telesales team motivation, telesales training
Posted in communication skills, customer handling, Customer service management, customer services, Independent audit of telemarketing team, sales development training, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telephone techniques, telesales, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Travel industry sales training – holiday companies. Travel companies often have a particular interest in working with training providers who have a detailed knowledge of the travel business.
Sales training and customer service training for these companies is as important now as it has ever been. We are pleased that we secured the services of a top travel industry trainer. Alan Cook has over 25 years experience working as a trainer and most of them with travel companies. He joined us back in 2007, with a wealth of experience in the travel and leisure industry.
Alan Cook - specialist travel industry trainer
If you are looking to increase your conversion rates on the phone, to sell more, to make more bookings of your overseas, or ski or UK based holidays we know a man who can. He’s already been doing it for a number of years. Alan Cook has many years experience having worked for Thomas Cook at Peterborough, and Page and Moy a Leicester based travel company now owned by Market Harborough based travel group Travelsphere.
Contact us info@tomarket.co.uk if you are a travel industry company wanting to do more. We can help.
Expert travel industry training in Leicester, Market Harborough, Peterborough, Manchester, Brighton, London, Birmingham, York, Cambridge, Coventry, Nottingham, Derby. In-house training, coaching programmes and mentoring for customer service, telesales and sales agents for UK breaks, ski holidays, tours, cruises, chalets, escorted tours etc.
Tags: customer service coaching, customer service training, increasing sales, sales training, selling more on the phone, travel industry mentoring, travel sales training
Posted in benchmarking customer service teams, benchmarking telesales teams, communication skills, customer handling, Customer service management, customer service team assessment, customer services, Overcoming objections, sales development training, Selling advice, telephone techniques, telesales, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Telesales, telemarketing, and customer service training from To Market is available for London based companies : onsite at your premises.
So for you no travel costs, no venue hire and no on-costs. We now have 4 days per month allocated to running telephone skills training for you in London. If you are based in London and have a 0207 or 0208 telephone number you qualify for these 2 day courses : we offer 2 versions of our communications skills course.
Customer service telephone skills training for your contact centre, call centre or customer service team is available. It covers such vital skills as listening, how to use your voice to display interest, and questioning skills to establish what they really want. Also how to understand the power of the 80% of your communication that either makes the customer warm to you, or alternatively puts them off ! It’s all good stuff.
We do of course also cover such topics as how to calm difficult and demanding people and how to ensure you offer exceptional customer service. It’s all about exceeding customer expectations.
The alternative course is for business development and so covers outbound telesales, telemarketing and internal sales calls.
The bells and whistles training package also gets you a series of training audio CDs on customer service that you can use after the customer service training programme is complete.
If you’re a London based company who wants sharper skills when dealing with customers on the phone, contact us, we can help with quality customer service and telesales training. Last year, one of our clients won a Sunday Times award for the best customer service in their sector. Who knows, next year it could be you !
Telesales & customer service training - London
Tags: customer service seminar, customer service training in-house London, customer service training London, London call centre training, London telemarketing training, onsite training for customer service, telephone skills training london, telephone techniques, telesales skills, telesales training London
Posted in communication skills, customer handling, customer services, Forthcoming courses, London, sales development training, Selling advice, Telemarketing management, telephone techniques | No Comments »
Monday, August 10th, 2009
Exceptional customer service and it’s really not that exceptional is it, is about effort. The businesses who do will prosper and those who don’t won’t ! It really is as simple as that.
Last week I went to a local town and was searching for a particular ordnance survey map. I visited 3 shops who sell maps. The first didn’t have the one I wanted on display. So I moved on. Shop number 2 had a small display and a lady stood behind the counter. “Do you have any others apart from these, as the one I want isn’t here ?” I asked. “No only those” she replied. “OK, when will you next have more stock in ?” I persisted. “We have a delivery every couple of months or so.” ‘Wow’ I thought, not exactly racing out of the shop then are they ?
“And can you order the ones you want ?” I followed up with. “No, not really we just get issued with this small range.” At no point did she suggest that she could order it, not did she suggest another solution. I was unimpressed.
Shop 3 also didn’t have the map, and so I returned to shop 1 and asked the busy manager if she had any more stock. She said that she didn’t but she would be seeing the rep on Wednesday. She said that she was willing to call him, if I was prepared to wait 5 minutes. I did and she went off to make the call.
The outcome ? Well she is getting one dropped off on Wednesday afternoon, so guess which shop will be getting my map business. It may only be an £8 purchase, but it’s still all about effort. Make sure that you go the extra mile, and are willing to help people. Not only will your actions solve more customer problems, and help you maximise any opportunity, but also you’ll impress them !
And in these times where there is less money going round the economy, there is more need to make sure you get more than your usual share.
This is one of many important topics we cover on our 2 day customer service masterclass courses. The venue for the next course is likely to be the East Midlands and so is ideal for any customer service, contact centre, call centre personnel in Kettering, Wellingborough, Northampton, Peterborough, Corby, Market Harborough, Lutterworth, Leicester, Loughborough and Northamptonshire. http://www.tomarket.co.uk/courses.php gives you dates of this and other courses.
Tags: customer service 2 day seminar, customer service advice, customer service tips, customer service training, customer service workshop, exceeding customer expectations, exceptional customer service training, offering great customer service
Posted in communication skills, customer handling, Customer service management, customer service team assessment, customer services, Forthcoming courses | No Comments »
Friday, July 24th, 2009
For goodness sake ! No really ! I nearly swore then !
For heaven’s sake when you’re designing your customer service process, or when you’re offering customer service yourself, for goodness sake use a bit of common sense. Of course we’re all brought up with the mantra of exceeding customer expectations, or delivering exceptional customer service and all the best practice in customer service training, but be a human too !
I walked into Sainsburys and bought just one item, a one pint of milk. So I don’t know what that weighs, around 1 1/2 lbs I guess. Because I only had one item I went to the one item till. The guy’s opening gambit line to me was “Would you like help with your packing ?” Really he did. He didn’t smile as he said it, he really meant it.
Use a bit of common sense when dealing with your customers in business, and treat them as individuals and prove that you are one too ! Think outside the square and be prepared to go beyond the process and the system. People will thank you for it and remember your great service.
Tags: advice on customer service, customer service best practice, customer service in retail shops, customer service tips, customer service training, delivering exceptional customer service, exceeding customer expectations
Posted in communication skills, customer handling, Customer service management, customer services, retail sales | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
A one day business development seminar is about to be run for business owners and is fully funded in the East of England, the Eastern Counties including Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
If you’re a director or business owner manager of a small to medium sized business in Leicestershire in the East of England your place at this £500 one day business development seminar may qualify for full funding. So to you – not a bean ! Not one shilling !
Funded is available through Train to Gain. The seminar is titled
How to win and keep more business
So it will cover elements of sales, customer service and how to motivate your team to build better customer relationships. And of course you will pick up ideas from other people like you (who run their own businesses) so good opportunities to network too with like-minded people.
If you think you may qualify, and you’d like more details on how to improve the sales and customer service functions within your company just let us know via e-mail. You can e-mail me directly and I’ll write to you personally with more details. If you have any questions in the meantime – pick up the phone and give us a call.
This seminar is ideal for business owners, and directors within companies in Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds, Newmarket, Norwich, Ipswich, St Ives, Haverhill, St Albans, Stevenage, Letchworth, Baldock, Hemel Hempstead, Luton, Leighton Buzzard, as well as the wider counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire
Tags: Bury St Edmunds, business development ideas, business growth seminar, cambridge, Ely, fully funded training, funded business growth seminar, Haverhill, Hemel, how to build business workshop, Ipswich, Luton, new business development, Newmarket, St Ives, Train to Gain funded training, training for business owners
Posted in business development, business growth, customer handling, Customer service management, customer services, Field sales training, Free training, Funded training, owner managers directors, Personal development, sales development training, Selling advice, seminar, Train to Gain funding | No Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
A one day business development seminar is about to be run for owner managers fully funded in the East Midlands.
If you’re a director or owner manager of a small to medium sized business in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire your place at this £500 one day business development seminar may qualify for full funding. So to you – not a bean ! Not one penny !
It is being funded by the government through Train to Gain. The seminar will be based on
How to win and keep more business
So it will cover elements of sales, customer service and how to motivate your team to build better customer relationships. And of course you will pick up ideas from other people like you (who run their own businesses) so good opportunities to network too with like-minded people.
If you think you may qualify, and you’d like more details on how to improve the sales and customer service functions within your company just let us know via e-mail. You can e-mail me directly and I’ll write to you personally with more details. If you have any questions in the meantime – pick up the phone and give us a call.
This seminar is ideal for business owners, and directors within companies in Leicester, Northampton, Kettering, Corby, Loughborough, Coalville, Oakham, Rutland, Market Harborough, Wellingborough, Nottingham, Mansfield, Sutton in Ashfield, Derby, Lincoln, Newark, as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire
Tags: building business, business development, business growth seminar, business growth workshop, corby, customer service training, developing new business, Funded training, funding for business growth seminar, kettering, leicester, Lincoln, new business ideas seminar, northampton, Personal development, sales training
Posted in business development, business growth, customer handling, Customer service management, customer services, Field sales training, Free training, Funded training, owner managers directors, Personal development, sales development training, Selling advice, seminar, Train to Gain funding | No Comments »