What should you do if your customer doesn’t respond to your quote or proposal? You will want to follow it up and get some feedback. Equally though you have to be careful not to irritate them. Too much dogged determination may be counter-productive. So be intelligent in how you play it.
Is having your customer facing phone team working from home a good idea? It has it’s advantages but perhaps it isn’t what’s best for your customers and that is what is important ultimately.
Should you tolerate a customer who swears at you? Clearly not but the answer is more nuanced than that. If you terminate the call the customer still has the same problem. So if you feel comfortable deal with it as best you can as if they weren’t swearing at you.
5 top tips to help you secure more appointments over the phone. Ensure you have a clear idea about what you are trying to achieve but remember that you must work to build rapport from the start. This involves getting them into conversation – not bombarding them with statements about how good your company and it’s products are.
Directing the conversation is a key skill when trying to steer your customer in the right direction on the telephone. On our 2 day courses we show you the easy to use 2 stage process – the Seek & Speak circle. We demonstrate it to you, and then give you the chance to try it for yourselves.
Training is a great way of adding skills and capability but also providing motivation. To get some added verve and feeling of appreciation that you’re investing in them. Training works on many levels.
Christmas and new year is a great time to take stock and review your business, your product lines, your customer mix etc. Most of the country goes quiet, so you can take time out to think, without being worried that the rest of the economy and your competitors in particular are stealing a march on you.
Good selling in B2B is often about informing and offering knowledge, and advice to your customer, then allowing them to make their decision. Building your own credibility with industrial or commercial customers will pay great dividends long-term once they know they can trust you.
Switch selling and how to. This is about finding another way of offering a different solution for the same requirement. Selling adhesives for instance to someone who thought they wanted nails or screws. This needs some good questioning skills to find out more about the need and also good listening to fully understand the customer’s standpoint. But done well, it helps you build great credibility with your customer.
Building up your knowledge about the decision-making unit within your client accounts is important to help keep your competitors out. Otherwise you’re vulnerable if one day your key contact leaves. On a recent course we discussed some ideas to help you keep in with your customer accounts.