Maximizing Inbound Sales

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Business Issue - The contact center is one of the most important alternative channels for delivering products and services. Contact center representatives are the first, and sometimes the only, employees whom current and potential customers ever encounter. Whether existing customers call regarding their accounts or prospects shop for information, contact center representatives must provide excellent service and professional, needs-based selling.

Omega Performance’s Solution - Maximizing Inbound Sales is designed to help contact center representatives expand their role as sales and service providers. The program is based on the fundamental principle that the best service you can provide customers is to meet all their needs through the sale of appropriate products and services. Participants have a chance to identify the poor practices that can make telephone solicitation irritating to people who are otherwise willing to do business by phone. They explore the role of attitude in positioning themselves for sales success.

During Maximizing Inbound Sales, participants learn how to use a Customer Interaction Model to provide efficient, optimal structure for each call. The model guides participants through a telephone sales process that includes establishing rapport, exploring needs, making recommendations, asking for the business, and concluding the call in a way that builds and sustains customer relationships.

What Is Included

The two-day workshop moves quickly and intensely through discussions and exercises that are grouped into eight units:

1) Consultative Sales. Consultative sales is relationship building. Participants discuss the impact of attitude on selling by phone and distinguish between product pushing and building relationships. They learn the role of attitude, discuss how sales equals service and present the benefits of telephone selling to the customer, their institution and themselves.

2) Establish Rapport. The Customer Interaction Model is introduced and participants begin to work with the Call Observation Guide to prepare for this first step in the model. They learn how to establish rapport and create interest in a very limited time frame, since the first 15 seconds on the line are the most critical.

3) Explore Needs with Customer. Relevant and appropriate questions create a conversation with a customer. Participants learn to explore customer needs by developing and asking questions. Their questions are based on information they already know from reviewing account screens, customer transactions or from something the customer says. Questioning techniques are discussed and practiced.

4) Recommend Solutions to Meet Needs. Participants develop sales messages that use persuasive words to describe features and benefits linked to customer needs. They practice making confident and compelling recommendations to customers and, when appropriate, making the right referral.

5) Obtain Agreement. Asking for the sale can be the toughest part of the telephone sales process. Participants learn techniques to ask for the sale. They practice getting customer agreement and handling objections—the two critical preludes to successfully closing the sale.

6) Determine Next Steps and Show Appreciation. As part of this final step in the Customer Interaction Model, participants clarify next steps and set expectations with their customers. They practice ways to conclude the call professionally, including keeping the door open if the customer does not respond positively or agree to a sale or referral.

7) Putting It All Together. The workshop leader and participants discuss and apply the standards for giving balanced, developmental feedback on performance and then engage in an extended skill practice of a complete call—following the model and applying all the skills learned during the workshop.

8) Workshop Conclusion. The leader summarizes the day and discusses next steps for applying skills on the job. Participants conclude the workshop by completing an action plan that describes what they will do as a result of the course.

Delivery Options

An Omega Performance consultant or a bank leader trained by Omega Performance conducts the two-day session.

Results You Can Expect

Maximizing Inbound Sales helps contact center representatives to:

Identify typical customer need areas
Establish rapport with customers
Use effective questioning techniques to identify gaps in products or services used by a customer
Make recommendations that link benefits to needs
Deliver an effective sales message
Respond effectively to customer objections
Ask for the business and close the call

Who Should Be Trained

Maximizing Inbound Sales is designed specifically for contact center representatives who:

Handle the majority of the service calls and cross-sell other products and services to meet customer needs
Are part of a team taking inbound sales calls and who may also make outbound telephone sales calls

Prerequisites

None. Maximizing Inbound Sales benefits employees in newly created contact centers as well as experienced representatives who want to become more confident and effective in handling inbound sales calls.