It is common for us to hear the frustrations of managers that their sales teams do not make enough prospecting calls and that no matter how much they push their sales teams, prospecting remains a weak area of their business.
This is often due to what we know as “Call Reluctance”.
Call reluctance is something that most sales businesses have, but very few managers seem to fully understand.
Sales professionals love inbound sales enquiries. All of the hard work, the sales message and the reason to purchase have been taken care of by the marketing activities undertaken. So, with relatively little effort all the sales person has to do is interact with the prospect in the correct manner and reap the rewards of the sale.
Outbound calls, particularly call prospecting is a much harder task. The sales person has to:
- Hope that the timing is right for the customer
- Use the right approach
- Overcome objections for making the call
- Create desire
- Convert the prospect into a customer
Each of these elements create a fear of prospecting, so it’s often far easier for a sales person to simply hide behind email, or say that they have made their prospecting calls, when in fact they haven’t.
Overcoming Call Reluctance starts with understanding these 5 critical elements:
- Are the prospecting calls really being made?
- Do the sales team use the correct approach to engage with the prospect?
- Is the message right?
- At what time of the day are prospecting calls more successful?
- What is the expected call outcome, and what is our success rate?
So even though call reluctance is a fact of life, that does not mean there is nothing we can do about it.
Using Calls2Account businesses have a clear understanding of the number of calls being made by individuals, whether their approach and message is correct through call recording and the rates of success.
This allows the Calls2Account users to offer the sales teams support and training they need to overcome their own particular “fears”.
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