A service professional’s attempt to convey quality, add value, and maximize revenue potential will almost always turn up empty-handed if the vocal rudiments are absent. So let’s invest another minute on pace of speech and reconsider how words per minute factors in. A good speaking voice should be somewhere between 120 to 150 words per minute, which is the pace at which I am speaking during this recorded lesson.
But sometimes, telephone professionals accelerate their pace of speech, and they start to speak at this pace, which gets closer to about 200 words per minute, which becomes a little too rapid. So being proactive and maintaining a good telephone pace of speech enables our message to be heard and understood. And these are vital behaviors for maximizing phone sales over the phone.
So being proactive is what enables us to convey a more professional message over the phone. Being proactive is what enables a service professional to practice what is called containment, to ensure that situations do not get worse. Notice I use the word situations and not problems.
This is because the word problem implies that something is wrong. Now, we know that part of our job is to resolve problems and to fix them. But when we overuse the word problem during telephone calls, we’re just reminding the customer about what is wrong.
So using a word such as situation changes that message. And this is an important component of word selection when we are serving customers over the phone. In business, words can be weapons.
And using the right word can create just the right element and just the right message that we want the customer to hear. A word can make things worse or can make things better. For example, one phrase I hear often after thanking someone is when they say, oh, it’s no problem.
Like this. It’s no problem. I urge service professionals to substitute the words no problem with the words my pleasure.
Like this. It’s my pleasure. You see, there’s only two things wrong with the words no problem.
The words no and the word problem. They’re both negative. So when we think about what influences customers to buy and say yes when we make a suggestion, it almost always comes down to their feelings.
In service and sales, feelings matter. Here’s a true story about my recent pickup truck purchase. I was seeking a new pickup truck.
I had test driven about a half a dozen different trucks. Couldn’t find one that I liked. I was out locally and I saw a truck in a dealer’s lot, drove in, spoke to a salesperson.
He asked me if I wanted to take a test drive and I said yes. So me and the salesperson, we got into the pickup truck and I was in that truck no more than 30 seconds driving down the street and I was feeling the leather seats and listening to this powerful stereo with a bass speaker under one of the back seats of the pickup. I was looking at the moonroof.
I was looking at all of the amenities, the heated seats and within 30 seconds I decided I was going to buy that truck. Now the test drive took about five minutes. Came back to the lot but I was already a buyer.
It was all based on my feelings and what I was perceiving while I was in the cab of that pickup. Now once I sat down with the salesperson and we started to work out the arrangements for the monthly payments, it was only then that I started to rationalize how I was going to explain this new purchase to my wife. You see, I bought that truck based on feelings and emotions.
Then the pragmatic mind kicked in and I started to rationalize how I was going to pay for it and that’s the way people make buying decisions. Relationships matter, feelings matter and first impressions matter. To a service professional who is serving a customer over the phone, our first impression that we convey to the customer is often the customer’s final decision about us and the company that we represent.
So to put it simply, your first impression is the customer’s final decision. It happens that quickly and once that relationship is in place and the customer’s feelings are positive about us and our company, we’re off to a good start. The part of our vocal presentation that should be present over the phone has to do with us demonstrating that we like our job.
Customers should hear the passion for what you do. If you like your job, customers will hear it and people want to do business with and pay attention to someone who likes what they do for a living. Liking your job and making it sound like you like your job really matters when you’re making a suggestion to a customer.
When making suggestions over the phone, a service professional must be confident in their own beliefs about the company for which they work. They must believe that no one does this better than us because the certainty and authority of their belief is audible over the phone. Whenever a service professional lacks that certainty and authority in their voice, they start to sound apprehensive and unsure.
And both an apprehensive and an unsure tone of voice is heard by the customer and the customer then diminishes your message. The other facet of call conversion over the phone has to do with having no fear about asking a question and making a suggestion. Some people fear making a suggestion or asking a question because they are afraid of risk, they’re afraid of failure, or they’re afraid of offending the customer.
And all of those fears are in your own head. They’re not real. When we believe that no one does this better than us, that should override any fear that we may have.
And making a suggestion to a customer is done because we care about them. It’s because we know our company delivers value. And whenever there is a misunderstanding about price, it’s never because our price is too high.
It’s almost always because there is a misunderstanding about the value. And it is a professional’s job to convey the value we deliver in very clear and uncertain terms. So when a customer starts to complain about prices being too high, that is our invitation to ask a question, such as, well, help me understand what matters to you most.
And when a customer speaks about that price matters most to them, that is our invitation to ask other questions about safety. The fact that our employees are all factory authorized, factory trained, and fully insured. That speed and peace of mind matters to a customer.
Well, we can handle that because our trucks when they’re out in the field are fully stocked. And we have all the right schematics and documentation to make sure we can get things done right the first time. You see, for a customer, it almost always boils down to peace of mind.
That’s what they want. Now, they may say that price matters. But when you start to influence a customer with these other factors, you are causing that customer to rethink their perception of value.
And service professionals who are both prepared and trained in phone calls have greater control over their own behavior, and over the entire service event. And the control that I’m referring to here is not about manipulation or aggression. It’s about influence.
It’s about your willingness to serve that customer that is so sincere, that customers are influenced to rethink their perception of value. And thereby, price becomes less important, because the value you deliver becomes more important. This is the power of your own self-control and your ability to influence someone else.
When service professionals exercise more self-control during phone calls, they are leveraging the benefits of what I call containment. Containment is what happens when a situation stays within fixed limits, so it doesn’t get worse and make a mess. Serving customers is best handled by a professional who never lets their own ego and their emotions get in the way of converting phone calls into more sales.
Regarding ego, it’s important to remember that it’s not about you. It’s about the customer. And keeping your focus on the customer is what empathy implies.
So when we’re keeping things about the customer and keeping our own ego in check, what drives us to convert phone calls into more sales is that we care about the customer.