no-sale

How You Are Throwing Sales Away By Missed Call (And How To Fix It)

This might sound absurd to you. The very notion that someone would throw away sales when most businesses claw and scrape for every sale they make seems a little ridiculous. The reality though, is that businesses throw away sales all the time, often without even knowing it. One way that this happens is by not effectively capturing potential leads. Without leads, it is nearly impossible to make sales, and especially difficult to grow your existing client base. Despite this, people throw leads away unconsciously almost every day.

The most painful part of all this is that these sales slip through businesses hands in such an obvious way that it should be clear to everyone how to prevent it. Ultimately, it comes down to what is still for many, the first line of contact with a company they’re interested in doing business with: the telephone. If someone calls your company and isn’t treated in a professional, efficient manner, you have immediately put a sour taste in their mouth, and contributed to a negative image for your business in their eyes. All you have to do to turn this around and ensure a positive impression, is create the right kind of telephone experience for your customers.

There are any number of things that companies do wrong when it comes to fielding telephone calls, all of which are essentially gift wrapping a lead for their competitors. Here are five guidelines for ensuring you don’t make the same mistake.

  1. Make sure that the person who answers the phone is friendly! This is such a little thing but it is amazing how many businesses miss it. If a cantankerous, unprofessional or unfriendly person answers the phone, you can bet the caller won’t dial your number again.
  2. Don’t let the phone ring more than once or twice. If you do, impatient callers are either going to move on, or be annoyed by the time you finally answer.
  3. Only take calls in a quiet environment where you can hear the caller clearly, and they can hear you without a lot of distracting noise in the background.
  4. Don’t use voicemail when you can help it. Get the phone answered by a real person and you’ll avoid the countless hang-ups that everyone finds when checking voicemail.
  5. Avoid hold times at all cost, and if you must put someone on hold, make sure you get back to them as soon as humanly possible.

 

This can be a lot to handle for anyone tied up with all the other tasks of daily office life, which is where a professional answering service comes in. These companies are proficient in using every trick in the book to make sure that no leads escape your company. You can count on them to provide polite, prompt and efficient service to everyone who calls, helping to make sure that your competitors are no longer benefiting from what should rightfully be your leads.

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