The 5 Best Actions You Can Take to Improve Sales Calls Ditch your script. Record your calls. Analyze your patterns. There are new, non-conventional ways to approach calls. Have you tried them?
By Anna Johansson Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
We've all got a ton of digital tools to help us boost brand awareness, attract subscribers and followers and ultimately convince people that our brands have something to address their needs. However, closing the deal still usually depends on a one-on-one conversational interaction -- or series of interactions -- the traditional sales call.
Related: How Sales Leaders Can Use Call-Recordings to Masterfully Coach Their Sales Reps
Your top salespeople work tirelessly to track down leads generated by your marketing team. They reach out to previous customers to renew interest. And they work to convince interested buyers to finally take the plunge.
You can improve those close rates by: 1) asking your top performers to train your newcomers; or 2) sweetening the pot by offering more to your prospects in the first place.
But if you want to get even more out of your sales strategy, you'll need to optimize your and your salespeople's calls themselves. So, how, exactly, do you improve those calls? Here are five ways:
1. Ditch the script.
First, let's be clear: Sales scripts can be helpful. They're a useful rubric for guiding the conversation in the direction you want to go, they're a useful resource for training new candidates; and they're a nice crutch for anyone who is shy or anxious about talking on the phone.
But there are two big problems with sales scripts on calls: First, they have a tendency to sound fake (especially if you're using a template). Most customers can tell the difference between a sincere conversation and one that's been over-rehearsed or pre-planned, and you'll lose sales if you always sound insincere. Second, scripts lock you into a single routine. It may be a decently effective routine, but you'll never know if there's something better out there.
Related: 7 Tips for Cold-Calling Success
2. Record your calls.
Have you ever experienced that phenomenon where the sound of your recorded voice is alien compared to what you're used to hearing? This happens because of the vibrations we pick up in our own head, but it represents a bigger idea; we don't know what we sound like until we listen.
Accordingly, your underperforming salespeople may be making critical mistakes they could pick out in an instant -- if only they realized they existed. Start recording your sales calls, and make your sales staff listen both to their own calls and those of others. You'll become collectively more acquainted with proper sales techniques, and be able to isolate some of the most egregious mistakes your people are making.
3. Analyze your patterns.
Unfortunately, there's only so much the human mind can pick out in a single episode of listening of a sales call. That's why artificial intelligence (AI)-powered speech recognition and analytics tools are starting to grow more popular. These tools automatically transcribe your sales calls, then analyze the text, looking for specific keywords that can tell you how the conversation is progressing, and where (for better or worse) the turning points are.
It's an automated way to dissect how your sales calls develop, and a perfect tool for brainstorming new angles and tactics.
4. Control your progress with goals.
You should also make sure your progress remains steady and measurable by setting goals for your salespeople. These need to be both short-term and long-term, so your salespeople can see steady progress and feel motivated by their own efforts. Your goals also need to be both individual- and group-focused, so you can keep your team working together while still inspiring a bit of competition and individual improvement.
5. Experiment and observe.
Finally, don't let yourself get too comfortable with any one set of tactics -- even if your phone-call recordings guide you in that direction. Just because a strategy is good doesn't mean it's necessarily the best, so if you want to keep improving, you'll want to experiment, sometimes with drastically different approaches.
Observe how these experiments develop, and scrap whatever doesn't work. Inevitably, you'll find something worth exploring.
A note on conventional tips
You'll notice that I haven't included any conventional tips to directly make your calls better, although there are plenty out there that seem to work. For example, there are no recommendations to start the call with a positive anecdote, or to make calls while standing and walking around to bring more energy to the meeting.
Related: How to Psych Yourself Up to Make That Call
These can be helpful, but they're short-term fixes, and they aren't going to fix any glaring problems with your strategy. They're also limited in how much value they can deliver.
Instead, the strategies listed, in contrast, are methodologies that can be applied indefinitely. They're tools to help your team members learn and improve on their own. Accordingly, they won't give you an instant boost in productivity or effectiveness, but they will yield the most powerful results ---- especially when applied over the course of months or even years.
