More and more organisations are discovering that they can achieve a strategic advantage by leveraging their call-center personnel. Call-center agents are a competitive advantage when they serve as a primary customer contact point. And ensuring that all customers benefit from excellent service boosts retention and builds a strong, positive brand image.

Inbound Sales Excellence focuses on techniques and skills that help your call-center agents address the challenges inherent in their unique selling environment.

Programme Overview

Inbound Sales Excellence is a highly interactive programme that actively engages agents in learning and applying their new selling skills. The programme runs a total of 16 hours and is designed in a modular format with five units of study. You may choose to implement the entire course in a two-day workshop, or you may deliver the programme one module at a time. You also may select just one or two of the programme modules.

The programme is flexibly designed so that a variety of configurations is possible to meet your training needs.

Module 1: The Customer Experience (2.5 hours)

The purpose of this module is to discuss strategies for enhancing performance and building customer loyalty. Agents engage in an interactive exercise that builds understanding about the customer’s perspective of the buying process and about what keeps a customer loyal over time. Agents also participate in an activity that uncovers the challenges inherent in balancing call-center quantity measures against the need for high quality in their customer interaction. This discussion leads to an overview of the other course modules.

Please note that Module 1 (“The Customer Experience”) is required for teaching any of the other programme modules.

Module 2: Guiding the Call (4.5 hours)

This module helps agents develop their oral presentation and listening skills so they can communicate confidence and competence while gaining better control of their customer calls. This module has three sections:

	Oral Presentation: Agents identify the elements of effective telephone presentation and discuss how these conditions build comfort. They practice demonstrating professionalism to increase customer confidence, which helps them earn the right to ask questions and make a recommendation.
	Call Courtesy: Agents learn how to keep clients engaged during the call process and discuss ways to keep the call on track.
	Listening to the Customer: Agents explore the barriers to listening, evaluate their own listening skills, and learn and practice three types of active listening skills: Selective, Responsive, and Empathic. They also practice “reading” and responding appropriately to customers’ verbal cues.

Benefits Upon completion of Inbound Sales Excellence, participants will: z       Quickly communicate their competence and establish credibility with customers. Customers will be more likely to stay on the phone, respond to questions, and accept the agent’s recommendation. z       Uncover the customer’s real needs by using an approach that is efficient for the agent and comfortable for the customer. The length of calls stays within reasonable parameters, and customers willingly share information that helps the agent position a recommendation. z       Make compelling solution recommendations that lead customers to say yes. Agents close more sales and increase revenue. z       Enhance the agent’s comfort level and skills for handling customer objections. The agent will be more likely to uncover all of the customer’s concerns and complete the transaction. z       Close the sale—and the call—in a way that leaves customers with strong, positive feelings about doing business with your organization. Customers will remain loyal over the long term.

 

Module 3: Discovering Needs (3 hours)

In this module, agents learn a technique for discovering their customers’ needs so that they can provide a solution that adds value and creates customer loyalty. Agents learn and practice a four-part questioning strategy:

	Transition to Use: Questions that provide a transition from the call opening to exploring and focusing on the customer’s use of products or services
	Explore: Questions that broaden the discussion in order to learn more about the customer’s situation.
	Focus: Questions that center on details and more specific information
	Needs Summary Statement: A concise statement that summarizes and confirms the agent’s understanding of the customer’s situation

 Module 4: Providing Solutions (3 hours)

The objective of this module is to help agents make compelling solution presentations, effectively respond to customer objections, and close more sales more quickly. The module has two parts:

	Communicating the Message: Agents learn and practice a four-step process for presenting a solution.
	Answering Technical Questions: Agents implement a five-step process for answering typical technical questions asked by their customers.

 Module 5: Finalising the Sale (2 hours)

The objectives of this module are to model effective responses to customer objections, and provide techniques to close more sales more quickly.

	Handling Objections: The facilitator defines an objection as “a question in the customer’s mind combined with tension.” Agents learn methods for uncovering the customer’s real concerns and for responding to customer resistance.
	Closing: Agents discuss the assumptive closing attitude and practice techniques for closing the call.

 

Session Length              Two days 

Participant Materials     Participant guide, job aid card