In every industry, there are areas where it is especially easy to make mistakes, resulting in negative consequences from the company’s point of view. The task of the management staff is then to catch mistakes as quickly as possible and to eliminate them efficiently. What mistakes are most often made by call center employees? What should you pay attention to today and to what extent should you train consultants to make sales effective?
As you know, the sales process is a very complex task, in which the most important thing is excellent knowledge of the offered product and friendly contact with the customer, focused on meeting his needs. This specificity of the work of a salesperson, also a telemarketer, determines what skills he should have and what mistakes he most often makes. Irregularities may concern the sales process itself, the merits and procedures used in the call center during conversations with consumers.
Seller Know-How – What Could Go Wrong?
At the beginning of his professional career, every salesperson undergoes a series of training’s that teach him how to deal with the customer. This, however, still does not guarantee the success of his actions. Practice and lively contact with the interlocutor require high flexibility, openness and often the use of advanced negotiation techniques. This is a complicated task, which is why many consultants make mistakes in this regard. How to catch them and fight them? First of all, attention should be paid to the techniques used by the consultant, the ability to deal with the client and active sales. Telemarketers most often have problems with perseverance in the fight for potential sales and with adapting their arguments to the client.
It also happens that a consultant, acquiring skills in presenting products and their benefits, after some time almost automatically repeats some phrases and keywords, reducing the given argument to a minimum. At the same time, he forgets or is not aware that usually it is not enough for the customer to fully realize the value of the product. Such habits of the employee should be quickly detected and counteracted so that the consultant achieves the desired results.
In addition to irregularities in the sales process itself and the approach to the customer in the call center, there are also substantive and procedural errors. Providing false or incorrect information by a consultant and failure to respect procedures are particularly dangerous for the sales center. First of all, they may result in a complaint from a poorly informed consumer and the cancellation of the signed contract. In addition, they affect the reputation of the company – both the call center itself transmitting incorrect information and the client on whose behalf the telemarketers act. It can therefore be said that these are the greatest offenses that require immediate reaction. Fortunately, these errors – although serious in consequences – are the easiest to eliminate. Usually, additional training or information reminder is sufficient.
Attention, Check it Out! Monitoring is the First Step to Effective Sales
Experts admit that fighting errors starts with monitoring and reporting. Monitoring of conversations should take place constantly, because it allows to detect irregularities and determine the scale of the problem. Conclusions from the interviewed interviews must be included in the reports. It is best that the documents assessing the quality of calls are prepared on a weekly basis – this guarantees the ongoing sending of information about emerging errors and a quick response to the problem.
What to do when an irregularity is discovered? The first stage of action – sometimes it is sufficient – is coaching with the manager. A consultant who makes repeated mistakes should go through a conversation with his immediate supervisor, who explains the essence of the problem and reminds you of the sales rules, as well as – if necessary – information about the product. If, despite these tips, the situation does not change – additional training of the telemarketer is necessary. In the case of sales errors, such training is carried out by the trainer, while if the matter concerns substantive or procedural errors, the problem is dealt with by the person from the Monitoring Department responsible for the quality in a given project.
If mistakes are directly related to the substantive or procedural knowledge, the only way is to continually consolidate the knowledge. Although conducting the initial training is enough for the consultant to start the project, there are often changes and updates during the course of which the employee should be informed.
Training, i.e. Constant Striving for Perfection
The best way to fight consultants’ mistakes, as well as a remedy for duplicating incorrect practices, is the organization of training, thanks to which you can strengthen the knowledge and skills of employees in many areas. Organizing substantive training, stimulating creativity, refreshing and consolidating or developing existing skills – is very important from the perspective of the entire work of the consultant and its results.
When a consultant presents a product too mechanically and in slogan, the best solution is to conduct group or individual re-training, consisting in a short and specific repetition of basic issues to refresh the argument. It also helps to constantly encourage consultants to look for new solutions and avoid old patterns.
It is also worth encouraging consultants to look critically at their work from time to time and try to answer the question of which tasks are causing them trouble and how they can counteract them. In case of doubt, they should turn to a specific department to ask, get information and make sure. The task of managers or managers is not only to organize appropriate training, but also to create an atmosphere in which employees will not be afraid to ask questions. Consultants need to be sure that they will obtain reliable information when needed to help them complete their tasks and obtain better results.
The risk of making a mistake in a call center may appear on different levels and therefore bring more or less losses. Experience, appropriate employee management, monitoring of conversations, as well as continuous improvement of training techniques allow for the elimination of errors before they appear on a larger scale.