Telereps, Save Your Breath

In any sales or service situation it's critical to listen, diagnose and encourage prospects to elaborate before persuading. One way to do this in telesales is to ask open-ended, consultative questions.

Consultative questions begin with words like what, how and why to get prospects to describe their circumstances and offer clues to their hot buttons. Closed-ended questions, on the other hand, start with words like is, do, has, are, can, will, which and could. Closed-ended questions are designed to produce simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, void of any narrative detail.

Consultative questioning offers many benefits. It can increase your understanding of a prospect's current situation and goals, allow you to help that prospect identify problems on his or her own, and thus make this potential customer more open to your product or solution. It also can uncover your target's likely objections early on in the process and reveal if the individual has the budget — and purchasing authority — to make a buy. And it gets a dialogue started in a way that demonstrates your sincere interest.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Pretend you're marketing safety training to construction firms. The product has a low price point, so you can expect to close after one or two contacts.

You would begin a call by introducing yourself and positioning your solution:

Hello, (contact name). This is (caller) from (marketer's name). We've provided safety training to construction firms for over 25 years. Our training can reduce your exposure to accidents — and the downtime, lawsuits and higher insurance rates that follow. Best of all, our program only takes five minutes a week!

In the construction industry, safety is paramount to owners and crew leaders. Insurers consider accident and injury rates when determining premiums. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforces site safety rules — accidents can produce investigations, stop-work orders orfines. Injuries can result in lower productivity, schedule changes and more worker's compensation claims. Worst of all, mishaps exact a terrible emotional toll on a crew and their families. Yet safety programs are considered time-consuming and costly by some firms.

Knowing this, you'll need to discover whether your prospects have safety training and assess its quality. You'll also want to identify your targets' risk awareness and receptiveness to your proposition. You'll achieve this by asking open-ended questions that compel them to visualize their current processes and evaluate their effectiveness. Your objective is to stir doubt, employing questions that point up your solution's strengths.

Here are examples of consultative questions related to safety training:

• Describe the safety program you have in place. How often do you hold training? What topics do you cover? Who does your training? What happens during a standard training? How long does it last? How do you document which crew members participated in the training?

• When was the last time you had an injury on site? What happened? How long was that person out? How did it affect your crew? The project? Your insurance?

The key to consultative selling is getting prospects to divulge information without feeling interrogated or manipulated. Similarly, it's critical to recognize when to speak and when to listen; you must suppress the urge to jump in and sell whenever your prospects make an important point. When it's time to sell, fashion emotionally charged pictures that link the targets' responses with your solution. For example, let's say one decision-maker conceded that it's only a matter of time before his crew's luck runs out.

You could respond with the following:

I know what you mean, (contact name). An accident can be costly. I just read where the National Safety Council found the average back injury will cost you $10,000 — and even more with indirect costs!

Take it a step further, (contact name). Imagine a crew member falls off a scaffold. You'll be asking yourself, ‘Did I do everything I could to make this site safe?’ You'll wonder if that employee was trained to work up there. You'll be fretting over liability. Worst of all, what will you say to that employee's family?

That's where our weekly training comes in, (contact name). It helps prevent accidents in the first place. It reinforces a culture of safety in which your crew is trained about the dangers to themselves and others…

After building your case, outline price and terms, offer an incentive, and close. In this way, you can determine not only what a prospect needs, but how they need — and what you'll have to do to help.

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JEFF SCHMITT (jschmittdbq@mchsi.com) is marketing and compliance manager at Advanced Data-Comm in Dubuque, IA, a subsidiary of Working Solutions, Plano, TX.