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Record Calls To Increase Revenue

by Kevin Levi, Vice President, OrecX - May 30, 2017

Record Calls to Increase Revenue
 
Companies large and small today have discovered value in recording customer telephone calls far beyond customer service and agent performance measurement. The known and expected advantages typically fall into the areas of customer service, compliance, order verification, and dispute resolution, and not much farther. What many organizations are starting to realize is that there is equal value outside of the contact center.  What we are talking about here is additional revenue generation. Yes there is a direct correlation between recorded calls and increased sales revenue.
Call recordings can provide rich intelligence, insight and background information to sales professionals that can help them convert more sales opportunities. The unfortunate truth, however, is that recorded sales calls are largely sitting in data warehouses collecting dust and not being utilized to advance the sales process.
 
Share Notes with Team Members
 
Here is an example of how a company can effectively utilize call recordings to increase sales revenue:
The inside salesperson makes an outbound call to a prospect and has a sales discovery discussion. Once the call is complete, and it is determined that there is a viable sales opportunity, the inside salesperson emails the call recording to the outside sales rep who listens to the conversation and gets up to speed on the opportunity. In the technology industry, the call may also be shared with product development and/or sales engineering if additional development support might be needed to complete the sale.
 
What used to happen not very long ago was the use of paper notes instead of voice recordings to get all sales team members up to speed on the opportunity. In those scenarios, it is very easy to see where pertinent details might have be missed and therefore not shared. With the recorded call, nothing is ever missed. All sales team members are working from the same level of base knowledge.
 
Derive Sales Intelligence
 
In an inbound call center environment, call recordings can also provide a substantial amount of sales intelligence. Put another way, recorded calls can be used to discern buyer preferences, information about competitive offers, ideas for new product features, and so on.
 
Whether a call center rep resides within the four walls of one of the company’s contact centers, works from home or works within an outsourced call center (e.g. at a BPO), the opportunity to glean such intelligence still exists. A little training for agents on what to look for can go a long way. By notifying inbound agents what types of information the sales team is looking for can enable agents to flag and forward relevant calls to the sales team. Think for a moment about the potential here is such a practice were put in place. The actual ‘voice of the customer’ would be right there for the sales team to hear. Do you know how much money organizations spend on analyst reports to gain insight into the voice of the customer and their buying needs, challenges, preferences, etc.? From personal experience, I can say this number can easily exceed $50,000.
 
Enhance Sales Training
 
Similar to paying for ‘voice of the customer’ analyst reports, professional sales training can run into the tens of thousands as well, if not more. Before any company should even consider employing a sales training firm, it ought to first institute a process in which salespersons and sales managers have to listen to a certain number of recorded sales calls every week. Select portions of calls can be tagged so the individual does not have to listen to the entire conversation but rather just the noteworthy portions. For example, a tagged portion of a call might be when a successful upsell occurs or the point at which an unhappy, ready-to-cancel customer suddenly becomes a happy, loyal customer.
 
In addition to sales staff reviewing their recorded calls themselves, the practice of listening to past interactions along with a sales supervisor is also an effective practice. Together they can discuss what went right and wrong and how future interactions can be improved to increase sales conversion.
 
Kick Off Sales Team Meetings
 
One of the common practices in sales today is the recurring sales team meeting, which is often used to discuss strategy, goals, monthly or quarterly results, and countless other topics. Sometimes these meetings are long, boring and do not hold the interest of the sales team. What is there was a way to spice these meetings up in a manner that also boosts sales success?
 
Nothing rings truer to a salesperson’s ear than hearing the voice of an actual customer respond favorably to a sales pitch. Recorded calls can provide opportunity for your sales professionals. A good practice for sales managers is to kickoff sales team meetings by playing a few of these recorded interactions. Let your sales staff hear the pitch and the resulting interest from the would-be customer. This will fire up your team and demonstrate best practices that can be echoed by other sales agents. You don’t have the play the entire interaction but rather just the interested portions of the calls. This will only take a few minutes and the results could be significant in terms of its impact on your sales numbers.
 
Demonstrate Winning Sales Rhetoric
 
Your top salespersons convert the most opportunities for various reasons. Primarily, it is the rhetoric they use to get prospects interested in your product and services. Why not give all sales team members visibility into these best-practice interactions by sharing the best of the best in a “Hall of Fame” of sales calls?
 
Simply capture the very best sales calls and store them in a “Hall of Fame” folder for underperforming and newer agents to review to sharpen their own skills to boost performance on future calls. It is one thing to be coached on winning sales rhetoric and running through role playing. It is quite another, however, to hear actual interactions with real sales prospects as they actually occurred.
 
Share Sales Testimonials
 
Every sales organization clamors for sales references who can espouse the benefits of your products and services. Marketing teams are constantly trying to secure customer testimonials, whether written, verbal or video-based. But think about it. Your call recordings contain a slew of verbal testimonials which you can transcribe and anonymize. Here is what you do. Have your sales team flag their most successful sales calls in which the prospect makes a positive statement worth sharing about your agent, your company and/or your solutions. Then, have an intern perhaps transcribe the most pertinent portion of the interaction. Then, share it with your marketing team for them to put it on your website as a testimonial. You can contact each sales prospect to request permission for using their name. If approval is not granted, you can simply anonymize their quotation so you will not run in to any legal trouble.
 
Future visitors to your website will be presented with countless quotations about how great your company and its products/services are, and this will help advance your sales conversion rates.
 
Conclusion
 
There are so many more ways in which recorded customer conversations can help your sales efforts, including sales script refinement, having VPs and Managers listen to recordings to keep abreast of changing buyer behavior and preferences. In fact, a recent survey by OrecX of contact center professionals showed that 34 percent feel that the sales team can benefit most from call recordings.
 
Author:
Kevin Levi
OrecX Vice President

OrecX provides the world’s most affordable, easy to use and install call recording software for enterprises, contact centers and communication service providers. 

 

 

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