Does your company have an inbound calling strategy? You’ve invested time, energy and resources to make your phones ring. You’ve worked hard to acquire every lead and customer.
What happens when the phone rings? If you don’t know, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.
Customers who call you are more likely place an order with your company. When they do, they spend more than the average customer.
When you have a strategy in place for those inbound calls, you can increase those numbers even more.
Keep reading to learn how you can leverage the power of inbound calls by creating a solid inbound call strategy.
Why Do Customers Call?
The main question you need to answer when you create your inbound call strategy is why are they calling?
Is it to feel like your company can be trusted before they buy? Do they have questions before committing? Might they need a little reassurance before taking the next step?
Your potential customers exist in different stages of the buying lifecycle. The typical lifecycle is made up of 4 steps before a customer makes a purchase.
Awareness: The point where someone becomes aware of your company, product, or services. This is usually through marketing, direct outreach, or social media.
Interest: Once a prospect knows about your company, they will be interested in what you have to offer. They’ll start to look at your product offerings, and keep that information on the back burner.
Desire: They know they have an immediate need for your company’s offerings. They do more research into pricing and start to compare your company to others.
Action: They’re ready to take action and make a purchase. At this stage, they know they have a need. They need to be convinced that your company offers the best solutions to solve their problems.
An important point to note is that customers want to be in control of every step of the process. They don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to. Nor do they want to be called. Think about today’s world; no one wants to be called anymore, not even by their friends. People want to make calls when it’s best for them.
That’s among the biggest differences between outbound and inbound calls.
When you understand why your potential customers call, it’s easier to manage those calls. You can put the right people on the phone to give the customer exactly what they want before buying.
Set Up Systems for Each Stage of the Buying Process
There’s a big difference between a prospect who’s ready to buy and someone who just wants to kick the tires.
You want to make sure that you have systems in place to handle people who are just curious and people who are ready to commit.
You want to be sure that each one gets a high level of service, but no so high that your customer acquisition costs increase. It costs more money to have a phone rep than it is to have someone answer an email or live chat.
Your system should have a live chat and email options for people who are interested but don’t have the desire or want to take action.
If someone calls in, how can you tell where they are in the product lifecycle? That’s where a cloud-based phone service comes in.
They can route those calls to the appropriate person, so your staff time isn’t wasted routing calls. Prospects also feel like you have it together because they’re not being passed from person to person.
Have the Right People Available
The worst impression someone can leave on a call with a potential customer is ineptitude. You want to make sure that the people you put on the phone are confident, knowledgeable and ready to assist prospects.
It’s important to have your top sales reps available when a prospect is ready to buy. You can have customer service reps ready to answer questions for those
Use a CRM System
You’re going to need to have a record of all of the calls that are taken. It’s not enough to rely on memory or notes scribbled down everywhere.
Sales reps are productive when they have access to a CRM. Your entire team can have access to customer notes that show when they called, the issue at hand, and how it was resolved.
That can make your entire team more effective, especially if the original contact person is unavailable.
The good news is that a CRM doesn’t have to be an expensive solution. There are plenty of cloud-based tools that are priced according to the number of users and contacts.
These cloud-based tools often have an app that sales reps can use to access data anywhere. That’s convenient in case they need to follow up with a prospect while they’re out of the office.
Analyze Data
You’re going to need to track the effectiveness of your inbound calling strategy. The way to do that is to use detailed reporting and analyze data regularly.
You can track the number of calls, how they’re generated, and sales performance. You can also measure custom satisfaction after the fact.
The metrics will let you guide your marketing strategy. You can learn what is working, where adjustments need to be made, and where the greatest opportunities are.
An Inbound Calling Strategy That Gets Results
If you’re on the fence about having an inbound calling strategy, you need to hop off of it. There are great reasons why a plan of action around inbound sales. They come down to time and money. Yes, it’s an investment to have salespeople work the phone.
However, you’re leaving money on the table because you don’t have the staff in place to handle customer calls when they’re ready to buy.
When you do that, selling becomes easy. If you need help getting people to call your company, don’t hesitate to contact us today at 213-973-9905. You can also review our process to see how we get things done.
