Every business owner knows from experience that not all leads are equal. Some have real potential to convert into a sale as the prospective customer has the money and desire to purchase your product or service. Others simply do not. Understanding which leads have the potential to convert and which do not can have a direct impact on your conversion rate and is an important answering service best practice to follow.
The secret to a successful call center or answering service is the ability to maximize opportunity and aim at converting every qualified lead into a sale. The bottom line of every campaign boils down to how many sales you can generate over time. Those conversions require proper tactics on behalf of the answering service’s phone representative, which, though demanding, is the difference between being successful or not.
Consider these 5 tips on how to turn every lead into a sale.
- Design Your Lead Criteria
In addition to collecting lead’s names and contact information, answering services can collect any kind of information you need to classify leads correctly. To do so, you will need to design the right lead criteria. Ask yourself – Does this lead meet your minimum for order quantities, dollar value, and frequency of orders, as well as any other important criteria for your business? If so, pursue the sale. If not, consider declining it. Additionally, converting leads takes time. Time is money. Before committing to pursuing a lead, calculate the dollar value of converting that lead and make sure it meets your requirements for your profit margin. If it does not, you may still want to walk away. - Create Strong Fielding Questions
Identifying strong leads is the key to closing leads, and it requires proper planning. By preparing a list of questions for answering service phone representatives to ask callers, you can help the answering service representatives best prioritize your leads. The idea is to use caller responses to determine the strength of the lead. Information gathered by phone representatives can shed a lot of light on which leads turn into sales and will be helpful in fine-tuning your methods for differentiating between good and bad leads. By equipping answering service representatives with the right well-planned questions, they can easily determine which leads should or should not be pursued. - Focus on Listening
When speaking with a potential client, answering service representatives should listen to the needs of the caller, and be equipped with questions that are not too pushy. Consumers are more educated than ever, and often know what they want, and will often openly share the answers to lead questions without being asked. Do not scare away leads by pushing a sale. Show you care about their needs with attentive listening. - Always Follow Up
Asking phone representatives to strategically follow up with leads in a timely manner is a good way to close a sale. For one thing, following up keeps you top of mind. Additionally, it drives home the point that you care about their time and business and provides them with an easy way to stay in touch with you. Lastly, following up with leads the same day can help you beat out the competition, as the average lead response time is 42 hours. - Keep Lead Information Organized
Answering calls is just one way in which an answering service can help you close your leads. Another key feature of an answering service is data organization. From answers to questions to contact information, keeping collected data organized is essential to evaluating the strength of a lead and having all the information needed to close the sale.
Although these tips are helpful in closing leads, at Pittsburgh Telephone Answering Service, we believe in addressing all leads professionally and treating every lead as a potential sale. Our trained phone representatives will handle every call with the utmost respect and follow your directives in terms of gathering information from your callers. As your trusted answering service, we are available to help you analyze which leads convert into sales.
Pittsburgh Telephone Answering Services knows how to handle leads no matter how unique or varied leads may be. We know that ignoring or failing to properly address any lead is a common error that makes other call centers or answering services fail at turning every lead into a sale. We take pride in our ability to ensure that leads are all equally addressed and provided with exceptional care.
Call us to discuss what we can do to help your business convert leads into sales.
