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Permalink Reply by Jason Mickelson on February 13, 2013 at 2:15am

Your first call does have great purpose!  By the end of each first call we should have an appointment to meet a prospect in person or a plan on how to best follow up in the future to set an appointment.  All future correspondence must be purposeful as well, but I will save that for a future time.   

Step one is to engage.  All customers are cold and defensive when you call a stranger from an unknown dealership.  You have 30 seconds to break the ice if you are lucky.  Don’t waste it babbling!  I like to make an introduction, tell them the purpose of my call, and ask them a great open ended question in ten seconds.  If you have managed to keep the call alive, you are well on your way to “Purposeful Phone Contact”

Many believe the purpose of the first call is to sell a vehicle, but this myth will likely die with the old school car guy.  Keep your focus on learning about your prospect and building rapport.  Uncover the customer’s true wants and needs by asking great questions which earns you the right to match these with a vehicle that may be a good fit.  The beginning of your call should have your prospect talking 75% of the time.

Tip:  Answer all questions and find a vehicle while you are on this first phone call unless they really have to get going quickly.  Even if the prospect cuts the call short, arrange your next phone appointment before you end the call. 

When you understand your customer’s needs match them to a vehicle, listen for confirmation that the option you provided will be a possibility that your prospect will consider.  Now ask them WHEN they will be available to meet with you. 

Tip:  Be careful to not ask this important question in the form of a no question.  Example to avoid:  Would you like to come out and see it or do you want to see it?   The natural human tendency is to answer this question with a reflex NO.  This situation is very comparable when someone greets a lot up and is met with the standard, “I’m just looking.”  Try asking, “When are you available to visit this week.”

If you aren’t rewarded with an appointment, ask questions and figure out why?  The main purpose of your call is to set an appointment and you may have to ask for it more than once. 

Tip:  If the customer says they will visit your dealership, check the solidity of your appointment against this simple test.  Ask yourself if you have a VTD.  No, VTD is not a wicked disease.  Verify you have a VEHICLE, DATE and a TIME for your appointment.  When missing one of these three items, subtract 33% from the likeliness of them showing.  For example, if you have a date and a time without a vehicle picked out you would anticipate a 66% chance that this appointment will show.  If you don’t have a time or a vehicle, the odds of a show are only 33%. (Numbers are based on our personal experience which is like a high dollar study but different)

I believe your first call should be as long as possible assuming you are bringing information and value to the conversation.  Every minute spent having meaningful conversations with your prospect will result in a stronger appointment.  Your purpose is not to do all the talking.  God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason.  Our average first calls on new vehicle OEM leads are 17 to 24 minutes long and sometimes they go over an hour.  If you have a VTD (vehicle, time and date) and feel good about your appointment in less time, go for the appointment.  In the event someone has a low show percentage, consider working through their purpose of the call with them and timing each call to see how long their first calls last.

Jason Mickelson
Auto iLead 

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Permalink Reply by Mat Boyle on February 13, 2013 at 4:58pm

Hi Jason,

Here's my take on the importance of the first phone call.  My franchise network trains around 1800 salespeople throughout Australia and we record and review an average of 7000 outbound phone calls per week.  I'd be interested to see  your opinions of the differences between the Us and Australian market.

When it comes to successfully converting internet enquiries into sale, there is no more important step than the initial phone call.

First thing to measure is the response time, the first phone call has to be within 30 minutes or less from when the enquiry is generated (within businessh ours of course)  When it's outside of this window, 30% of your leads will be non contactable.

There are three outcomes that any salesperson needs to be aiming for on the initial phone call.

1. An Appointment At The Dealership Within 24 Hours

2. An Appointment At The Prospects Home/Work Within 24 Hours

3. A Commitment To Purchase Over The Phone (Accompanied With A CC Deposit)

There is of course, follow up procedures for when the salesman is unable to achieve these outcomes

The important concept that we base our training on is not what you say that counts, rather what your prospect hears. Often well meaning questions asked by a salesman over the phone are not clear or misunderstood or are perceived as being high pressure which breaks trust and rapport, killing any chances of having the prospect take the action you'd like them to.

There is a formula that we recommend and three specific questions to ask in the opening couple of minutes of the phone call that give any salesman control over the call and builds huge amounts of trust and rapport because it gets the prospect talking about their favourite subject...themselves.  More importantly as the prospect answers these questions they reveal all the information that a salesman needs to help the prospect buy.

Now it's important to know where the lead has been generated because this will affect the reasons why a prospect will enquire with you.  However there are only six different conversations that could running through a prospects head when they make an enquiry, salespeople need to know what they are and have word tracks, scripts and processes to take any of these six conversations and move the prospect to one of the above outcomes.

We've tested hundreds of different opening questions and THE question that gets the best response from prospects and is most likely to lead to an appointment or commitment is "What was it about this car that appeals to you"

The prospect will want to steer the conversation towards their dominant buying motive (your best price for example) it's vital that you don't answer their question but use that as a reason to move the prospect forward in the sales process (appointment or commitment.)

That said you can not be evasive of their question because that will kill any chances of the sale, so you need to develop scripts and processes that find reasons that benefit the prospect to do what you've asked them to do. When done correctly you make the experience much easier for the prospect which increases the likelihood of them purchasing from you.

We have an opening script that our salespeople use then we train them to listen to the answers, make judgement calls and follow a process to move the prospects to the best outcome.

 We record the outbound calls and review them with the salesman each week, using it for situational training. We also measure KPI's (with internet leads its response time, appointments set, appointments show up, commitments to purchase and deals) and use the data to make recommendations towards lead flow (some salespeople aren't cut out to handle internet leads but are great at converting service customers into opportunities for example)

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Permalink Reply by Jason Mickelson on February 13, 2013 at 7:18pm

Thanks Mat!  Now we have the start of a great thread that will be beneficial to everyone in the business. Great add!

Jason

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Permalink Reply by Jason Mickelson on February 15, 2013 at 9:48am

10 Criteria to Evaluate Your Sales Calls

Everyone says you have to record and evaluate your calls, but what are you evaluating?  Better yet, ask yourself if everyone on your sales team is aware of your expectations. If there is any doubt, consider taking a little time and develop your evaluation process.  Ensure that you are clear on purpose of your calls and how they should sound. Then educate your team on your expectations to maximize buy-in. 

If you need a conversation starter, here is an example of 10 criteria that I found on the web at telephonedoctor.com.  This list is pretty good and it makes great sense.  If you want to have real fun, develop a list similar to the ten criteria below and then ask your team to guess your list.  This will prove harder than it one might think.  

First Impressions 

Tone of Voice

Rapport Building

Ownership of Call

Listening Skills

Determining Needs

Professionalism

Problem Solving

Summarizing

Last Impressions

 

Your list may be 8 or 9 or 12, but have a list.  Your team and customers will thank you. 

 

Jason Mickelson

Auto iLead

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