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Priority 1 – Convert leads, opportunities and enquiries into profitable business 67
The really important thing is not necessarily what you say, but how you make
the potential customer or client feel. Think of the enquiry call or visit to
your premises as a ‘test drive’. If you haven’t dealt with them before then the
whole experience and encounter is for them as if they were ‘test driving your
business’, insofar as they have the chance to experience what you are like.
Thus what is of paramount importance is that they are respectfully and
courteously dealt with in a way that reects the fact that you are interested
in them and genuinely appear to want their business. The old adage of
‘people buy people rst’ is absolutely true in this situation. If a prospective
customer doesn’t like the individual they are dealing with at your company,
it will make it that much harder for them to make a happy and positive
buying decision in your favour.
If you doubt this, just for a moment, stop and think of a situation when you
have been on the telephone or face to face with somebody talking to you
about their services, goods and prices and you have had to decide whether to
buy from them or someone else. Have you ever had that moment when you
are in the middle of one of these buying conversations when a little voice in
your head whispers, ‘There’s no way I am buying from them’? What was it that
made you feel like that? Was it something they said? What was it that brought
on this negative reaction? I have asked many people this question and the
most common response is usually, ‘I don’t really know . . . it was just a feeling.’
What about the opposite? Have you ever been in a buying or decision-making
situation and instead of the negative whisper, you have felt a positive tingle
or shiver up your spine as this time the voice in your brain goes ‘Yes, I quite
like them.’ Again, what was it that brought about this response? What did
they say or do that triggered such a positive reaction? The most common
response is again the same, ‘I really don’t know, it was just a feeling.’
Callers or visitors to your company making a potential business enquiry
will, at some point in the process, hear that little voice in their head and
experience this ‘just a feeling’ moment. Whether it is a negative one or
a positive one is absolutely determined by the way in which the enquiry
handler deals with the prospect, but rest assured the outcome of that
‘feeling’ will play a huge part in whether you convert the business or not
at the price you want.
7. Don’t fall into the price trap
As mentioned in the section on pricing, the price trap is the automatic
assumption that everybody who pops into your premises or calls and asks for
68 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
the price will only ever choose the cheapest. This is simply not the case. If
that is your perception and experience then I invite you to consider that this
is largely because you are either not doing anything else other than giving
a price, or you are generally not handling the enquiry as well as you could.
If you only give the price to those who ask, then it is you who reduces the
issue to one of price and you who actually forces them to go to the cheapest.
To prove the point, I have often had the opportunity of monitoring conver-
sion rates for a number of different businesses. There is a huge discrepancy
in conversion rates between different people within the same organisation
trying to sell the same products or services, despite the fact that they are
all working to the same prices or fee levels. If their respective conversion
rates based on the enquiries that they deal with are A 18 per cent, B 43 per
cent, C 31 per cent, and D 76 per cent, how do you explain the difference
in results if all of them are working to the same price or fee structure? It is
clearly not about ‘price’, it is more to do with technique and performance.
That is what we will look at shortly.
8. Get the basics of telephone rst response and meet
and greet right
So far as telephone enquiries are concerned, it’s worth remembering that
by the time your call handlers actually speak to a prospect, they may well
have already gone through a switchboard or reception process and formed
potentially irrevocable impressions of your business. With this in mind you
really need to go back to the basics of making sure that the people who are
your rst response operate to a set of high standards. Remember, if you
don’t tell them precisely how you want your calls to be answered, then
don’t be surprised if they do their own thing.
I could ll a whole chapter on how switchboard or reception staff should
deal with incoming calls but the basic objectives should be to:
pass the caller through to someone who can help as fast as possible;
take the name of the person calling and tell them who they’re going
to be put through to;
give the call handler the name of the person they have on the line;
apologise to the caller if there is a delay;
take the prospect’s number, name and brief details if the relevant
person is not available and arrange when it is convenient for a call
back. If at all possible, it is always better to have the call dealt with
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Priority 1 – Convert leads, opportunities and enquiries into profitable business 69
rst time around. If it gets left, then the prospect may have done a
deal elsewhere by the time someone gets back to them;
avoid inappropriate excuses about why certain people are not
available. For example, I have had switchboard staff say to me, ‘I can’t
put you through to Mr Smith at the moment because he’s just gone to the
toilet so he might be a while’;
deal with the caller with an interested, courteous, helpful, warm and
friendly tone. Some communications experts talk of ‘putting a smile in
your voice’. I’m not sure I would personally use that phrase, but it gets
the message across.
One of the great irritants of our technological and digital age is the ‘call
centre’ hold or the ‘menu selection’ system. You know the routine, ‘for sales
press one, for accounts press two, to speak to a human being press three’.
It is a curious fact of modern life that these systems are universally hated
by almost everyone. Have you ever encountered somebody who says, ‘Hey
those phone menu systems are great . . . I really like listening to them’? Yet the
same people who despise them, when they are making calls, suddenly
decide they would be great to install in their own businesses.
I am prepared to accept that they might make sense in large organisations
with huge call volumes that are able to deal with incoming calls more
inexpensively by having them dealt with by call centres. However, it is time
for some business development ‘tough love’. Your potential customers and
clients don’t like them and it is not helping your cause.
It is actually very simple: the more you distance yourself from your pros-
pects and the more barriers you erect in the contact process, the less likely
prospects will be to buy from you. In short, then, if you can avoid these
devices, do so.
The same applies to your front line ‘meet and greet’ people. If prospects
visit your premises or shop and are not dealt with properly, then you are
potentially losing business and you may never know about it.
9. Get outside help – ACT
If you want to get dramatic results, then you must understand this acronym
. . . ACT.
A = Analyse. Ideally you need someone from outside, taking a hard
and critical look in, as if they were a prospect. They should be looking
70 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
at your available ‘conversion’ information, making mystery calls and
visits to nd out what is really going wrong and where the ‘leak’ is in
your ‘enquiries bucket’.
C = Create new system. As a result of the analysis and mystery
checks, a tailored new system, structure and method of handling
enquiries should be created to rectify the weaknesses found.
T = Training. This then needs to be carried out to implement the new
system. It should include:
information and presentations to relevant team members to get them
to understand the nature of the problem, the concepts involved,
the potential benets to the business and themselves, and the new
techniques and systems to be used;
techniques practice, which should be carried out in small groups and
where telephone enquiries are involved, actually over the phone with
trainers and coaches;
monitoring of prospects handling, carried out on a periodic and
ongoing basis to ensure new methods are actually being put into
practice;
regular reviews of conversion rate results per individual, which are also
vital.
The reason I have included this section in my 10 commandments is simple.
It is because I have seen many organisations totally buy into all the con-
cepts mentioned and then do absolutely nothing. They have attended my
public seminars or invited me ‘in-house’ to speak or advise on this topic
and then believed that hearing about it would somehow do the trick.
In the same way that reading about healthy eating and diet plans won’t
cause weight loss, merely reading up and hearing about my ‘converting
enquiries’ material won’t bring you new business. Start to ACT . . . now!
10. Understand and master the ve-step conversion
process
While every business has slightly different requirements as regards personal
interactions there are ve common practical steps to dealing with every
lead or enquiry. Get the relevant individuals implementing and mastering
these, in the order I mention them, and you will see very quick and dra-
matic results.
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