Sales agents often face customer rejections in their work, we’d say that 9.5 out of 10 customer conversations end with customer rejection. For newbies, this is the main thing that make them leave the sales job, while professionals learn for handling objections. Even when the best agents handle different types of rejections in sales, there is still a high percentage of calls that are rejected without a successful ending for telemarketers.
The goal is to understand – do we understand the root cause of customer rejections properly? Can we change customer decision during the conversation by using sales pitches? How to use sales rejections in your favor? Let’s find out the main reasons for customer rejections, learn real examples of different types of customer objections, and find out how can we handle customer rejections effectively during telemarketing campaigns.
Customer rejections based on lack of information
Rejection in sales isn’t something uncommon, and it is not uncommon to hear a client’s refusal instead of “tell me more” for a sales rep. So if you hear this common sales objection after the first brief presentation, try telling the potential client more about the product your sales teams are offering. Or perhaps your presentation wasn’t clear enough – then you’d better do it again to avoid losing sales opportunities. Sometimes potential customers say one single word – “expensive”. Inexperienced sales managers might be disarmed by this, but experts in professional call centers with relevant learning experience know that such a conversation can be directed in the right direction by providing the client with more detailed information and valuable insights about the benefits of the offer. Thus, this type of customer refusal signals an insufficient argumentation for the customer, and the operator should always be ready for it if he want’ to achieve high sales performance rates and sales success.
Company’s reputation and trustworthiness
It is very easy to get rejected by a client if you do not learn to understand what lies behind their phrases and how to influence them. Thus, call center agents often face the situation when, when addressing a potential client on behalf of the customer company, they hear that he simply does not know such a company. Here arises a situation that requires from the operator sales confidence, proper sales approach and maximum efforts in order to cause a person on the other side of the phone line trusting disposition, without which the whole further conversation will simply lose its meaning. To do this, it is worth giving the client maximum information about the company: Internet address, physical address (if the company has an official representative office), phone number, forums and social networks where the company is represented and so on. All this will make the argumentation more convincing and allow the operator to move directly to the realization of its main goal – close of a deal to reach the sales outcomes.
Another great example of building rapport and trust when talking to a prospective customer is using social proofs. Sales training has to include such sales strategies for sales performers to help them use social proofs quickly to become true sales professionals. First of all, people are more likely to believe anything if there is a relevant evidence, and moreover, they are even more likely to believe if this evidence happened in their industry or a field they are related to or interested in.
Give the potential customer time
So, when the operator is unable to bring the conversation to the desired outcome and achieve success in sales, but all of the above does not fit the format of the conversation, and the qualified prospect just hurries to say goodbye – it is worth giving him time. This is formalized in a special table of conversations and in it opposite to the contact who hurried to end the conversation, the time for the next call should be indicated. This is extremely important, as not everyone has time to listen to the proposal and immediately agree with it. Sometimes client refusals are motivated by a simple hurry or not being ready to make a decision instantly – you can just call in a wrong time. Therefore, a potential client should be given time to think, and very often call centers are based on this whole strategy of telephone sales, which are implemented in several stages. Each of them implies a certain script, which takes into account which of the situations may await the operator at this or that stage. All this is not difficult for professional call centers, where such scripts are prepared by specialists with extensive experience. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that the call script is the only way agents can communicate with a customer – they have to know how to work without a script, but use it as a supporting tool.
Conclusion
The root cause for customer objection isn’t always the fact that customer doesn’t want to accept your offer, but because there are other influential factors agents have to uncover. You also have to know that some customer objections are true objections, so there is no way you will sell the offer to this particular customer. Working with customer rejections is a difficlut task, and agents have to learn how to communicate properly to achieve the goals set.