The Science of Telephone Sales Management

Im in the middle of building a new sales management seminar and Im breaking out a separate unit on the differences between general sales management and the management of telephone sales.

And there are some crucial distinctions, though I just want to touch on one, here.

Telephone selling can be, and because it can be, it should and must be, SCIENTIFIC.

What do I mean?

First, lets establish the value of science. When an area of study or conduct becomes scientific: (1) It is systematically and critically monitored, measured, and managed, and recognized as an important process; (2) Its mysteries are revealed over time; (3) And this leads to greater understanding and more consistent control of its causes and effects; its inputs and outputs, and its results and contributions.

Ultimately, science aspires to being able to say, like a recipe, if you heat water to 212 degrees, Fahrenheit, at sea level, the water will boil.

Keep doing exactly this, and youll keep getting rewarded with boiling water, which as we know has its uses beyond making pasta, significant as that one is.

A well run business seeks consistent and reliable results; in a word, predictability. This makes nearly everybody happy, from workers to shareholders.

Selling, as a discipline, as a field, also strives to produce consistent, reliable, and ever-improving results.

Specifically, we try to the extent we can to govern carefully those known behaviors that produce and increase yeses, and discourage or avoid nos. When were failing at this job, we seek understanding to help us to recover quickly and to get back on track.

Telephone selling is, potentially, more scientific than field selling because we can control at least one side of the communication equation: What the seller says, how he says it, when he says it, and how he responds to what the prospect says.

In practical terms, we can SCRIPT the sales process, bringing it to a boil, if not at will then with great consistency, once we have discovered the laws underpinning certain types of conversations.

Also, and crucially, we can monitor and manage telephone salespeople in real time, listening, side by side if we wish, to every word being said. When sellers deviate from the call path that has been developed, tested, and proven to work, a finger can be pointed exactly to where the seller needs to get back onto his message.

Nothing else, in any other area of business I know, attains this kind of clear feedback and guidance, nor benefits as much and as directly as this kind of intervention from management

As you know we can preserve the entire transaction in a phone sale through recordings for unlimited playback and analysis, if we deem it to be useful.

By capturing events, live and recorded, we can LEARN MORE and MAKE RAPID ADJUSTMENTS & IMPROVEMENTS.

And then, we can revise scripts for all, and distribute the latest and the greatest, very quickly, applying en masse our newfound knowledge.

Of course, none of this is visible to the buyer, which contributes to its effectiveness.

In field selling, the closest we usually get is accompanying a seller to see a prospect, but we cant exert such meticulous control without seeming unduly intrusive and distracting.

Having said this, using a scientific, systematic process seems essential, at least in telephone selling, because WE CAN.

Why would we ever accept making sales as an idiosyncratic, iffy result when it can become more predictable, commonplace, and more profitable?

Again, this is one of the crucial differences and actual advantages of telephone selling versus field selling.

Given its potential for meaningful, practical research and the leverage the resulting know-how can produce for companies and for salespeople, it makes you wonder: Why hasnt there been greater brain formation, in the telephone sales arena?

Why arent our best and brightest communication scientists and scholars attracted to it?

Now, thats a mystery worth unraveling!

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 850 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered \"The Gold Standard\"--the foremost expert in sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

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