Companies are losing potential customers because their telephone agents have failed to build genuine rapport in the crucial first minute of a call.
Direct Sales Accreditation Ltd (DSA) has launched Britain’s first ever accredited qualification for advanced telephone marketing, telephone sales and customer service to help companies build rapport with customers in under 60 seconds.
DSA is celebrating after gaining official NCFE accreditation for its Level 5 Diploma in Advanced Telephone Skills.
The diploma is the brainchild of Bournemouth-based DSA’s head of training Simon Bell who has 20 years of experience in telemarketing, training, telesales and customer services.
“It’s a proven formula for creating business rapport and building customer relationships. We are introducing a benchmark and it’s a high benchmark,” said Simon.
“We’re trying to change the way that companies look at customers and their relationship with their telephone agents. The diploma will also help companies to attract and retain high quality telephone agents.
“We will change the face of telephone marketing because we can measure emotional involvement between telephone agents and their customers.
“We will raise telephone agents’ skill levels to an unprecedented standard by introducing our formula for business rapport.
“Our formula increases the confidence of telephone agents and their willingness to engage with customers – improving conversion rates, increasing productivity and introducing the concept of customer loyalty in the limited timeframe of a telephone call.”
The course has been designed to help telephone agents better understand not just their customers but also themselves, in what is fast becoming a new career choice for professionals.
The diploma involves 100 days of study over five months, ninety-five per cent of which is work-based – avoiding disruption and increasing the direct relevance of the training – with the remaining five per cent taking place in a tutorial environment:
• Stage one – personal psychology
• Stage two – customer engagement
• Stage three – customer interaction
• Stage four – performance evaluation
• Stage five – new business generation.
At £1,950 per person – less than £20 per day – DSA is already taking bookings for the diploma from companies employing telephone agents who are seeking to boost productivity in an increasingly challenging business environment.
Picture – 60 second Rapport Team – left to right, Simon Bell, Hagen Rose and Neil Tregillis of Direct Sales Accreditation Ltd.
Author: Jo Robinson
Published On: 16th Apr 2008 - Last modified: 11th Sep 2019
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I find that the biggest problem is that too many sales people tend to build up a phoney rapport.
I know that it is a sales call then they start the call with “Hi, how’s it going..” or “how are you today…” or other language like that. It just gives me time to think about how uninterested I am before they launch into their pitch.
On a cold call a snappy attention grabber could work much better – something along the line of “Mr Portcullis – I’m just calling you with a proposition that could save your company a considerable sum of money. We have helped a number of similar sized companies save quite a tidy sum and I wondered if you would be interested in finding out more.”
That would be better at getting my attention.
The key to building rapport is to use an audience specific language so that we learn how the potential customer is feeling about our product and/or service and then ask rapport building questions. This allows us to value the prospect and apply our closing techniques only when the time is right.
Simon
How do you suggest that people would start up an outbound cold call?
Hi James. Firstly you need to really understand why you are making the call and that does take some time. Then the opening line depends on the product and/or service and the target market but overall, the opening line must be driven by sincere interest in the potential customer.