Calling is Too Old-School, This is the Email Age. Is it? Think Twice!
What do you prefer- Power of voice or convenience behind the screens?
Communicating from your comfort zone is convenient, isn’t it? You can take your time, sip your coffee and draft an attractive email. You do not have to deal with unexpected questions or impulsive customers. Online communication gives you control over your interactions, where you can think and respond with impactful answers. The automation technology is an added advantage for communicating through emails where you can shoot multiple emails at your convenient time. It means you can reach more prospects in lesser time.
The shortcut is always appealing, but it also has many drawbacks attached to it. The major drawback is that it has reduced human interaction through phone calls.
The calm office atmosphere seems pleasant, but the silence gets annoying when you do not hear from your clients. How often have you logged into your account and found your inbox flooding with customer’s positive emails? Think before you hit send on your screens, because there are chances that your emails might get stuck in their junk folder and not even reach your prospects.The possibilities are higher, when you send mass emails.
|As per a research, 57% of people who receive these kinds of emails consider it as spam and ignore it.
Moreover, emailing at the peak work hours is distracting, it drains productivity. A disruption caused by your email might annoy your client and he might not even take the pain to open and read it.
|A case study conducted by Danwood Group found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover from an email interruption (regardless of the email’s importance) and return to work at the same work rate as before the interruption.
The screen can save you from awkward moments where you go blank and have no clue what to say next. However, the same screen can also be a block between you and your customers. You are unable to build a personal connection with your clients to address their business issues. Each company has different business challenges, a common email will not serve their specific problems.
Moreover, your client’s inbox is overloaded with various promotional emails. Your competitors too are busy occupying the space in their inbox. In this scenario, it is difficult to draw a potential prospect’s attention towards your email.
|As per SaneBox’s internal data, the average inbox contains only 38% important and relevant emails. This implies 62% of emails in the average inbox are irrelevant and can be processed in bulk.
You never know that your emails too might have got lost in that 62% of emails that weren’t given importance by your clients.
You need to ensure if your clients are clicking and reading your emails. Just drafting an engaging email is not enough, it is of no worth if it is not giving the desired results. Work on solutions and conduct an in-depth market research to know what is effective. You can even refer email statistics to understand the market behavior like the below chart that shows the clicked, opened and delivery of different industries.
Blindfolding yourself and walking on one path will not lead you to successful sales results. For driving growth, you need to explore alternatives.
One such alternative is ‘Calling’ your customers.
Phone Calls- Use the power of voice
Your voice is a useful tool to influence prospects; phones calls still have the ability to close a deal. This thing from the past has not lost its efficacy in sales. In fact phone calls seem more genuine, they do not appear like spam to the prospects. It helps in building trust and authenticity.In this digital era, human interaction has lost its value. Good communication with the clients can give them a reason to mull over your product. Investing in a product is a big deal for companies and they will not move forward till they see a benefit. Through a phone call, it is possible to create an impressive image of your product.
|A study says telephone-based outreach delivered 8.21% response rate for a prospect list compared to emails that had 0.3% response rate.
Calling adds clarity to your brand’s message. Most of the time written description of a product can be misunderstood. However, through phone calls, it is easy to explain the product to the clients. You can solve their queries and provide a better solution. A good understanding of the product can give them a reason to think about investing in your offering.
| As per a research, phone calls have 30–50% conversion rates, compared to only 1–2% for clicks
Phone calls are beneficial, only if you know how to make the most of it. Calling, demands thorough research about your prospect. To speak confidently you need to know all the necessary information about the prospect’s company. Only when you have enough knowledge about your prospects, you can modify the solution according to their business needs. Question your customers to gain a grasp of their requirements.Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about their problems. How severe is the issue? How often does it occur? How is it affecting their business? Till you do not think from the customer’s point of view you cannot present a beneficial solution. Discuss their business pain points. Understand the interest of the clients, hit their core concerns like revenue growth, cost reduction, mitigating risk and increasing profit margins.
“Don’t bring price into discussion before the value” -anonymous
Ensure them, you are here to solve their issues and offer a solution that will be profitable for their business. Work on your tone, how you convey the messages is important. If required, record your calls and listen to your past conversation to identify your weak areas. Work on self-improvement to ameliorate your vocal impact and perform better on calls.
Sales approach in the technical era
Technology has transformed the way business sells. New technological advancements have eased the job of sales reps. Technology like Customer Relationship Management software has helped sales professionals in quickly achieving their sales targets. Nowadays, sales professionals perform all their sales activities from a CRM only, be it managing customer data or creating historical reports or emailing their clients. Most of the CRMs even allow you to integrate with phone applications like RingCentral so that sales reps can seamlessly connect with their customers without having to toggle between applications. Calling gets much better with a CRM, they do not have to dial numbers manually or search for contacts. All the information they need is in front of them they just need to click to connect. Through CRM’s calling feature, sales professionals can not only call but also take notes, schedule appointment and automatically log calls. It also helps them in recording calls for performance analysis and referring past interaction with the clients. Using the CRM’s inbuilt phone sales reps can also create a special dial list of hot deals, to contact the important contacts first. Calling through a CRM Software is the productive and beneficial way to conduct and track sales calls in the modern business age.
The final words
“Be stubborn about your goals and flexible about your method”-anonymous
Till you are not focused and determined about your sales goals you cannot achieve it. Once you are clear with your goals you need to find the way to reach there. The power of voice is necessary but you cannot completely ignore the emails. Though there are drawbacks with emailing, there are solutions too and by using the right technology it is possible to resolve those issues. Act smart, combine the power of voice and words to quickly achieve the goals you have set.
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