How To Sell By Not Selling Via Inbound Telemarketing

Soft Selling Is A Game Changer When It Comes To Inbound Telemarketing

Soft selling or consultative selling works best with inbound telemarketing. In an inbound telemarketing, your business receives a call from prospective customers. Who are responding to your advertisement or direct marketing communications. Some are asking for general inquiries about your product or service offering.

In the soft selling approach, your inbound service agent does not aim to make a sale. Instead they focus on the needs, challenges, goals, and interests of the individual prospects. 

Nowadays, a good business is not about one-off selling. The playing field is now all about nurturing customers. This is to encourage a stream of repeat purchases. 

How does that change in principle affect how inbound telemarketing works? Telemarketers are now viewed in a consultative role or as advisers. 

Here, a prospect calls to reach your business and is not immediately offered a sale by a pushy sales rep. Most of the time, they do not ask questions. 

They expect your inbound call center agent to address the underlying need they have. To get the solutions they expect to get from your product or service. Your inbound service agents are now in the position to guide the prospect through the decision-making process. 

How Does Consultative Selling Works In An Inbound Telemarketing Scenario?

In a consultative selling or soft selling, your inbound call center agents act as consultants. The aim is to address the need of the prospect, not to push the product or service.  Therefore must have a strong understanding of your service or product offering. 

At the same time, show genuine empathy and excellent communication skills. This is to provide a deep understanding of the product or service to your prospects. To make sure it is also well-received. 

This is basically reframing the conversation. Like turning the spotlight away from your business, product or service but towards your prospects. 

Key steps to transform your inbound telemarketing into consultative selling:

1. Focus on talking about the prospect customers
2. “All about the prospect” approach
3. Ask questions if the prospect needs the product
4. Qualify the prospects if they are a good fit with the service or product offering
5. Focus on providing solutions to prospect’s needs
6. Encourage the prospect into the next step of the sales cycle 
7. Prospect does most or equal amount of talking throughout the call
8. Strategically pitch around probing sales questions
9. Talk about benefits, problems, ROI, client examples to make prospect interested
10. Focus on the prospect’s interests

Remember, soft selling or consultative selling is about subtle persuasion and casual language. This means to create a low pressure sales experience for your prospects. Which encourages 57% of your prospects to proceed with the purchase. 

Why Does This Sales Approach Works Better With Inbound Telemarketing?

Today, the proliferation of fake news and click bait advertisements turned people to be more skeptical. About the media, advertising, and being “sold” to. In fact, only 4% of Americans believe that companies advertise with integrity.

This means advertisements and marketing are here to only gain profit. Not necessarily about addressing the customers and solving their problems. That is why relationship and trust building is the key to retain customers. 

Something that works best with an inbound call center. In this model, prospects took the first step in laying out their needs. The key to success is to encourage them to do the next step for your business to finally close the deal.

Characteristics of an Inbound Call Center with Consultative Selling Approach

1. Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is a standard practice in inbound and outbound telemarketing. For inbound, this is equal to research. 

Research and truly getting the target market reaching your business pay offs in the whole sales journey. This way, your agents can write up unique scripts when approaching a specific market segment. They can even personalize scripts based on the prospect’s data recorded in the system. 

2. Personability

As what we have stated above, genuine empathy is a must for inbound call center agents to be effective in a consultative selling approach. This is to offer genuine recommendations to solve the prospect’s problems. All the while the tone is light and conversational. 

Relatability is also something your inbound call center agents should foster to be successful consultative sellers. As properly nurtured leads make purchases 50% more. 

3. Focus on Relationship-building

Inbound call center with consultative sellers is the perfect blend for customer experience personalization. A personal treatment goes a long way that results in earning customer’s loyalty. Which makes them spend 67% more compared with new customers. 

4. Active Listening to Prospects

Reframing the conversation towards your prospects is what makes consultative selling different. Good to note that 19% of prospects want to connect with salespeople during the awareness stage of the sales process.  

And when prospects feel they are heard and not just another customer to sell to, your credibility improves in their eyes. In turn, it enhances your ability to soft sell and provide an offering to solve your prospect’s needs.

5. Ask Probing Yet Thoughtful Questions

Genuine interests to your prospects is possible through asking open-ended and relevant questions. This is for you to get the full context of the situation they are sharing with you. 

As 69% of prospects associate listening to their needs as a way to create a positive sales experience. In doing so, this helps you to gain their trust and build rapport. 

6. Provide Value Without Asking for the Sale

The goal is not to make an immediate sale but to add value during the contact. You want to show your prospects that they are on the top of your mind and simply want to help them by providing solutions. 

As 61% of prospects expect your inbound call center agent to provide relevant information. Especially during the consideration stage before finally making a purchase. This is a crucial part as they are expecting to talk with advisers not a hard seller that could turn them off. 

7. Give Space to Decide

Making follow-up is good but not to an excessive amount. This means you have to step back and to empower them to make their own decision. Good benchmark is to contact your prospect again after 48 hours or on the agreed time. 

As 42% of prospects are even more encouraged to proceed with the purchase when the inbound call center agent does call in the agreed or specified time. 

Once you do, make sure you are prepared to answer questions that may have cropped up during the prospect’s deliberation stage. Remember, soft selling is to constantly add value in every conversation. 

Inbound Service for Consultative Selling Improves Customer Retention

To build a long-term relationship with your customers is the end goal of consultative selling. This is reframing the sales representative persona of inbound call center agents into advisors of the business. 

This approach encourages and ensures a strong relationship with customers. Plus higher chances of getting referrals from existing customers. As 92% of consumers trust the referrals of people they know. 

Imagine nurturing one prospect and eventually becoming your business spokesperson to the people they are close with. 

Also with the increasing market competition, your consultative selling approach offers professional advice and insights during the decision-making process. This provides your business the sense of credibility and industry expertise that sets the difference. 

Magellan Solutions Is Your Inbound Service Provider For Consultative Selling

Our inbound and outbound telemarketing services comprise talented professionals trained in soft selling or consultative approach. We understand the necessity of changing the approach as customers and market behavior changes. 

Here at Magellan Solutions, we make sure our inbound call center agents are well-versed in the most effective selling techniques there is. We constantly train and retrain them to ensure they have in-depth knowledge of your business, products and services. 

This is our pledge to make sure they are effective advisors for your business. Which they can extend intelligent and value-adding conversation to your prospects and customers. 

We also prioritize information security with our ISO 27001-certification, GDPR and HIPAA-compliance. 

Ensure to get the best inbound service only from us. Get your free 60-minute business consultation and let’s work together today. Fill up the form below!

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