Helpful Summary
- Overview: We explore the fundamentals of sales calls, including benefits, use cases, and best practices.
- Why Trust Us: At ServiceBell, we offer innovative allbound (outbound+inbound) solutions that simplify sales processes for businesses of all sizes.
- Why It Matters: Learning how to make more effective sales calls would improve your reps’ overall efficiency and boost revenue numbers.
- Action Points: We recommend leveraging ServiceBell Outbound, our AI parallel dialer, to make more sales calls (up to 9 at once) in less time and get ahead of competitors that still depend on manual dialing.
- Further Research: Explore the ServiceBell blog for more expert sales tips and insights.
Looking to Achieve Better Results from Your Sales Calls?
The goal of every sales team is to sell effectively—and this is where a touchpoint like phone calls comes in.
Though sales calling is one of the most manual and time-consuming selling techniques, tools like ServiceBell exist to speed up and automate a huge part of the process, achieving more results in less time.
Read on for an overview of sales calls and best practices (plus tools) to help you make the most of them.
Why Listen to Us?
Several user reviews and case studies back our claim of being good at what we do—helping you sell more with our intuitive allbound software. We’ve watched our clients like Sybill and DemandZEN grow their pipelines by $1 million and $500K, respectively, thanks to our suite of integrated inbound and outbound sales tools.
Despite our extensive track record, we are still very committed to providing learning resources to help even more businesses (like yours) hit their sales quota and boost revenue.
What is a Sales Call?
A sales call is an audio conversation between a sales representative and a potential client. It is almost always pre-scheduled, meaning that both the sales rep and prospect know the arrangement before time. It is an opportunity to understand the intricacies of the product or service being sold. These calls frequently require presentations or demos.
A good sales call script should have:
- An introduction
Hello [prospect name], my name is [your name] from ServiceBell and I will be walking you through our outbound software and how it can benefit (business name).
- A value statement
At Servicebell, we help sales professionals and businesses alike, book more meetings and improve their conversion rates.
- A pre-qualifier
Do you currently face (insert a few problems that your product solves)?
- More product info
Highlight more information about your product or service
- A close-out
Ask questions, collect feedback, and make your closing statement.
Benefits of Sales Calls
There are several significant benefits to making sales this way. Though it might sometimes be uncomfortable for the caller, it's a fantastic method for reaching potential customers.
- Personalized Interaction: A sales call allows for a real-time, personalized connection with a prospect. Sales reps can easily build rapport and trust by providing direct human communication.
- Immediate Feedback and Clarification: Through sales calls, prospects can express their concerns and ask questions in real time, providing the opportunity for the sales rep to give immediate feedback and clarification.
- Effective Relationship Building: Looking for a new way to strengthen relationships with prospects and customers alike? Use voice or video interactions to demonstrate understanding, and empathy, setting the foundation for a strong relationship.
- Tailored Sales Pitches: Of the many things sales calls can do for you, I find this to be one of the most interesting. With a sales call, a sales representative can customize their pitch based on the prospect’s needs, and pain points; this will increase the chances of closing deals.
- Higher Conversion Rates: It is already proven that personalized engagement increases the likelihood of conversions. Immediate responses to any objections and concerns a prospect might have, in addition to more tailored sales pitches, can result in higher conversion rates.
Sales Call Use Cases
- Lead Generation: A sales call is a big part of lead generation. The call usually entails identifying and qualifying leads that have expressed their interest in your product or service, to convert them into loyal, paying customers.
- Prospect Engagement: Are you tired of sending emails, and more emails? A viable way to engage prospects is through a sales call. By leveraging sales calls, you can engage your prospects in meaningful interactions to build trust and move them up the sales funnel.
- Customer Relationship Management and Retention: Every business wants to maintain a healthy pipeline, and a foolproof method is nurturing and maintaining relationships with leads and existing clients. Sales calls would make it easy to achieve this.
- Upselling and Cross-selling: The dream of any business is to offer more value to their ideal customer profile. You can use a sales call to offer clients higher-end products (upsell) or complementary products (cross-sell), based on their perceived needs or purchase history.
- Customer Needs Assessment: Guess a faster and more efficient way to get feedback or conduct an assessment to understand specific needs, preferences, and pain points, you guessed right– a sales call!
- Conversion Rate Optimization: Are you looking to refine your sales process and convert more prospects to paying customers? A sales call is a good strategy to increase the percentage of conversions through targeted follow-ups.
Best Practices for Making Effective Sales Calls
Sales calls can be nerve-wracking—even for seasoned sales professionals. But with the right approach, they can also be incredibly rewarding. Whether you're closing deals daily or just starting out, these tips will help you elevate your game and achieve better results.
1. Research Your Prospect Ahead of the Call
A sales call is serious business, and there’s no better way to show how serious you are about a prospect than doing your background search properly. Researching your prospect thoroughly before the call not only impresses them, but also provides you with enough information to understand their industry, business model, pain points and needs.
For example, starting your sales call with ‘Hi Joshua, congratulations on your company’s latest seed funding, impressive thing you’re doing with Vanity Ltd’ would make your prospect more inclined to listen to you.
2. Create and Follow a Clear Agenda
To avoid rambling during the sales call, prepare a clear agenda before hand that keeps you focused through the conversation. Your outline should include important details like:
- Introduction
- Purpose of the call
- Pain points from the research done earlier
- Key points
- Next steps
- Close out
3. Personalize the Conversation with the Prospect Data You Have
Personalization can change the trajectory of your sales call. By addressing the prospect by name and referencing specific details regarding their business, you prove yourself as a serious sales rep who is genuinely interested in solving the needs of his prospects.
For example, you can say ‘Hi [Prospect’s name], thank you for taking time out to speak to me today.’
4. Ask Open-Ended Questions
Encourage dialogue with prospects by asking more open-ended questions, allowing them to divulge their business aspirations, needs, and problems your product or service can solve for them. This would build a deeper understanding between both parties.
Questions like ‘Can you tell me more about the problems you’re currently facing?’ can keep the conversation going and prove that you understand ther needs and concerns. example
5. Listen Actively and Pay Attention to Non-Verbal Cues
A part of being a good conversationalist is listening, nobody wants to talk with anybody that doesn’t give room for their opinions to be aired. Pay close attention while your prospect is speaking, re-iterate what they’ve said to confirm that they’re being heard loud and clear
You can show your prospect that you understand what is being said by saying ‘Yes, I hear you’, ‘You’re absolutely right’, ‘I see how that can be a blocker’, etc.
6. Address Objections and Concerns Confidently
No need to take offence or act defensive when a prospect has objections during your sales call. Many might argue that objections give you further chance to prove your product’s worthiness by providing clear and concise responses, and evidences to remove doubts.
For instance, if your prospect has objections, you can say ‘That’s a valid concern, however, with our product you can…’
7. Leverage Conversational AI Dialling
Use technology to qualify leads according to their potential, separate them into high and low potential prospects before expending more energy to set human-powered sales calls. AI dialing can automate outreach, schedule calls effectively, and identify high-potential leads, allowing sales professional to focus only on high-level interactions.
ServiceBell Outbound offers a robust power dialer and AI parallel dialer that helps sales teams increase their outbound reach by dialing up to 9 lines at once, and engaging prospects with pre-recorded messages. This feature allows sales reps to analyze interactions and decipher sales-qualified leads from the pool of prospects.
What makes us unique is our allbound approach. We blend inbound and outbound solutions to create a seamless, powerful strategy. Imagine this–our outbound dialer taps into the first-party intent data generated by inbound tools like visitor identification and monitoring.
When a high-intent client visits your website, our visitor detection system identifies them and alerts you. You can then analyze if they match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If they do, add them to your call list and connect effortlessly. No missed opportunities, just smooth, effective engagement.
Conduct More Effective Sales Calls in Less Time With ServiceBell
Improving your sales call strategy is crucial for maximizing sales efficiency, and ServiceBell does this effortlessly.
Looking to optimize your sales calls and close more deals? ServiceBell Outbound has robust capabilities like the AI-parallel dialer, that allows you dial up to 9 prospects at once, coupled with other features like automation, virtual salesfloor, and more.
Now that you’ve learned how to make your next sales call a success and you’ve also been equipped with a holistic software like ServiceBell, what are you waiting for? Book a demo and see for yourself.