In the new age of technology, people no longer have to meet face to face or even pick up the phone to get a message across. Email has become the preferred method of communication for many potential customers. However, when trying to move a sale forward, email can bring barriers to communication and ultimately affect the success of the sale. Wouldn’t it be great if you had four top tips on how to turn emails into phone discussions? Oh wait…
Take Control Of The Process:
Although many prospects will start a conversation via email, your goal should be to eventually move the conversation to an alternative means of communication, preferably a phone call. However, your first job should be to adapt your mindset to welcoming email as a part of your sales process, mapping out clear steps and your end goal. As a salesperson, email might not be YOUR preferred method of communication, but you need to focus on using it as a tool to qualify interest and promote an alternative means of communication, rather than using it to seal the deal on a sale. As a result, you’ll spend more time in control of the discussion and you should see significantly better results.
Question Time:
Inevitably when you receive an email inquiry, you’ll most likely be bombarded with questions too. It’s great that your prospect is clearly intrigued or interested by your product or service, but answering a million questions over email isn’t practical. In this situation, a phone call would save everyone a lot of valuable time from getting caught up in the frustrating back and forth cycle. Here’s a few tips for this situation…
- Respond by email, but don’t answer all of their questions at once. It’s okay to participate in a back and forth for a bit…so long as you don’t send too much or inaccurate information.
- Although you might be a go-getter, refrain from calling them immediately after the initial email. Chances are, your call will go right into the prospect’s voicemail and get lost in the clutter, which means your odds of having a meaningful conversation with the prospect decrease drastically. Remember, if they wanted a phone call straight away, they wouldn’t have emailed you in the first place!
- Sometimes it’s better just to ask the question, ‘Would you mind if we took this conversation to the phone?’. A message like this could substantially increase your chances of closing a sale, because you’ve asked permission and demonstrated respect for the boundary of the prospect created by using email.
These are just a few things to keep in mind when receiving questions over email, it’s important to remember that it also depends on the nature of the question and to respond appropriately.
Mirror And Match:
To convert an email into a phone conversation, you’ve got to build a good rapport with the prospect by using “mirror and match”. You might be thinking ‘what on earth is that?’. It’s simple, you just imitate aspects of their initial email, for example, using the same greeting, closing line or font as they do. This is a great technique for establishing a bond and rapport, which puts you a step closer to working out whether they’ve got a problem you can solve for them. It’s also important that you don’t let the email sit for too long, as this can damage your rapport with the prospect. Too much time can kill a deal, it’s vital you respond quickly so you can show the prospect you’re on the ball. Otherwise, that phone conversation could be out of the window before you even pressed ring!
Get There First:
Following on from the last point about responding efficiently, another reason for this, is they’re most likely scoping out your competition. If they’ve directly emailed you, you might be safe for a little bit, but if they’ve downloaded information off your website, chances are they’re doing some window shopping. Infact, studies have shown that 78% of customers buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first. Although some of the previous tips do apply to this situation, you can break the rule of calling them first, because the sooner you reach them, the better! You want to find out what prompted them to download this information, have they got a problem you can solve, if so, what is it? If you are met by their voicemail, make sure to leave a message asking them to get back to you, and then follow up with an email too. A top tip to getting a prospects attention, is to use the subject line to ask a question like, ‘Can I get 10 minutes of your time this week?’. This will prompt them to open up the email to see what the question is, and your cliffhanger of a message is sure to get them on the phone!
Getting prospects away from the comfort of an email conversation isn’t always easy, but if you follow these tips you should be dialling the phone in no time. However, if you’d like more information, our free webinar “Mastering Digital Sales: Transform Your Sales Team Into Digital Performers” could be just the thing for you! You can sign up here.
