We spend a lot of time working with our clients to help them develop call guides. This involves determining what information sales reps would like to have about a prospect prior to meeting with them, and determining the best way to ask those questions. But there another important set of questions in teleprospecting: the questions the prospect asks. Through questions, our prospects tell us what they think of our call, what worries or concerns they have, even how interested they are in continuing a dialog.
Here are some questions to be on the lookout for during a call, along with some tricks for addressing those questions:
Doubt Questions: Where are you calling from? Where did you get my information? These types of questions indicate that the contact isn’t comfortable. He or she is suspicious of the nature of the call. For the teleprospecting agent, it important to recognize that suspicion and work to diffuse it by putting the contact as ease as much as possible. Share any relevant information you may have about where the their data came from. Provide background information about what you’d like to accomplish and why. And tread cautiously as you continue. If someone is already on the defensive, they are not likely to answer in depth questions about their internal environment or how they spend their money. Try steering the conversation to more benign topics, at least until you’ve had the opportunity to build trust with the contact.
Red Flag Questions: Why are you calling? Is this a survey? How many questions do you have? These questions tell us that something has gone wrong with the call from the beginning. Within your first couple of seconds with a contact on the phone, you need to explain the purpose of your call in an honest, clear, and concise manner. Any question about your purpose means that you have already failed at delivering your message. The best fix for this is to start over in the clearest possible way. I recommend something like,