In this month's episode of the MegaMarketer Coachcast, hosts Justin Jacobs and David Tester talk about getting the most out of your sales calls. Learn about the five most important pieces of info you need to get out of every phone call and why great marketing can't overcome a bad sales process. 

Key Lessons Learned: 

Why Your Sales Process Matters 

• Web traffic on cell phones is up 220% over the last 5 years so your website has to be mobile optimized to take advantage of the growth in mobile traffic. 
• 70% of homeowners will forget about you in the first three months if you don't reach out to them after your first invoice. 
• The breakfast of champions is feedback. The number one thing you can do today is to call your own business and see how hard it is to get a hold of you. 
• Is your team answering within three rings? If not, you're losing business. Your team should be on red alert when the phone rings. 
• Are you listening with the intent to understand, or with the intent to respond? 
• Are you speaking with empathy while trying to build rapport? Or are you speaking so fast that the person on the other end feels lost and confused? 
• Is your automated answering machine too complicated, so that you're frustrating the caller and driving them to your competition? Automating and outsourcing your inbound calls may save you time while making it harder on your customer. If it's preventing you from booking an appointment is it worth it? 
• Answer the phone and take care of your customer, don't make them work through multiple automated menus just to speak to a real person. 
• You can generate any number of leads for your business but if your sales process doesn't work well and captures the caller's info it can make those leads worthless. 
• The little details of how you deal with customers as they call in can add up to significant revenue for your business or be a considerable but mostly invisible expense. 

The Big Five Pieces of Information You Need From Every Call 

• When someone calls, coach your team to get their first and last name. 
• Next up is the caller's phone number. 
• An easy one to forget is to also asking how the caller heard about you, so that you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing.  
• The final step is to invite them to schedule an appointment with your business. 
• They called you for a reason but life often gets in the way. By collecting that info you can call them back if you get disconnected and show them that you care enough about their problems to reach out again. 
• Listen and take notes before trying to diagnose the caller's problem. It's very easy to go right into the technical details of the call but that's also an easy mistake to make. Most potential customers don't know the details and it's not a great idea to make your customer feel dumb. 
• You should make your customer feel good about the overall experience. Use their first name during the conversation and keep asking questions to get to know the customer better. 
• It's important to follow a script for every call and to check in and listen to your calls as they happen. The worst time to think of something is the moment it comes out of your mouth, have a script instead. Without randomly checking the calls you can be confident the script is probably not being followed.
• Do not quote prices on the call. Nine times out of ten their inquiries or concern has nothing to do with price. Always ask why the caller is asking instead. 

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Links to Resources Mentioned