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Fine-Tuning Your Telephone Skills By Denise Clancey, President, Teledirect Partners “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” With these words, Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call to his assistant 132 years ago. From these words sprang a relationship with the spoken word and the telephone that has grown and shaped our business world and our lives.
Phones are such a familiar part of our work and private lives that we often do not focus on our telephone skills and the message that we deliver about ourselves during our conversations.
What better way to honor the invention and the inventor than to ensure our telephone skills are in good working order?
Have Deliberate Conversations One of the most important things you can do to fine tune your telephone skills is to be focused on having deliberate conversations. There are many reasons to call. It can be something as involved as a sales calls or a business opportunity or as simple as a call to ‘check in'. Identify where you want to lead the relationship and spend a few minutes identifying the impact this conversation will have on moving your business relationship forward. With each call, identify the intended results you desire and prepare yourself with the information you need for a successful outcome.
Do the Prep Work Prior to the call, spend some time researching the company and the person you are calling. There is so much information available through simple web searches that it is unprofessional to make a call without a bit of information about the person you are calling. Search their websites, find articles they have written, uncover something about their interests and hobbies.
If you are making a number of calls, particularly about a subject or offering that is new or that you are uneasy delivering, work from a ‘call guide'. Think through the questions that might be asked and craft your responses. When you have the answers available to you as you call, you are less likely to be susceptible to ‘what if I don't know the answer?'
And then spend some time practicing. Read the call guide and the questions and answers out loud. Read them while standing in front of a mirror. Call you cell phone and read the guide into your voicemail. Buddy up with a business associate and form a ‘practice partnership', giving both of you the opportunity to test out your calling techniques without going live. Practice out loud until you feel comfortable with the words and until the words flow smoothly and effortlessly.
Now that you have set up the call to be as successful as it can be, it is time to listen, really listen, to your surroundings. What will your customers hear when you call them? Ideally, you should make telephone calls from a quiet place. If you share office space or if your neighbor is particularly noisy, minimize the intrusion by creating some ‘white noise'. A radio designed to emit nature sounds is ideal for this. At the very least, be prepared that your noisy neighbor might interfere with your contact's ability to focus. When you hear this happening, apologize for the inconvenience, and offer to call another time, from a different location. This gesture is usually enough to bring your contact back to focusing on the call.
Calling Success You've identified the purpose of the call, you've researched the company and your contact, and now you are ready to make some calls. How can you get the most out of your efforts? If staying in touch with customers, business partners, and business associates is part of your work day and you conduct some or all of this business by phone, the best way to ensure that you get it done is to schedule into your calendar. Plan a two hour block of time every week or two weeks, set up your phone calls and research in advance, and make the calls at the scheduled time. Calling creates a rhythm and a rhythm begets confidence and success.
Focus on ending your conversations with a definitive call to action and by identifying the next steps. The best way to ensure that you will have another conversation with your customer (or prospect) is to set up the next call while you are in the current call. End each of today's calls by telling each person you are calling what your next actions will be and when they will be hearing from you. If your next contact will be a phone call, be as specific as you can in order to secure a firm phone appointment. Once the appointment is firm, tell the person you will call to follow up on this conversation on that day, put it in your tickler file, and make the call.
By developing telephone techniques as a tool in your marketing and communication portfolio, you will be more effective and more confident in your business interactions.
Alexander Graham Bell could only have imagined how significant animpact his invention would have on the business community and its importance as a tool in our business arsenal. A focused approach to doing business by phone will improve your business relationships and increase your success rates. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” - Alexander Graham Bell
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