When your sales people are effectively trained, leads are more likely to want to stay on the line with them.
A recent article shared on LinkedIn prompted me to consider the importance of voice training for Sales teams. It reminded me of the maxim “always smile when you answer the phone” as the listener can hear the smile in your voice. Certainly, when I record a voicemail message and want to beam positivity and appeal, I find myself doing this (call me and see if you can hear it!)
The article also made me think about the cold callers we all get from time to time – you know, the special deal to secure a weekend away with $1,500 value reduced to $900 for a limited time, or the offer to upgrade your phone plan. Most of the time they talk really quickly, hoping to not allow a pause during which you can hang up. But occasionally, they hook me in, and what those that do usually have in common is a disarming (but effective) pitch and a great delivery – warm, engaging, not too quick, not pushy and it doesn't feel scripted. This is effective sales cold calling (to me, anyway).
Of course LinkedIn tell us that cold calling is dead and social selling is the future. I agree, however a lot of businesses still do cold calling, in various ways. Moreover, the end goal of all social selling is to get an audience with your customer – ideally in person – worst case via phone call - and that’s when your voice comes in. There’s no removing the human factor.
Given the critical part that the human voice plays in the sales process, how then to train for success? A voice coach will surely be the most effective way – someone to come in and deliver training with your sales teams – inform, role play and then actively correct bad habits. But this is costly, and lasts (at a maximum) only as long as the tenure of your sales staff – which means paying over and over. This challenge is at the heart of why eLearning provides such a great return on investment. It’s a digital good which, once owned, can be provisioned infinitely, and not just for new starters, but as a great way to refresh your teams.
“How do we do eLearning for voice training?” you may ask. Well, here’s one way to create the content...
Have your Sales trainer (or one of your sales top talent) create a course, with a combination of theory, voice recordings (clearly demonstrating desirable and undesirable speech), tests, and an assignment whereby the learner can submit audio files for various scenarios. You can do all this quickly and easily with a modern, cloud-based learning management system, like Simplify LMS. Once you have a great course, you then assign it to your learners, who can complete it (and use it for refreshing their skills) from any device, any time.
Other options are to work with a voice professional to help them to create the course in the LMS, or to purchase the course from a third party, and then provision this to your users via your LMS – both great-value options when compared with getting the professional trainer in to your office repeatedly.
Does this mean that eLearning can take the place of face to face training for voice coaching? No way – you should always follow up and have a human element of 1:1 training or assessment. But as a means of efficiently enhancing skills and providing the ability for flexible refreshers, eLearning can’t be beat.
Even for voice training.
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