What if you knew with absolute certainty that every day you lose potential business, that you could win? What would you do about it? Believe it or not many firms of all sizes fall into this category and leave cash on the table!
Let me explain, by asking you a few key questions first. When you’ve read the questions, you’ll appreciate what you are missing.
- Are you aware that some firms have generated in excess of an extra million euros a year, without spending a penny on marketing, simply by converting more of their existing enquiries into business at the right fee rates?
- How many of your team who handle telephone enquiry calls have ever had any basic conversational sales training?
- How many of your team who handle telephone enquiries actively enjoy handling enquiry calls?
- When you recruited your staff, was the ability to handle potential client calls in their job description and a particular strength you were seeking?
- Do you realize that every enquiry call is a sales call and potential business?
- Do you know how many new telephone enquiries you get for each work area every day?
- What is the potential annual revenue value of your enquiry calls every year?
- Do you know the conversion rate of each individual who handles your incoming enquiries?
- Do you have a proper commercial strategy for deciding who should handle each call in order to maximize results?
- How much more business would you win if you really got to grips with this area?
- Do you know that just one or two new jobs won could pay to have everyone in your firm trained to convert more enquiries?
- Do you know that 90% of firms who sort this area out and have proper training for their teams experience a significant increase in their conversion rates within a few weeks?
Despite the simplicity of this area and the guaranteed results, some firms still don’t realise just how much potential new business is leaking away. Sometimes, when they do, inertia and slow decision making gets in the way of progress. For example, one firm rang me after hearing me speak on this subject at a large conference. During the chat, they told me they only convert an average of 25% of their telephone enquiry calls and wanted my guidance and training help to improve this. I wrote a proposal and indeed they went ahead, but it took them 10 whole months to proceed. What this meant is that, for an extra ten months they were happy to accept that they would lose 75% of the new business opportunities. By the way, their average conversion rate now is 75%. So again, I ask you how much business are you losing now and how much extra work could you easily win?
Edited by Professor Ian Cooper, 2015