Telephone Skills

Phone Skills and Strategies:
In most professions, skills are extremely important and absolutely vital in various areas or business. It is important to note that skills and abilities are very different from each other.
Having an ability is being able to do something such as sing.
A skill on the other hand, is learnable or teachable.
This very topic of ‘power of telephones in business’ is based on a combination of a number of skills. Clear communication is an acquired skill. As long as you practice the different approaches outlined in all of this week’s posts, your overall telephone skills will improve and it will reflect positively in your accounts. You must then devise effective ways to combine different skills to use to develop powerful business building strategies.
Let’s zero in on one particular strategy: The use of a headset.
Headsets on cellphones free your hands and enable you to be able to reference material and look up information almost instantly. It would be very helpful to your client or prospect, and also helpful to you if you are able to have answers at the ready, that you can convey to the other party. This is a time-saving practice and in business, time is money. In everyday operations, you reduce the amount of people you have to call back with follow up information for example. If you can refer information to them instantly on the call, the next call will be to take your relationship to a new level, as opposed to continuing the content of the previous call’s topic. Headset usage is fundamental and it will help a great deal in your telephone efficiency and business management.
Another strategy: Conference calling.
The most common application of this feature on your phone, is in 3-way calling. 3-way calling is extremely powerful because it creates a virtual meeting room. It’s very powerful in validating business information to a prospect by means of introducing them to a business partner who may be able to give clearer insight into certain issues and this builds the prospect’s confidence in your business and they are very close to joining you in business at this point.
The fortune is in the follow-up.
This is so true that it can make or break the success of a particular business. Follow up is very important but overlooked by many business people today. Ever so often we may make initial contact with a prospect and at some point in the relations, you may begin discussions to offer your business to them. What comes next? FOLLOW UP. Many times, prospects fall by the wayside after that initial introduction to your business but the deal is left hanging forever. Few steps can be taken to avoid this happening and it will definitely reflect in the size of your business.
First of all, every telephone call is an appointment and all appointments should close with the setting up of a new appointment. At the end of every phone call, there should be an agreement for you to do something, for you prospect to do something and for you both to get something done. This creates anticipation it is very important to CHECK UP on the progress, at a point in time halfway between the current and next appointment. This demonstrates professionalism and confidence and these characteristics are attractive to business people and prospects. So follow up is very important to the success of your business and the telephone is the perfect follow-up companion.
So always remember these things:
Be polite and courteous at ALL TIMES.
Be professional enough that your listener cannot tell when you’re having a bad day.
Be sure to respect the person’s time and know when your limits in your relationships with them.
Write down the highlights and main points and goals of EACH AND EVERY Phone call before you pick up the phone.
Be sure to contact me for further assistance with respect to telephone skills and other telephone issues.
Once again thank you very much for your time and attention. I look forward to next week when I will be posting about voicemails and their importance and advantages and also how to generate a response or a call back from a client or prospect.