Honesty is the best tele-selling policy

Even “white lies” won’t guarantee you more deals closed

When your work involves any type of “selling” and in my case it’s done entirely over the phone, every day seems to be an unending race for bigger numbers. And the challenging task of delivering these numbers are of course carried on by front-liners, guided by operations managers and team leaders with the focused mission of making sure precious calling hours on a shift are spent productively, with agents skillfully using voice, spiels, and attitude, to ensure that the day’s output stays on target.

While the combination of a pleasing voice, engaging spiels, and a positive work attitude helps in building confidence, honesty or transparency in tele-selling proves to be a very important strategy in not only bringing in the sales, but in making sure you engage in transactions that are intended to provide value to customers and from which the company will be able to grow its business.

But what happens when an agent’s productivity seems to be on a constant shortfall? Out of peer pressure and sometimes desperation (and mostly to stay on the job), some agents resort to actions that not only veer away from the established work processes, but with a few tricks, numbers are bloated as a saving grace and to prevent the bleak picture from getting exposed right away.

Tricks such as processing a transaction that client did not confirm yet, up-selling items that customer was made to believe as free, scheduling the delivery at a later date to dodge spot checks, or just simply closing a sale or deal that didn’t exactly happen. You applaud for these encouraging numbers when declared during the day, only to get disappointed later when you find out that not all these transactions are pushing through. In this case, you’ll need a strong transaction verification process implemented, otherwise you might get into the vicious cycle of the earn-more, lose-more trap.

Even “white lies” in tele-selling won’t get you ahead. I remember an agent trying to explain the “white lies” in his spiels in order to be more convincing, one of which is “I can personally attest to you that this product is really effective, as I’m using it…” and I would object “…and are you indeed using it? Because if not, while your white lie might get you some deals, it’s not going to work all the time, in fact, you sound like a traditional salesman by saying that, and if I were your customer, I‘m not buying both your personal testimony, especially the product.”

If there’s one thing you need to do to ensure honest-to-goodness tele-selling, it is to make sure your agents are convinced that your products (or service) work, without having to lie yourself. Make them your endorsers by having them use or avail of the product or service, so they can sell from experience, not from mere spiels, that are predictable. And if the agent found the product or service to be unsaleable, don’t push right away, instead listen and ask for ideas, a great “tele-selling clinic” for newbies and veteran agents for coming up with spiels that are not only strategic but realistic. You’ll also get valuable feedback from your frontliners that you can communicate with your product development and marketing team and/or suppliers, to improve product and service iterations.

When customers are somehow deceived—whether skipping with the need-to-know details of the sales package or hyping-up a rather ho-hum offer, you’re bound to get these deals closed for sure, but in the long run, these will turn out to be one-time deals, with no guarantee of getting repeat customers and will otherwise increase your returns and cancellations, which will hurt your KPIs, of course what you don’t want being the case.

Being totally honest with customers still is the best tele-selling policy. It helps not only with rapport-building, but with ensuring the relationship with customers remains transparent, making it easy to turn them from first-time buyers to repeat and loyal customers.

Thanks very much for reading! Appreciate it big time if you recommend this post. Let’s get connected, I’m @cclozano everywhere online. Keep the good vibes rolling! #ktgvr