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Why Call Center Reps Need to Consider Prospects' Website Activity

By Drew Hendricks April 06, 2016

Are the sales reps at your call center struggling to meet sales quotas? Whether they’re dealing with cold calling, or people who’ve opted in to receive more information about your products and services, your agents need to know who their prospects are.

How much does each sales target know right now about the product you’re selling? Do they know the extent to which the people they call are familiar with the product? What aspects of the product are most attractive, or most problematic to each lead?

By arming your sales team with intelligence on prospects’ past actions on the product website, you’ll empower them to support and sell more effectively. The best part is, because you’re likely using a professional-level email marketing and/or landing page platform like GetResponse or MailChimp, you already have access to this data. Here’s why paying attention to it can make such a big difference when it comes to phone sales conversions.

Sell the Hole, Not the Drill

Of course prospects want products, but what they’re really looking for is solutions. When you know where someone has spent the most time on the product’s website, you can use that insight to determine why they’re most interested in buying. You can see which features are most attractive to them. By having access to these records, sales reps can direct their conversations around these issues and demonstrate how the product is actually the best solution to the prospects’ pain points.

Let’s face it – no one likes a pushy sales rep. When your agents ask about the specifics of what they already know a lead is looking for, their ability to address pain points efficiently shoots through the roof.

Instead of grinding through a trial-and-error process of trying to find these trigger talking points, they can create a conversation that feels comfortable. Rather than simply following a script talking about how the product is the greatest thing since sliced bread, access to prospects’ onsite activity logs allows them to skip straight to what the lead really wants to do with the product.

Get Better Results with Personalized Pitches

While the call center industry as a whole seems focused on call quantity, shifting your focus to call quality can help yours outperform the competition.

The more targeted the conversations between sales reps and prospects are, the higher your conversion rates will be. Did Sarah visit your pricing page three times last week? Did John download your competitive comparison ebook? Did Rhonda click on your “money back guarantee” banner? According to Forrester, less than a third of organizations monitor the quality of interactions with target customers, and taking steps to do so can give you an edge over competing call centers.

As MetricNet partners Jeff Rumburg and Eric Zbikowski recently wrote, “Most call centers… do not exploit the full potential of their performance metrics as a diagnostic tool.”

Integrating your website visiting activity with your customer relationship management (CRM) software empowers reps with additional information to make the calls more personal. With just a few minutes preparation to look at the prospect’s online activities, the rep now has the information they need to create a more personalized pitch, selling the hole, not the drill. Integration is fast, easy, and totally worth the investment.

Learning is Now Self-Service

Before the days of the Internet, it used to be that people learned about products and services through speaking with sales staff. Now, information is at our fingertips, and we learn about new offerings through publications we trust, search engine queries and social media. Regardless of whether the product is B2B or B2C, the process is largely the same. In fact, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships with businesses without interacting with another human, according to Gartner’s predictions.

When prospects see something potentially useful to them, they’ll take the time to do it themselves by clicking around, learning more about the product’s specifications and the brand’s reputation. They’ll educate themselves on available options and the specifics around each solution. Gone are the days of in-home product demonstrations – that’s what YouTube is for.

By the time a prospect has opted in to receive a phone call from one of your sales reps, they likely already know a great deal about what you have to offer. That’s where today’s tracking technology gives you an edge. Your agents can see and follow along the customer journey, leveraging that knowledge to create optimized pitches.

Targeted Pitching Is Within Reach

Change the way your team communicates with prospects by shifting the conversation away from talking up the product and towards the solutions it has to offer that are especially interesting to the customer. With this strategy in place, you can improve call quality and customer satisfaction. While it may mean you sacrifice some call volume, isn’t it worth it if your sales volume increases?




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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