Using Live Telephone Answering Services To Help Your Sales Team

By Author: Larry Chandler
Total Articles: 738
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Companies that use a medium-sized to large-sized workforce face lots of issues. Sales people need to be out in the market place talking to either new prospects or current customers to generate new sales. With lots of people making various contacts through phone calls, emails and direct mail it can be a challenge to handle not only the request of the sales force but also the incoming requests of customers. This is how live telephone answering services can come in handy. Having a reliable service available to handle multiple tasks can free up lot of time and effort.


Hand Out Leads


One of the most important duties of live telephone answering services is to give new leads to the sales representatives. Some customers will actually call in to a company with questions about a product and make known their desire to talk to someone about purchasing the product. Qualifying the lead, gathering important contact information, as well as buying information, can be gathered by the phone operators and then divided up to the proper sales people.


Answer General Questions
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Sometimes people will just call and simply want to know the price of an item with no serious intention of making a purchase. These types of calls are often called “window shoppers” or “tire kickers.” While it is true that they may indeed buy something from you one day the purchase will not happen any time in the near future. This type of generic question can be handled by live telephone answering services freeing up the sales staff to focus on more promising leads.


Offer Assistance to Sales Staff


Most companies, regardless of the industry, rely heavily on the internet and email. Companies make updates to products and add new features on a constant basis. In order to alert the general public, as well as the workforce of the company, management will send out an email with links and attachments. Sometimes it is not that easy for a sales rep to pull up a smart phone or laptop and dive into a 6 page attachment discussing the latest announcements. That is where live operators can benefit the sales process. Sales reps can call in and get the latest info in a matter of moments without digging through a lot of emails and web pages.


Offer Assistance to Customers


Customer service is probably the biggest value offered by live telephone answering services. Helping customers check the status of an order, discuss current promotions and even help with a return or exchange is a necessary task but one that can eat up a lot of time. That is why it makes more sense for someone at a phone to help with this task instead of asking a commissioned sales rep to handle the task. It also gives the customer reassurance to be able to talk to a real person rather than a computer.


If your company relies on a group of sales people to spread the word about your products and drive in revenue then you should really consider using live telephone answering services. It can save you some time and improve your company's profitability.

Larry Chandler is a freelance writer for Anser Services a provider of live telephone answering services and USA call centers. Check out their site at Anser.com to learn more about their services.