By Nick Bilava, Storage.com
The phone is ringing. Does your call center or sales team know the best ways to turn that prospect into a paying client?
Turning self storage prospects into customers when they call is why you invested in a call center or hired and trained your own staff to answer the phone. If not handled correctly, that call (and dozens more throughout each day) will slip through your hands and the money that was on the other end of the phone winds up in the wallet of a competitor.
Here are a few tips to land those potential clients so they don’t swim downstream and bite on someone else’s hook.
Know Your Strengths
Knowing what your storage facility does well will guide your call center or staff in promoting those attributes to callers, and you’ll find you will achieve more sales. There’s an important caveat here, as well. As an owner, it’s imperative that you are sure of the edge your facility has over competitors. Thinking you know what your facility does well and actually knowing what your facility does well can be two different things.
To be sure of where you’re ahead of the competition, make an effort at least semi-annually (if not quarterly or monthly) to ask your sales team what prospects are mentioning or asking about when they call. Your reputation will often precede you, and your storage facility may have built up good word of mouth about particular offerings. If you have the ability to record calls, listen to them. To get a good sampling, you may have to devote several hours to this, but it can be well worth it.
Not only will you understand why customers are calling, you may find additional ways you lead the competition. Call centers can review calls, as well, and provide you results, but sitting down from time to time and actually listening to calls will do any owner good. You may even discover customers want something no one else in your market offers and your operation can be the first to take advantage.
Leverage Those Strengths
Once you’re sure of where you lead your competitors, it’s time to get the sales team on board. Communicate to your phone CSRs or sales staff what your operation’s strengths are and how you want to position those strengths. Schedule training sessions or staff meetings to go over talking points, update scripting, and engage staff in role play scenarios to better prepare them to leverage your strengths. Encourage your team to ask the callers if they know about the particular services you do well. Educating your sales team on how they can excel in presenting those offerings will also get them excited, and that excitement will spill over into each conversation.
Knowledge Leads to Upselling
When your sales team is well-versed and knowledgeable about the entire scope of your self storage offerings, they have the opportunity to upsell with confidence. Daily or weekly updates about offerings can be communicated to your staff in a myriad of ways. Meetings, emails, or intranet page updates can assist in providing your sales staff with the product knowledge they need to upsell. Holding contests for your sales or CSR team can also boost upselling, as well as morale. However, there can be a fine line between upselling appropriately and becoming a nuisance to the prospect. In addition to educating your team about offerings, some education about when and how to upsell effectively without alienating the prospect will go a long way to further build the reputation of your operation.
When you know what your operation does well, you’ll be able to put those advantages to use. Encouraging your staff to ask callers about those advantages may open the eyes of the prospect to offerings they have not yet considered. Educating your staff that handles calls about the entire scope of self storage services will give them the confidence to effectively upsell.
By putting these tips to use, you’ll empower your sales team and watch more and more prospects become customers. And what’s not to like about that?
