A successful sales call as a business is often a cause for celebration, as it can lead to growth, increased revenue, positive customer experiences and effective networking, but what happens when these valuable opportunities are missed? When a call doesn’t make it through to you it instantly bridges the gap between your business and your client, and it may have a negative impact on your future professional relationship.
However, with effective strategies in place, your business can ensure your teams never miss a vital sales call ever again. By implementing proactive solutions such as scheduled callbacks, innovative technology, enhanced team organization and effective call routing, it is possible to manage your sales calls and provide an excellent service for every caller. When you take a driven approach to implement each of these proven solutions, this will allow your sales team to respond to every opportunity that is presented to them, and improve sales performance.
What Causes Missed Sales Calls?
If you’re a sales manager or business owner hoping to prevent missed sales calls, you need to know why they even happen in the first place. Some of the reasons mentioned below may help you and your sales managers to identify gaps in your current processes and find the best possible solutions.
Here are the most common reasons for missed sales calls:
Understaffed or Unavailable Teams
Having an insufficient number of sales reps on your team is one of the most common reasons for missed sales calls. There may also be scheduling issues, meaning that there isn’t enough call coverage during peak hours. Assessing your teams’ working hours and staffing numbers may be the key to reducing the number of missed calls within your business.
Lack of Structured Call Routing
When a caller intends to speak to a certain area of the business and they aren’t directly routed to the right place, this can cause significant problems. Disorganized call routing and distribution prevents a sales call from going through to the correct person at the correct time.
Overloaded Sales Teams
Sales representatives may be multitasking, attending meetings or juggling too much on a daily basis, which can lead to missed calls. Distributing the workload between your sales teams equally, and ensuring responsibilities are clear and dedicated may help to counteract this problem.
Technical Failures
Using outdated call management technology, or poor phone systems is a surefire way to ensure a vital sales call doesn’t reach your team. Experiencing downtime in the system can also lead to dropped or missed calls on a regular basis.
These are just some of the reasons why sales calls might be missed. Now let’s explore some solutions to help your sales team track missed sales calls, and fix the flaws in your systems.
How to Track Missed Sales Calls?
One of the most effective missed sales call solutions you can implement is tracking strategies. When you make a conscious effort to track missed sales calls, you can ensure that follow-ups happen promptly and minimizes lost opportunities. Here are just some of the methods you could use:
Call Analytics Tools
With effective call analytics tools, you can monitor your missed calls, measure call times, assess frequencies, and get to the bottom of each missed call. This valuable tracking software can lead to you finding the right long-term solution so that your sales team never misses a call.
Missed Call Alerts
Another popular tool is real-time missed call alerts, which notify sales reps as soon as a call is missed. This allows them to follow up quickly to minimize the time between the caller intending to speak to someone, and actually getting through to the right person.
Review Call Reports Regularly
Sales managers should aim to review their call reports on a regular basis in order to identify trends and patterns in missed calls. This might allow them to pinpoint specific times of day or certain team members who may be missing calls more frequently than others.
Now, let’s delve into the proactive solutions you can implement to prevent missed sales calls and ensure timely follow ups.
How to Prevent Missed Sales Calls?
1. Implement Call Forwarding Systems
Call forwarding systems are another one of those sales call management strategies which can completely transform customer experience and sales performance. They will make sure that no call goes unanswered, even when the primary sales representative isn’t available to take the call.
How Does Call Forwarding Work?
Call forwarding redirects incoming calls to other team members who are available, if the intended contact is busy at that moment. This means that the caller gets to speak to someone on the other end of the phone, rather than have their call be missed.
By implementing call forwarding, you can ensure full coverage for your business so that every call is answered. This means that even during extremely busy periods or off-hours, someone is always ready to take a call and give the caller their time and attention.
Are There Any Backup Strategies?
At a time where there aren’t any available sales reps to forward the call onto, it’s recommended that you have a backup system. This system allows missed calls to be forwarded onto a general sales queue or a voicemail with an immediate callback option.
Recommend having a backup system where missed calls are forwarded to a general sales queue or a voicemail with an immediate callback option.
2. Utilize Automated Call Routing
So, how do you ensure that the right person receives the right call at the right time? Automated call routing can efficiently distribute calls to the correct sales rep, which can prevent missed calls due to misrouting or unavailability.
How Does Automated Call Routing Work?
Based on skill set, customer needs and availability, automated call routing technology will send the caller to the most appropriate sales representative in an effective and smooth manner.
This method is particularly useful for handling high call volumes during particular busy periods and peak hours. Call routing is a very effective tool to improve customer experience, and it reduces the likelihood of missed sales calls.
3. Monitor Missed Call Alerts and Reports
Taking the time to monitor all missed call alerts and analyze reports will give you an insight into how you can improve your call management systems. If you want your business to improve customer experience and reduce missed opportunities, this is a key component.
How Do Missed Call Alerts Work?
Setting up missed call notifications allows your sales representative to get an immediate message that a call has come through. This alert will signal to the rep that an urgent follow up is needed as soon as possible. There is specific technology available to help your business achieve this level of streamlined alert system, but it’s also important to take time to analyze the reports they provide too.
What Can Call Reports Do to Help Missed Calls?
All of the information within call reports can help you to improve the processes of your call management. With this information, you can not only analyze call patterns, but you can also determine where the flaws in your systems lie. For example, you may need to boost your staffing numbers during certain hours of the day, or provide more cover for specific days of the week. Having this in-depth analytic information at your disposal is the key to improving call management and never missing a sales call.
4. Set Up Call Overflow Management
When it comes to setting up call management for sales teams, you need to make sure that your team is able to handle a large volume of calls. Introducing a call overflow management system will ensure that no call is ever missed, even when your sales team is handling a large volume of calls.
How to Manage Overflow During Peak Hours
During the busiest periods, you need an overflow system that can effectively reroute additional calls to other team members or a backup team when the primary sales reps are otherwise engaged. This will not only help to reduce customer wait times, but it will also improve the reputation of your business and overall customer experience.
5. Use Scheduled Callbacks for Missed Calls
You’ll never miss a sales call or worry about losing a client if you use scheduled callbacks for missed calls. Ensuring that all missed calls are returned promptly and efficiently makes for a happy customer, and hopefully, a profitable sale! This is where automatic callback scheduling steps in and allows improvements to be made.
What is Automatic Callback Scheduling?
This automated system places all missed calls into a queue for follow up at the earliest convenience. This means that a sales rep will instantly know which call is the highest priority as the system has already lined it up for them.
This is an effective method for prioritizing important leads, so that sales reps can get back to them as quickly as possible. As a business, you may have a list of high-priority leads which need to be placed ahead of other sales opportunities. You can build these leads into the system so that it knows who and what your priorities are.
6. Set Up After-Hours Call Management
Setting up after-hours call management software is an effective way to ensure no call is missed for your business. It allows a caller to get through to your company, even when the sales team is unavailable.
What Are the Options for After-Hours Call Management?
One of the more lucrative after-hours coverage solutions would be an automated voicemail response, so that the sales team can respond to their message and return the call as quickly as possible. Redirecting the call to an outsourced team during closed hours is also a viable option for after-hours call management.
As useful as these solutions are, it’s vitally important that follow ups are carried out on the next business day. Setting up a dedicated system to ensure that all of these after-hours missed calls are going to be returned as soon as possible will help to keep the process running smoothly and enhance overall customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these strategies provide sales managers and business owners with some food for thought regarding missed sales calls and how to prevent missed opportunities. By implementing methods such as, call forwarding, routining, callback scheduling, and monitoring call reports, you can ensure that your sales team never misses a call. On a similar note, you should also leverage the power of technology to analyze and track missed calls so that your sales representatives can respond promptly and follow-up with customers in an efficient manner. This will not only improve customer experience, but it will ultimately drive more sales. Using the wide range of tools and techniques mentioned above, you can have full confidence that your sales call process is productive, professional and profitable for your business.
