#65: How Much Money is Left On the Table Everyday?
Most restoration company owners, and service business owners worry about production crews leaving money on the table by missing opportunities for additional work. Owners also think about costly mistakes that take place during estimating and invoicing. Salespeople are there to make money for the company, but even the best sales team will blow it on occassion and that too will leave money on the table. No question these things cost most owners plenty. Is there another major way that companies leave money on the table?
Perhaps the most over looked way of leaving money on the table is during the telephone answering process.
Think about it... at the moment that a prospect calls your company, the person answering your phone becomes the most important person in your company. How they speak, the tone of their voice, their confidence (or lack of it), their knowledge and experience all matter. Potential customers make instant descisions based on the subtle inflections, pauses and hesitations while the receptionist is speaking. That is not to say that a receptionist has to be a "perfect voice talent" but they have to be "good" and hopefully "great" at what they do, which is providing solutions and answers for prospects' questions and problems.
What's your "caller to customer" conversion ratio?
I suggest that you pay attention to how phone calls are being answered because it's expensive to advertise and promote your company and it's frustrating to discover that calls are not turning into dollars. Changing staff is not always the answer, unless the people who answer incoming calls are clearly not right for the position. In most cases, to turn things around, it's a matter of education, training and planning.
Your receptionist has to be knowledgable about your core services and your customers. They especially need to understand things from the customer's perspective. They have to learn how to take control of a caller. These are basic telephone answering skills. Doing these things poorly will lose business. Executing them well, will build business. Here comes the key message in this article...
Ownership often fails their receptionists by not empowering them correctly.
How so? Ownership has an expectation that a receptionist must convert callers into customers, yet they often don't provide the real support to make this happen. Certainly, this is a key responsibility for all receptionists. Many receptionists do very well at converting callers into appointments or jobs. But, when the day becomes crazy-busy and a flood of calls swamp the phones, it's not possible for even the very best receptionist to take the time that is required to speak in depth to a prospect without interuption. Its had to turn calls into business with constant intruptions. One answer to this is to have a back-up person trained and ready to help answer the phones during busy times. Or, direct certain calls to other persons (especially sales team members) who are in the office and are able to answer questions and "sell".
There will also be times when difficult questions or unusual requests for services challenge your receptionist. Do you have perpared answers and strategies in place for the difficult and unusual? You may wish to consider doing this.
There are also services available that allow you to record incoming phone calls. This way you to review how calls are being handled on behalf of your company.
My best advice to owners is to appreciate the huge and important role played by your receptionist. Have an awareness of the difficulties they face and support them in the task of being prepared to convert callers into clients. Also, you are in the highly competitive property services industry, so even more reason to stop thinking of a receptionist job as a low paid entry level position. These employees need training and your support... as if your business depends upon it. Because it probably does.
FYI - At Harben Marketing we offer telephone receptionist best practices training. It's a web-based learning program designed for owners and receptionists! We can also provde telephone recording services.