The verbal ticks of a cold caller
There are endless articles, company inductions and courses out there to help you cold call, these all tend to stick to tried and tested formulas with script construction then moving onto objection handling. What these platforms don’t cover is much more basic and that’s the language you use when you aren’t remembering your script, getting the customer to say yes 7 times or what objection handling technique is best for the flat out “no”.
Below is a list of things that almost every cold caller will do or will have done but need to stop in order to stay on the right side of the customer. I think these things really grate on people’s nerves and we don’t even realise we are doing it most of the time.
Ummmm
I have started with this one as I once had the displeasure of listening to myself on several calls when I started out years ago, unable to let silence fill a void whilst I thought, I said Umm to give me time to think. Listening to one call which was 12 minutes long I must have said it up to 35 times. It made me sound unconvincing and really put people on the phone off speaking to me. It was ingrained into my speech so took huge amounts of effort to wean out but was well worth the effort! Still today the occasion Umm triggers off alarm bells in my head as I then focus on not saying it again.
Obviously
This is not only one of my pet peeves but has featured on many lists of annoyed customers as one of the top triggers that set them off the wrong path. When a customer asks a question and you respond with the word obviously, you are in fact questioning their intelligence to find the facts themselves. Even if this is right, don’t point it out as you want to build rapport with a customer and make them feel at the centre of everything rather than on the defensive.
Bear with me
Now this one is an indifferent one, some people love it some people hate it and others growl.
I have on more than one occasion said bear with me to a customer who then growled at me and when questioned why, the response was “I am being a bear” … laughing also didn’t go down well at this point. I think the premise of being annoyed at this is not the sentence itself but the fact you are telling the customer to hold rather than asking. If you asked each customer “would you mind holding just a moment whilst I find that answer for you” it is an easier to pill to swallow.
At the end of the day
…it gets dark. You are setting yourself up for a fall if you use this, it’s a finalising term that tries to stamp your opinion over the customers and will infuriate 7/10 people hearing this. There isn’t much more to say on this one.
Honestly
This single word, although used with the best intentions to try and prove your statement, is the biggest way to undermine your customer’s faith in you. When you say “honestly” or the more elaborate “being honest with you” whether the customer (most do) think it or not will trigger the thought “why, weren’t you being honest with me before”. You don’t want to even raise into question the honesty of any part of the call so steer well clear of using honestly to validate your point.
Sales is an ever-changing set of tactics and I have only covered a small section of what is a huge subject, but hearing these so often when on the phone I know there will be many nodding heads and smiling faces reading this guilty of at least one of these.
So try and remove these from your calls, see what happens and if customers start to react a little differently when you are talking to them.