I participated in a webinar last week, sponsored by Water Technology, which was titled "Perfecting the In-Home Sale."
My part of the program was about best practices in lead generation — in other words, how to actually get that all-important in-home appointment in order to close the sale.
To prepare for this program, I spoke with many dealers in the water and home improvement industries. I found out that regardless of the industry, if two dealerships got the same exact leads, the more experienced offices set more appointments and closed more sales than the smaller, less experienced offices.
What many dealerships simply do not understand, is that their first sale is selling the prospect on the value of the in-home appointment. It’s the job of the professional who visits that home to close the sale.
Tips:
Use an appointment setter:
Dealerships who let their salespeople set their own appointments set fewer appointments.
Make sure a live person answers your phone:
No prospect leaves messages hoping to get a call back. They just go on to the next company on their list and call your competition.
Use a script for both in-bound calls and out-bound lead generation:
I can’t tell you how many times well-meaning staff spend time 20 minutes on the phone with an in-bound call prospect, answer every question and never remember to take down their contact information in the first 20 seconds of the call.
Train your appointment setter for success:
Test and tweak your outbound script for appointment setting and make sure you have additional scripting that handles objections.
Check out the latest webcast from Water Technology titled "Perfecting the In-Home Sale" here.
