28
Oct

4 Easy Ways to Get Your Staff Engaged and Calling Your Customers

The clock is ticking and Thanksgiving will be here in just under 4 weeks. You still have time to sell wine and send it out to arrive before the turkey is ready. You have wine and customers to call, how do you get your staff on the phone to sell some additional wine without them kicking, screaming, bleeding and crying? Keep it simple. Here are four things you can do right now to get them on the phone within an hour.

1. Organize the customers on a spread sheet in bite size pieces

You want to create a list in its simplest form so the person calling can see it. Keep the list small (at least I call it small) of about 50 customers and spread it out over two pages. Names, address and phone numbers are fine. They should be able to look these customers up in whatever system you are using if they need more information or need to place an order.

2. Give them a very simple script

Keep the script super simple. You need 4 components, intro, reason for the call, offer and close

(INTRO) Hi, this is Mark with XYZ Winery. Is Mr/s. Customer there?

(RFTC) Great, reason for my call is we are calling on our most loyal customers with a special for the holiday season. Thanks giving is less than X weeks away and figured you may be entertaining during that time or could simply use some wine. Do you have a minute to hear what we have?

(OFFER) We have the following 3 wines (list 3 wines) available and if you purchase a case we have a flat rate shipping special…

(CLOSE) What most customers are doing is a mixed case (for variety during the holidays). Which wines would you like in your mixed case? Would you like us to ship them to your home, office or wherever you are going for the holidays? Confirm order and take customers info

3. Only have them focus on calling for 2 solid hours at a time

This way there is structure; they know how long they will be calling for and staff won’t burn out. Anything longer may get grueling. Also, create a calling strategy taking time zones into consideration, e.g. East coast is 3 hours ahead and it’s great to catch people in the office their last few hours of the day.

4. Keep it fun!

Make a game out of it, such as who makes the most calls or who sells the most wine in a 2 hour period gets the “homers”. If you have 2 people make a competition out of it.

What you will find is people like to talk about wine and will carve a few minutes out of their schedule to chat. Not to mention, they will thank you for calling because they are busy and appreciate the customer service follow up.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Selling!