“Great Marketing Is Not Enough if Your Prospects Don’t Convert”

Making Ghost Calls Work for You

By now you know it’s sort of a mantra with me: Inspect What You Expect™. This may sound ominous, but it’s not when you do it right. And getting it right is pretty simple…

Relationship Is Key

The educational portion of your business – the ongoing coaching and training you’re providing for your staff – must be based on relationships, communications, and sales. How you treat your internal customers (your team) is how your team will treat your external customers.

So, when you tell your team that you’ll be doing mystery calling, or ghost calls as we call them in our phone sales program, they won’t like it. Initially, they’ll be concerned, afraid, threatened or feel like you don’t trust them and that you want to catch them doing something wrong so you can get rid of them or lecture them. (Check the laws in your state regarding recording calls.)

Any of the above reactions are normal, and you should expect them. Don’t back off or get nervous; remember, this is your business, and you make the decisions. You’ve got to monitor your staff daily. The telephone is one of the most important sales and marketing tools in your business for prospects, clients, and referrals. Without the phone and good staff, in that order, you’ve got nothing! No matter how good you are, you’re done.

Ease into this process. Explain to your staff that ghost calling is a positive program to help them become sharper than ever, to do even better than they already are, to enhance what they’re already doing right. Notice what I just said: to enhance what they’re already doing right. That’s a better message than “We want to fix what you’re doing wrong” or “We want to correct your mistakes.”

Another way to ease into ghost calls to your own business is to have your staff ghost call your competitors. Intake specialist Anita found when she called a competing firm that empathy was totally lacking. This showed her how important it is to express concern for callers. Making ghost calls can help your team members prepare to receive their own ghost calls, all in the spirit of improving themselves.

Your Most Important Tool

We’re Talking About the “S” Word

Folks that aren’t hired to be hardcore sales closers hate scripts. They hate the “S” word because they don’t want to be phony, to lie or to sound like a robot with no feelings or empathy.

You don’t have to read the script word for word, but there are some very important words and sentences on your script for a reason. A script is a guide, a cheat sheet, a road map to guide you accurately to the next step while staying focused on what the sole purpose is: to close the deal.

Here’s exactly what we teach our students to do when it’s time to learn a new script. In fact, I do this myself. I use scripts all the time, but I don’t sound scripted.

Get a recorder and read your script into your recorder three different times. Pick the best one, and then delete the others.
Listen to the recording every single day a minimum of three times per day for 10 consecutive days. That’s while you fall asleep, while you’re on the treadmill, while you’re driving in your car.
After 10 days, test yourself. If your intake calls are recorded, listen to them. Did you leap ahead? If you don’t have recordings, have one of your teammates do a difficult role-play with you. Also, record the role-play and listen to it over and over again.

Andrea is a paralegal, and she reported in her recent What I Learned (WIL): “Chris’s explanation helped me understand what we can achieve when we follow the script.”

Real sales athletes never stop role-playing or listening to their recordings or practicing new scripts. They do it daily to stay sharp, more often when they’re trying to learn a new script quickly. Try this, and you’ll lose your fear of the “S” word!

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