Proudly serving the industry for which it was named for more than 50 years, Outdoor Power Equipment provides dealers who sell and service outdoor power equipment with valuable information to succeed in a competitive market.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/98625
FEATURE STORY By Irv Shapiro Shortening response times with voice communications How voice communication benefits equipment dealers The value of establishing voice contact with prospects isn't lost on marketers and sales professionals. An Ifbyphone survey of 350 marketers found that 90 percent of respondents speak with prospects as part of the sales cycle. However, nearly two-thirds don't respond to inquiries within an hour, The ability to establish seamless and instant connections with prospects is important, but it's just one of the benefits that voice communication technology offers equipment dealers. Recent Ifbyphone research revealed that 95 percent of users have experienced an Leveraging voice communications in your dealership A prospect visits your company website and is greeted by a battery of content: images, videos, product specs, customer recommendations — everything needed to make an informed buying decision. Clearly impressed, the prospect likely takes the next step in the sales cycle and downloads or submits a request for more information. And then the prospect waits…and waits…and waits for a response. Sound familiar? This scenario is far too common for many outdoor power equipment dealerships. Prospects are often subjected to a delay in response time at the moment when they are most inclined to learn more about a dealership's products and services. According to a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study, sales leads are 22 times more likely to be converted when they are contacted within five minutes of submitting an inquiry. 22 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com Illustration provided by Ifbyphone Businesses that fail to respond in this critical five-minute window, often lose the sale because the lead or prospect loses interest and moves on to a competitor. To compete in today's multichannel marketplace, your dealership needs a proven and cost-effective way to quickly respond to sales inquiries and other conversion actions. Without it, your business runs the risk of losing market share to competitors who are more capable of responding to prospect requests, during the time period when prospects are most eager to speak with a sales associate. and a quarter fail to respond within a day, placing them far outside the all-important five-minute response time frame. E-mail alerts and other digital tools can be helpful, but they offer limited effectiveness in reducing response times since they usually require the salesperson to be online — an unrealistic expectation for sales reps who spend much of their day in the field or on the showroom floor. So for dealers, the best way to shorten response times is through the implementation of voice-based marketing automation technology. Voice-based marketing automation is designed to create near-instant voice communication between the prospect and a sales rep capable of addressing their questions or concerns. When a prospect performs a specific online action (e.g. submits a form request for more information), a call is instantly directed to the designated sales associate, before the prospect has navigated away from the dealer website. Next, real-time "whisper" technology reads the information the prospect submitted online to the sales associate, giving the associate the opportunity to immediately understand what the prospect is looking for within minutes of the initial request. The advantage of voice-based marketing automation is that it equips dealerships with a practical tool for connecting with Webbased prospects through their preferred communication medium. Research shows that two-thirds of businesses view calls as their most important source of leads (BIA/Kelsey), and 43 percent of searchbased conversions occur over the phone (AdInsight). Another benefit of voice-based marketing automation technology is that it's extremely flexible and adaptable to each dealership's unique needs and preferences. With the ability to support multiple sales associates, customized configurations and dynamic real-time reporting, the best voice-based marketing automation tools improve conversion rates without disrupting the dealership's regular sales routines.