Customer inquiries are full of opportunities for your company. Thorough consultation can help you identify the right products and services for each customer, build valuable customer relationships, and even sell additional services.
The perfect client advisor will do all of this well, but delivering fantastic advice can be a challenge. When queries are an integral part of your business, it pays to focus on perfecting them.
A large query is not as simple as it seems. Creating an effective request that converts a prospect into a customer or customer takes a lot of thought and preparation.
While there’s no substitute for an in-person workplace tour, you can save time and money, book more clients, and be more efficient overall by using virtual consultations as long as you follow these tips.
- Understand your goals
Make a list of your goals before entering a consultation. Is it your intention to persuade the client to sign a contract and formally engage you as a new client? Are you trying to get the customer to sign up for a free trial or are you hoping to sell them a more expensive package? If your objectives are clear, you may better organize the dialogue to help you reach them.
- Start with a consultation form
A consultation form gives you a significant edge when preparing for your appointment, and it may be integrated immediately into your content marketing or sales funnel. A free customer consultation form is available from Jotform.
By asking potential consumers to complete the form ahead of time, you can get a little extra information so you can rapidly change your approach to build a more meaningful connection. For example, if your consumer has specified that they are looking for specific attributes in a service, you might emphasize how your services will meet their specific needs.
- Be aware of your body language
During in-person consultations, body language can either help or hurt. Little gestures like crossing your arms over your chest or smiling can convey different messages to your customer. In the same manner, your clients can give you crucial clues. Make an effort to project a warm and sincere body language. During the meeting, make eye contact, smile, lean in closer, and interact with your client.
- Approach the consultation as a conversation
When you’re sure of your services and proud of what you have to offer, it’s easy to turn your consultation into a presentation – where you speak and the customer listens. This might be off-putting to customers, making them feel that you don’t appreciate them as people.
Instead, see the consultation as a dialogue in which you strive to create a relationship with the customer. When the customer is speaking, try to be a good listener by focusing on their issues and inquiries. Before making the sale, spend some time getting to know the consumer as a person and understanding their motivations and values.
- Ask the right questions
Understanding your client’s expectations, needs, and pain spots depends on the consultation questions you ask. Asking questions such as, “What do you dislike about your current service?” and “What would a perfect service experience look like for you?” will help you get useful information. You’re providing the customer a chance to disclose information you might not otherwise learn by asking open-ended questions. These specifics could be essential for converting customers.
- Let people know that you offer virtual consultations.
Do your prospective consumers understand that you provide virtual walkthroughs and consultations? If not, now is the time to add this information to your website and social media sites. One advantage of providing virtual consultations is that because it needs considerably less time and effort from both participants than a face-to-face encounter, people who were previously hesitant may be more likely to book a consultation with you, thus garnering you more business in the long term.
- Use your virtual consultations to establish trust.
By telling clients that you would take precautions to keep them safe, the mere fact that you offer virtual meetings helps to build confidence. Precautions connected to COVID should be discussed in conversations about workplace safety. Also, you can use the time on the video call to allay any worries the customer might have about the procedure.
- Troubleshoot virtually.
Customer callbacks are unpleasant regardless of the mode of communication, but you may utilize a video conference to visually view the issue and troubleshoot it, gathering information and creating a list of required supplies and equipment before scheduling an in-person visit. This can improve your efficiency and prevent you from being caught off guard when you walk into a jobsite to remedy what you believed was a simple problem that turns out to be considerably more involved.
- Set yourself up for success.
Even when watching a video, first impressions are essential. Make sure your WiFi connection is robust and that the background of your call seems clear and uncluttered. If you’re forced to make a video call from a jobsite, choose a quiet spot to avoid having background noise degrade the connection’s quality. Have some wood floor samples on hand to show the customer during your call while you explore their options if you really want to step up your video consultations.
- Prepare an Agenda
“To get the most out of our virtual consultations, we include a list of topics that will be covered in our calendar invite,” Stojcevski explains. “Not only does this enable the customer to prepare but it also provides us an agenda to keep to.
“After that, we want to share our screen and talk over plans and any other documents before giving it to the client,” she explains. “We’ve found that doing so helps them understand what we’re suggesting for their project.”
- Gather as Much Information as You Can
It goes without saying that I will obtain a copy of any working drawings that my clients have available for me to use, according to Kost. But occasionally, we may simply have a general plan. I will be eager to have my own set of measurements as quickly as feasible, even though this can be useful for broader design concepts.
The drawings from advertising materials, according to past experience, “may have doors and windows in the wrong placements, deceptive room proportions, and should generally only be used for broad concepts and not fine detail,” the author claims.
