Few people would be successful in their jobs if they didn’t have the tools they needed to perform.
And the telco retail environment is no exception.
Salespeople play a crucial role in the telco store. They’re the face of your company, they build customer loyalty, they orchestrate great experiences, they educate your customers – and much more.
But many telcos fail to provide the tools and training that salespeople need to be good at their jobs.
Here are the three tools your telco salespeople need to be successful:
1. The Right Education
Despite the resources available, most telcos don’t have a dedicated training department. As a result, telco employees don’t receive a well-rounded education.
Rarely, if ever, do people wander off the street and into your store with the necessary skills and experience to be a successful salesperson. Telco sales associates need:
- Superb people skills and the ability to adjust their selling style to the customer.
- A deep self-awareness, and to know their strengths and weaknesses.
- To see opportunity in all customer interactions and know how to recommend products that fit a customer’s lifestyle.
- To know how to be a trusted advisor, build relationships and handle customer objections.
- A strong desire to learn about the complex telco industry and environment and be able to communicate this clearly to customers.
By pursuing a telco-specific retail training program, telcos can help their salespeople learn these skills and gain a clear understanding their role in the retail environment.
And the best training programs don’t stop. Telcos should continuously invest in their salespeople’s education with advanced sales training and regular product and industry updates.
The right education is truly the best tool any employer can provide their employees to succeed.
2. The Right Systems
Telcos are notorious for using legacy systems that were built decades ago and don’t meet the demand of today’s retail environment. This results in slow, error-prone processes that tarnish the overall customer experience.
Knowing how to use the systems is another struggle. Sadly, many telco employees don’t receive adequate training on the systems they use, which compounds the effect on the customer experience.
To ensure success, telcos should provide their salespeople with systems that create frictionless experiences for both the employee and customer. Some of these systems include:
- Point of Sale (POS): Select a POS that’s integrated to other systems, such as your BSS/OSS, payment providers or Warehouse Management System.
- Inventory Management: Ensure your inventory management system supports serialized tracking. This will give your staff insight into stock availability in real-time, and visibility into stock levels across your organization.
- Queuing: Queuing systems manage store traffic and keep customers happy by keeping track of who is in the store, who is waiting, and who needs to be served.
- Digital Contract Signing: Digital contract systems are a great asset that are quick, fun and secure to use. As a bonus, Walk Out Working forms can be digitized so compliance can be enforced. This ensures customers always leave the store with a ready-to-use device.
By implementing the right systems, telcos can ensure customers have a quick, efficient experiences, and salespeople can spend more time with the customer instead of administering the sale.
3. The Right Processes and Policies
A common, unfortunate occurrence in telco retail is inconsistent service. The question of whether your customers will have a positive or negative experience largely depends on who is working that shift.
This happens largely due to a lack of training; it’s common for a few employees hold unique skills while the rest are either new or haven’t been adequately trained, leading them to stumble around in the dark.
Telcos need to define how salespeople should greet customers, what questions they need to ask, how to hand the customer off to a colleague who is better suited to take care or them, how to complete a sale, how to say goodbye… you get the gist!
By not having defined processes, telcos are creating room for error and risk missing opportunities, such as upselling or cross-selling.
No matter which salesperson the customer interacts with, their experience should be consistent – everyone should know how to properly handle requests, move the customer through their journey and perform transactions.
These processes should be taught to all employees, then regularly communicated, updated, and tested for retention. Regular assessments are a great way of ensuring that your processes have be understood by your staff – a combination of coaching and an e-Learning platform are very helpful here!
Take a minute to think about your current training program, systems, processes - or any other tools you provide your staff with. Do they set your employees up for success?
If you aren’t sure and you’re looking for more information about the tools discussed above, download our whitepaper, “How To Create Outstanding Telco Salespeople” and learn about what customers expect from their retail experience, why the telco store experience falls short, the characteristics of an outstanding telco salesperson and how to develop a successful retail training strategy.
