We have recently been part of a benchmarking exercise within our insurance call centre - one of the things we were measured on was the relative active or passive level of the sales close.
I have now been asked to develop some training for the call handlers to make their closing more active, yet still deliver sales through service.
We are unable to receive defintions or measurement criteria from the benchmarking organisation at the moment, so I have formulated some ideas as to what the difference is, but am struggling to put it into 2 separate statements to define the 2 types of close.
Can anyone help with a definition?
Thanks
Nicola
Nicola Sutherland
2 Responses
Closing
Hi Nicola
I worked as a sales trainer for a major insurance company for some time, at a guess, my definition would be:
Active: A direct question asked at the end of the call e.g. “Shall we get this set up now”
Passive: No question, just providing the customer with the facts and allowing them to make a decision
Slightly off the subject, during this time I developed a consultative approach towards telesales rather than transactional and got some great results in sales and customer experience. Happy to talk more about it if you are interested, you can get me on [email protected]
Best wishes
Rich Lucas
http://www.supremacytraining.com
Asking for the business
Hi Nicola
I would agree with Rich.
An active close would be the sales advisors asking for the business using a direct, alternative or an assumptive close. Where they have made an effort to get the business from the caller.
A passive close would be where no effort has been made to secure the business and as Rich said they had just provided a quote, information, facts and figures.
However I think you may need to consider that there maybe cases where the sales advisor may not be able to put the caller ‘on cover’ as some insurance companies I have worked with cannot issue cover unless the renewal date is within the next 60 days. Therefore if the customer is just ‘shopping around’ and has for example a September renewal, you may not expect them to ask for the customers business.
Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] if you want further clarification. However in the meantime I would like to wish you every success moving forward.