Impact on Business Acumen from the De-Evolution of Phone Skills?

    

In a global business world were a majority of the communications occurs via email, text messages, no-phone-skills-200.gif
instant messages, and posts on intranets and CRM’s, the increasing lack of phone skills is negatively impacting business acumen and business performance.

I can recall vividly my parents teaching us how to answer the house phone and engaging in a dialogue with the other party, whether it was a business call for my dad or a social call for my mother.  “Hello, this is the Brodo residence, Robert speaking, how can I help you?”  That introduction and the impending conversation with the adult on the other line forged many skills including the ability to deliver a message, take a message, understand something “grown-up,” interact with new people, and effectively share the outcome of the call with others such as my parents.

Of course today, there is no more such thing as a “house line” at home and in the corporate world the “main” phone number answered by a live receptionist has been replaced by an automated system that is usually not very customer-centric. 

Because of these changes, there has been a significant and profound de-evolution of phone skills which ultimately impacts the Business Acumen of people working in corporations.  The two most obvious examples of where they are most impacted are in the areas of Business Leadership and Sales.

Business Leadership is always a complex thing.  At Advantexe, we believe that Business Leadership is equal to the execution of your business strategy.  Executing strategy requires strong communication skills to create alignment, share information, provide coaching and feedback, and to talk with customers.  A lack of phone skills and foundational capabilities of communicating with the internal team can impact business results.

On the Sales side, I see a lack of phone skills impacting sales professionals every day.  I was working with some Sales Leaders last week who are struggling with the performance of their teams.  One manager shared a story where she was asking people about conversations with customers in the prospecting process and realized that not one of her 12 representatives actually had a physical phone call that week. All of the customer updates where conducted through email and social media.  When I asked her what she thought about that she replied, “At least they are doing something.  I have very low confidence in their abilities to have real conversations with customers and at least this way a potential customer can just click a link to get more information from our web page rather that talk with a sales person who can’t build a phone relationship.”

This current state of phone skills in business presents several significant challenges to all organizations trying to execute their strategies and deliver on their value propositions.  As a believer that good phone skills are necessary to conduct business that achieves strong results, I think every business leader has to push and force these simple and foundational phone skills to improve the overall Business Acumen of your people:

  • Develop strong phone etiquette – Everyone should know how to have a conversation and understand what the appropriate tone for the appropriate situation should be. Other elements of phone etiquette should include how to manage phone time, how to diffuse conflict, and how to communicate the information that you are sharing, etc. Better phone etiquette internally and externally makes the use of Business Acumen skills more effective.
  • Develop a greeting that supports the value proposition – Everyone in you company and on your team should view an interaction with customers as a chance to share and reinforce your value proposition. “Hello, this is John Johnson from ABC Manufacturing…”  That is a 30 minute exercise that can add a lot of value to the business process.
  • Leaving great messages – What if the person you would like to speak isn’t there? Do you just hang up?  Of course not. Leaving a message is a wonderful chance to extend the brand, communicate information, and build the relationships needed to be an effective business person. Again, a 30 minute exercise is all it takes to develop a great message to use and practice.

In summary, phone skills are important foundational skills that make other higher level skills and processes work.  Advantexe doesn’t even teach “phone skills” per se, but we count on them to teach out Business Leadership, Business Acumen, and of course our Strategic Business Selling solutions.  I am very worried that as a result of weak foundational phone skills it is becoming harder to develop the even higher level skills that are critical to business success.

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Robert Brodo

About The Author

Robert Brodo is co-founder of Advantexe. He has more than 20 years of training and business simulation experience.