Course Outcomes

This chat selling course will:

  • Explain the value of chat as a selling tool.
  • Explore the basics of relationship selling.
  • Demonstrate the importance of building rapport early in chat conversations.
  • Offer best practices for reading and matching communication styles.
  • Suggest language for asking questions, probing, and summarizing customer responses.
  • Provide ample opportunities to practice skills and receive coaching.

Course Overview

Live chat can be a differentiator in the online shopping experience, and an effective chat agent can boost conversion rates. Choosing a good chat solution is one piece of the puzzle, and knowing how to get the most out of it is the other.  This chat selling course covers the ins and outs of selling with chat and techniques for driving customers to the next stage in the purchase process. 

During this course, we’ll talk about how chat fits into the buying cycle, skills for starting conversations and building rapport, techniques for reading people styles and adjusting conversations to accommodate different preferences, questioning, probing, and summarizing skills, and language for leading site visitors to a purchase or the next stage of the buying process.

Program Objectives

At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

  • Explain how chat can be used as a sales tool and a relationship-building opportunity.
  • Describe how digital marketing has changed consumer behavior.
  • Articulate the reasons customers visit websites and how chat fits into various customer journeys.
  • Outline a typical purchasing cycle and what happens at each phase.
  • Build rapport using chat.
  • Use conversational English when chatting.
  • Integrate canned messages with real-time text.
  • Recognize language that is too casual for business chatting.
  • Match a customer’s communication style preferences.
  • Use open and closed questions.
  • Ask customers probing questions in a way that causes them to share information freely.
  • Summarize and paraphrase what customers say.
  • Lead customers to the next phase of the buying cycle.

The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).

Workshop Outline

The Basics: Understanding How Chat Fits

This course opens with an exploration of how chat fits into the online purchasing experience. During this part of the program, we will talk about how chat functions as a sales tool and vehicle for building relationships.  Next, we will look at how digital marketing has transformed the way consumers shop and why these changes matter to people offering chat as a communication channel to customers.

You Come Here Often?: Starting a Conversation

Just as getting off to a good start is important in face-to-face conversations, how we launch a chat can influence a customer’s opinion of us and our organization. This course component looks at characteristics effective online salespeople share and how to convey competence and confidence from the keyboard. In this interactive segment, we’ll talk about striking an appropriate tone, sounding natural, and greeting customers in such a way that they feel listened to and well served.

What’s Your Sign?: Knowing Who You Are Talking To

Some people are talkative; others get right to the point.  As chat agents, it’s critical to be able to quickly read customers and adjust accordingly.  A fluffy answer is not a good fit for a guy who prefers a no-nonsense approach.  Likewise, a short and direct answer may not suffice for the customer who asks detailed questions. This part of the workshop explains people styles, how to recognize them, and how to modify and adjust chats to accommodate customer preferences.

Let Me Ask You: Probing and Summarizing for Better Understanding

You can’t help customers if you don’t understand what they need.  In this portion of the program, we will explore sales communication and the importance of probing, reflecting, and summarizing what customers tell us.  Working through a series of case studies, participants will have an opportunity to practice their skills.  This segment ends with a discussion around authenticity.  We’ll talk about using canned messages appropriately, selling without being salesy, and avoiding words and phrases that are cheesy, pushy, or otherwise inappropriate in relationship selling.

What’s Next?: Driving to the Next Stage

Depending on the business, the next step in the sales process could be a purchase, making an appointment, or scheduling service.  No matter the organization, most have a defined sales cycle and goals for their online chat providers.  This final segment focuses on language for moving customers from one stage to the next.

At the program’s conclusion, participants should know how chat fits into online purchasing and specific actions they can take to build relationships with site visitors and drive them to the next stage in the shopping process.