Have you updated your iPhone yet? Better hope your customers haven’t. BDCs and sales teams alike tend to bellyache about how difficult it is to get shoppers to pick up the phone when they follow-up. Well prepare for a gut punch, because that is going to turn from an ache to a major pain. One small setting will cause big connectivity problems for your sales team.

Do you ever look at your iPhone, see a missed call and say, “huh, I never even felt it vibrate”? (I say “never felt it vibrate” because most people haven’t turned on their ringers since 2011.) Well you didn’t feel it because it never vibrated. It never rang. And it isn’t going to. The newest update on the iPhone is the cause. From now on, your phone defaults to sending any single call you receive that is not already in your contact list directly to your voicemail. You’ll never hear it ring or feel it vibrate. You’ll just see the missed call.

How does that affect your sales team and BDC? Simple. Connectivity will be the issue. Your team will do their best to execute their tasks to the best of their ability, picking up the phone and calling prospects as the CRM dictates, and it will just ring until voicemail. The customer won’t even have the option to pick up the call if they wanted.

DealerKnows analyzed over a hundred thousand leads and released a wealth of data at the last two DrivingSales Executive Summits. One relevant piece of data we uncovered is that something as simple as having a phone conversation with an Internet lead prospect increases their likelihood to buy 7x more than if no phone conversation was had. Connectivity with customers plays a major factor, and iPhone technology is taking this away.

This one little iPhone update is about to wreak havoc on how many people your team talks to in a given day. You need to start changing your expectations from calls. Get amazing at lead management through email, text and video, and hope for a miracle that your shopper doesn’t have an iPhone. You can role-play phone conversations until you’re hoarse, but the one task you should begin role-playing immediately… is how to leave a great voicemail that generates a call back. (And let’s face it – voicemails aren’t even listened to as often. Now voicemails are read via the transcript. Are you prepared for this technological disruption? Better hope so.

Don’t know how to leave voicemails that generate returned calls? Call DealerKnows. We won’t answer, but we’ll get back to you if you leave a voicemail. 🙂