Tips for Telesales. 11 helpful hints and tips

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1 Tips for Telesales 11 helpful hints and tips 1. Take Action Successful business development requires effort and consistency. If sales growth is a concern, now is the time to take action. Make those calls, no excuses! 2. Identify YOUR Proposition Think carefully about how to make your business and your services attractive to prospective clients. You may want to consider what problems your business solves, rather than what services you offer. For example, do you help to reduce costs, increase productivity, protect systems or resolve some other equally frustrating problem? Whatever it is, on the phone, you have possibly one or two sentences at the most to grab a prospect s attention. Try to make sure you use the few seconds you have to talk about them, not you! 3. Define Your Target Market Put some extra time into defining what type of company would be most likely to use your services and who in that company would make the decision. Start as high as possible. If they pass you down, that s not necessarily a bad thing. 4. Case Studies What areas does your company specialise in? What good work have you done in specific markets? What well-known clients have you got in particular areas? Select an industry that you understand, rather than one with high barriers to entry.

2 5. Corporate Telephone Preference Service Data quality is vital - a good list is worth its weight in gold. Once you ve defined your sector and who you want to speak to, you need to select a good quality list. Make sure that the list you purchase is updated and cleaned as regularly as possible - ideally a frequency of 6 months is fantastic, although 12 months is probably the norm. Also, ensure that the lists are screened for opt-outs on the CTPS (Corporate Telephone Preference Service). Be aware that you need to screen for opt-outs every 28 days in order to comply with legislation. 6. Brief and Train Your Team Well When using telemarketers, the mushroom treatment doesn t work. You can t leave them alone in a dark room, feed them rubbish and hope they will generate the results. You need to brief them well. That doesn t mean that they need to know the ins and outs of every aspect of your service. However, they do need to know why you re unique, why a prospect should see you, why they should see you now and what problems your service cures or helps. Ideally, a good knowledge about what you do / offer helps as this breeds confidence in them, which shows in any marketing call. It helps to provide a written briefing and to follow this up with a presentation to those making the calls after which they can ask questions. Don t forget that ongoing communication is important, as your telemarketers will learn as they go and you ll be able to help them quickly overcome any gaps in their knowledge. Use open as oppose to closed questions when making calls. This will build rapport and support the relationship. It also demonstrates a level of interest in the business of a prospective client. Start questions with how, what, where, which, why etc and use closed questions (do you do a lot of business development?) sparingly. Don t oversell and pitch your benefits at people. The key is to listen, understand, ask and show interest. Remember the WIFM concept. They are only interested in the WHAT S IN IT FOR ME. They don t care about how wonderful you are! 7. Choose the Right People The key to good telemarketing is attitude and enthusiasm. This has to be focused, however someone with a great attitude and passion for your services will outperform someone with huge technical knowledge of how your operation functions. Personality and the ability to build rapport are crucial. Studies show that only 7% of all human communication is related to what we say. Body language is the most important thing, closely followed by tone. Hence, over the phone, how you say it is almost more important than what you say.

3 As a result, choose people that are passionate. Make sure that you match the telemarketers with the prospects you re calling. If you re calling the marketing director of Mars or Unilever, you don t really want an 18 year-old student to make the call. Peer to peer communication is important in building rapport and therefore you don t want someone that will be unable to get past the Rottweiler gatekeeper or who could freeze when faced with a heavy hitter posing tricky questions. You also want to choose someone that will be open with you, a strong communicator who can debate the challenges and overcome them with you. 8. Be Patient Telemarketing isn t a precise science. If you ve failed to generate business doing your own telemarketing, don t expect results overnight. If you line up the factors we ve discussed here, success should come more swiftly, however success in telemarketing depends on a number of factors and results do vary. These relate to: Choice of target market Level of competition (including price) Level of awareness of your company Quality of your credentials (e.g. having produced for companies within their industry) Relevance of your services to the proposed target market Any relevant offers Timing Follow-up (e.g. calling them back in 6 months when they ask) Building momentum (i.e. doing enough calling to build up a head of steam) If you ensure that communication is high and follow-up is consistent, over time you stand a better chance of achieving your objectives. 9. Set Realistic Objectives High quality lead generation takes time. Not every prospect is looking for your services at the time of the call. Equally, your proposition needs to be attractive. You also need to consider what level of new business meetings you and your team can handle alongside the day job. As a result, set your expectations accordingly and be realistic. If you ve had someone in house full time and they ve only generated 4 appointments of debatable quality over 6 months, don t expect 30 appointments per month using an outside company if you plan to allocate only 30 hours per month to the activity. The key is setting objectives for what you can handle and what is consistent with your business status. For example, if you have something everyone wants and the

4 credentials and client base to back this up, you will achieve more than a start-up company with few clients and no experience. The other aspect to consider is do you want speculative meetings as well as meetings with prospects that are looking now? Our view is that speculative meetings are important as they allow you to unearth needs and to promote your services. They also build momentum for you. This assumes of course that the speculative meeting is with someone that is a decision maker and that is receptive to your proposition, even if they aren t ready to move forward right now. A good spread of speculative and warm meetings will help to build your mid-term pipeline. 10. Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up With telemarketing, you must be prepared to follow-up all the way to the end. This means: Have written information available for prospects that want to see something in the post. And make sure it is relevant! Prepare a good for those that want more information by . A good body copy and simple pdf case study should do the trick Make sure s and meeting confirmations go out promptly Don t change the meeting time unless absolutely necessary Prepare in advance of the meeting. Review the prospect s website without fail Plan your meeting. Don t over-present. It s much better to listen and understand than to try to dazzle by PowerPoint Agree next steps at the end of the meeting. Agree a time to call back or meet again Follow-up when you say you will and keep doing so until the lead either converts to business or it becomes clear that no business will be forthcoming. This could be a long gestation or short, dependent on your type of business and also the cost of sale Make sure you work with your telemarketer to brief them on the outcome so the loop is closed 11. Build Momentum Things don t happen overnight in business development. This is true regardless of which channel you use. Don t expect instant results. You need to give it at least three months to judge whether the calibre of meetings is appropriate. It could be that sales don t flow for some time, but you are seeing prospects you would not have seen otherwise and that could convert to business later. It s important to manage your time but this could mean a regular call to someone you ve met on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. Make sure you plug this into an

5 electronic or manual diary. This is your business development pipeline and one of the most valuable assets in your business. Telemarketing is a potentially powerful means to generate a sales pipeline for your business. It stops inertia in terms of insufficient lead generation. However, you need to work the process and give it time to deliver. If you do, you ll see the results in terms of momentum in your business and sales growth. See also our Telesales Script Data Bubble is a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which means we comply with all the codes and guidelines required of its members. Our full range of marketing tips and templates are available for download at Data Bubble 2013 Data Bubble Consultancy Ltd, 2 Aspen Rise, Bradford, BD15 9LA info@databubble.info