Telemarketing

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Telemarketing is the process of generating leads, appointments or sales through the telephone.

Some people love it, most people dread it!

If you are making these calls at the moment, here are some tips to make you more effective at making them. If you are not making any telemarketing calls you are probably missing out on a lot of additional business by not making them.

Here are just a couple of tips to get you started:

TIP - KNOW YOUR OBJECTIVE

Go into each call with a specific objective in mind.

Is it to create awareness?

Generate a lead?

Make a sale there and then?

Think this through.

TIP - CREATE QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU CALL

Armed with your calling objectives, create some questions that well enable you to move closer to your objective.

Focus on their situation, not yours.

TIP - KNOW YOUR OBJECTIONS IN-ADVANCE

It's not rocket science but every telemarketer will face the same objections.

"We've got no money"

"We are not interested"

"We don't have the time"

"Can you call back later"

The list goes on!

You need to be armed with responses to each of these in advance to move the sale forward.

TIP - HAVE A PLAN B

So you are going nowhere with the call. Have a plan B up your sleeve!

This might be the case of sending them your brochure or adding them to your mailing list or digging for some further information of when they will be in the market for your product.

Be prepared.

TIP - YOUR OPENING GAMBIT

Introduce yourself and then your opening statement when you call should create some curiosity and interest so that they will want to hear what you have to offer.

Focus on them and not you.

TIP - REVEAL WHAT YOU ARE OFFERING WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT THEY WANT
Only talk about what you are offering when you know more about their situation or the probloem that they are facing. You can then tailor your pitch with their requirements and needs in mind.

Do you make cold calls to generate leads?

If you do, do you actually like making them?

Well, whether it is your full time job to make them or whether they are part of your job, the vast majority of people who have to make them do not like doing so.

I actually put this down to the way that cold calls are perceived by the person making the call and the fear of failure.

Hear me out here.

I bet the type of calls that you make either have a positive outcome i.e a lead generated or a negative outcome where the prospect does not have a need for what you are offering at this moment in time.

I’ll just back track for a second. I just used the term prospect for the people that you are making cold calls to. You know what? They are not even a prospect are they when you think about it? A prospect has just that - prospects of buying your produce of service! Cold call recipients are more like suspects!

I digress but it’s something to think about isn’t it?

As I said before many of you will view a cold call as a success or failure activity.

Let me ask you a question:

How many people that you know actually like failure?

Let me ask you another:

How many people do you know would do something 1000 times knowing that they would "fail" 995 times?

Not many I am sure and herein lies the problem.

It is the way that you approach your cold calls that makes you think that you fail if you do not get a certain outcome.

From here on in I would like you to view making cold calls as raising the awareness of your products and services. Do not go into the call thinking that you MUST generate a lead for your sales team, instead go in with the attitude that you are just raising the awareness of what you do.

Therefore, if you make 500 awareness calls per day over time you will build up a data bank of statistical performance that you can use.

You see, you cannot determine whether your suspect actually wants your product at the time of your call but you can control how you approach each call and what you say during each call.

Soon, you will know how many awareness calls you need to make to generate 1 sales appointment for your team and then you will know how many sales appointments your company requires to generate 1 sale.

Therefore, by knowing the stats you can mentally prepare yourself each day knowing that by making your 500 calls you will be generating £15,000 for your company for example and that will help you get through your calls.

You will then know the impact of making an additional 100 calls per day overtime and what it means to your bonus levels.

There’s an old saying – If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

So, in summary – change your mindset and you will change the way that you view making cold calls and you will feel more comfortable making them.

Also, understand the wider context of what you are doing in terms of calls to leads and appointments to sales ratios and it will help you to remain focused on the job in hand.