Basic B2B Telemarketing Etiquette
June 20, 2011
When you are making a business to business telemarketing call, there is a basic etiquette that should be maintained. These steps will help you to improve sales and you might even have a chance to reach a person that others have unsuccessfully been able to contact.
To begin this process, you need to ensure you have the name of the person spoken correctly. While some names can be difficult, you will want to ensure that if you do make a mistake you apologize. Along with that, if your company uses an autodialler and there is a delay, make sure you let them know that you appreciate them waiting on the line.
During this process, you should speak at a normal and comfortable pace that appears conversational. Don’t read from a script or rush through a presentation. Present yourself as a friend with a smile on your face and this will be reflected in your voice.
Make sure you keep your tone friendly and don’t ever become abusive in cases where bad manners appear on the other end of the line. You should never terminate the call without telling them goodbye in a professional manner either. There is nothing that says you must listen to the abuse, but you should remain respectful and this will have a positive reflection on both you and your company.
Preparing for a Telemarketing Call
June 10, 2011
In telemarketing, you need to ensure that you are ready and prepared at all times. Simply dialling phone numbers and trying to sell a product, service or plan to another business is by its nature a difficult to do.
Because of this, you need to keep some key ideas and answers in mind when you are getting ready to make the call. Begin this process by having some questions and responses setup to the normal elements that come up. These will be things like, “Why would I consider your service?” or “We already use another company for this.” If you don’t have a solid persuasive response planned, you will have a harder time making the sale.
Along with this, you will want to have a solid knowledge of the product or services you are trying to promote. If you have to look for answers on basic questions, this will raise a red flag for the company you are trying to sell your product to. In some cases, you might find that a future conversation with this decision-maker will be difficult. Remember, thorough product knowledge is the building block for good telemarketing calls that you make, and when you have the confidence of knowledge, you will see an increase in the successful calls that you make.
Good Practices in Telemarketing
March 1, 2011
Telemarketing good practices basically follow common sense and to a great extent mirror what is good practice for businesses in general. For instance, setting goals for various programs you have in place, and making sure these are realistic as well as measurable is a good practice.
Testing and refining of strategies and techniques is paramount to success.You need to have individuals or a team that can take your existing customer data and analyse it to see which companies and customers have the greatest possible profit margin. You need to know which organisations are most likely to use and buy your service or product so that you can focus your telemarketing efforts on businesses like these.
And this directly leads onto another good practice which is taking advantage of the flexibility that is engrained into any good telemarketing staff or agency. This means using a flexible, bespoke approach to campaigns, gaining an advantage by adapting your sales team according to market trends, and to the analysis of what works and what doesn’t work. If it does not work ditch it, but when something is working, develop it so you can be even more successful.
Best calling times?
February 24, 2010
Is there is best calling time for outbound calls? The answers to this are many and varied. It all depends on your target audience and the service or product you are offering. B2B calling times tend to be business hours as you would expect peaking in the late afternoon. According to statistics, calls made offering services and products to the general public are most likely to be successful between the hours of five and seven o’clock in the evening. As I said before though, there does not seem to be a definite time for optimum calling so perhaps sometimes it is just the luck of the draw.
Statistics – Statistics – Statistics
February 22, 2010
Many companies rely on statistics such as number of calls, wrap up times, length of time on call etc. The question is how much do we actually get from these figures. You may have a telemarketer making 150 calls a day against another working in the same department making 100 calls a day. Looking at the figures it appears the first is working fifty percent harder. The actual result of these calls paints a very different picture if we then find that the agent with the lowest number of calls has a greater success rate. The lesson to be learned here is if we are going to use statistics we need to interpret them correctly and remember all is not always what it seems.