| Telemarketing is one
of the most powerful and cost efficient ways for companies to
create new business and provide great service to existing accounts.
However, telemarketing can lead to real disappointments and
even disaster if your telemarketing sales staff does not function
at the highest level of excellence and professionalism. We have
developed an outstanding Telemarketing
Sales Training class that will equip your people to produce
great results in any situation. Communicating by phone is much
different from a face-to-face interaction. Our outstanding telemarketing
sales training instructors will help your team recognize the
personality of the client on the other end of the line simply
be listening for tone of voice and speech patterns. These insights,
and many more, will have your call centers humming with new
customers and more profits.
If selling makes you uncomfortable, try these strategies
for success.
Q: I have a degree in electrical engineering. Now that
I'm an entrepreneur, I find myself having to sell and
am uncomfortable with this new role. Can you give me some
tips on how to get the sale and maintain my integrity?
A: There are four specific things you can do to improve
your chances of getting the sale—even if you lack
experience and feel uncomfortable doing so. As it turns out,
only two of the four involve making "buy" recommendations,
which means you're actually only "selling" during
those two activities (the first two in the following list).
The process can be broken down this way:
1. Exploring: investigating the unknown to learn something
new. Exploring typically means asking questions like: "How
does your business operate?" "How many employees
work here?" "How many different locations do you
have?" "How much do you think you spend each month
on network services?" "How many output devices do
you currently have in your department?" Just make sure
you're asking the right
person in the organization; someone whose opinion is respected
and is tasked with providing his or her opinion about a pending
purchase.
2. Initiating the process. Initiating is the point in the
sales process where we begin to map our products, services
and solutions to the needs we've uncovered during our exploring
activities. Make sure to match your
initiating sales activity with the people who serve, perhaps
in addition to other formal roles, as important advisors to
the organization's decision-makers.
Think of your own experience. Have you ever met with someone
who could influence the purchase decision, and then noticed
the conversation stopping dead in its tracks when you started
to deliver your pitch? You perhaps heard, "Stop trying
to sell me and just stick to the facts."
3. Finding a sponsor. You need to find someone in the organization
with a strong belief in your idea and who will vouch for your
credibility. To succeed, you'll need the decision-maker to
take on the role of sponsorship for the acquisition of your
product, service or solution. After all, he or she knows what's
going on and who's making it happen. He has direct access
up and down the hierarchy. He's in alignment with the entire
enterprise and, for the most part, is upwardly mobile. Decision-makers
are the folks we want on our team.
Once you've got such an ally, there's really only one important
rule to follow: Tell your sponsor everything—the good,
the bad and the ugly. If you've got delivery problems, tell
your sponsor first. If you've got product reliability issues,
tell your sponsor first. If your organization is getting ready
to stop supporting any particular revision of a product (such
as a piece of software), pick up the phone and tell your sponsor
the moment you learn of the decision. In other words, never
let any news about you get to the decision-maker from any
source other than you.
4. Leveraging: consciously drawing another person's attention.
At this step, you must be willing to make your case to your
sponsor before you make it to the "approver" in
the organization—the person who will be giving the final
go-ahead on the sale. (You tell your sponsor everything, remember?)
You must be willing to articulate, with credibility and passion,
both hard-dollar and soft-dollar value results in your discussions
with decision-makers and approvers. Sometimes salespeople
focus exclusively on one or the other, and that cuts down
your opportunity.
Putting It All Together
Regardless of your lack of selling experience, you'll make
more sales faster when you incorporate the above steps into
your process. Even better, you won't be "selling"
all the time!
Tony Parinello
Telemarketing Sales Skills - Gain Insight Into the Telemarketing
World
Telemarketing Sales Quote
People begin to be successful the minute they decide to be.
Harvey Mackay
Suggested Reading:
Friendly Persuasion: Dynamic Telephone Sales
Training and Techniques for the 21st Century
by Dan Coen
Telemarketing
Skills Training Manual
by Sandra Ambrose, Daniel Hellmuth
Top Telemarketing Techniques
by Ellen Bendremer
Sales Training
Basics (Crisp Fifty-Minute Series)
by Elwood N. Chapman
How to Manage Growth and Maximize Profits in Outbound Telemarketing
by Steven A. Idelman
In-house t-e-l-e marketing: A masterplan for starting and
managing a profitable telemarketing program
by Thomas McCafferty
Total Telemarketing
by Robert J. McHatton
Telemarketing:
Applications and Opportunities (A Fifty-Minute Series Book)
by Lloyd C. Finch
Successful Telemarketing: The Complete Handbook on Managing
a Profitable Telemarketing Call Center
by Kathy Sisk |
