Telemarketing Top Tips
Some Top Tips For Telemarketing
The UK has over 450 telemarketing agencies ranging from small agencies that have recently set up, to large call centres that have many years of experience in calling.
We at Marketing Quotes have put together some tips for telemarketing for your business, to help you be more effective at lead generation.
Having Good Data
Like building houses, calling businesses is about the foundations. Having good data is where it starts; if you have up to date data to work from, this makes the lead generation process much smoother.
Tips For Telemarketing – Calls Per Day
It always has and always will be a numbers game. The agents need to be making north of 100 calls per day. This can be broken down into 4 quarters, from start to 10.30, then lunch time, and the 2 afternoon sessions.
Setting Targets
Having small bite sized targets is good, rather than weekly targets, having daily targets keeps things in bite sized chunks.
Everyone needs goals, whether in their life or in their job, and telemarketing is no different.
Telemarketing staff by their very nature are goal driven, commission hungry and focused on hitting daily and weekly targets.
This is why telemarketing is such a powerful form of marketing as it is proactive with hungry sales people behind it.
Experienced Staff
Good staff are hard to find, as any business owner will tell you. Finding good telemarketing staff that are motivated, capable and experienced is essential for any successful campaign.
A Few Handy Telemarketing Tips
- Ask for what you want – Do you want an appointment, a demonstration or a sale? Don’t be shy. It’s the reason you are calling the prospect.
- Ask open questions – Open questions to encourage the listener to talk giving you information. Closed questions to qualify and filter, closing doors to objections.
- Be confident – It radiates to your prospects. Prepare to succeed and chances are you will succeed.
- Be honest to the prospect – Honesty really is the best approach. You will get found out if you lie or try to deceive.
- Be motivated – People buy from people. If you’re not positive about what you offer, why should your prospects be interested?
- Be patient. Telemarketing does take time and patience and perseverance.
- Be prepared to make your calls at times to reach your decision-makers, for example before 9 am and after 5 pm if necessary. Not everyone works a 9-5 day.
- Build rapport – Use frames of reference, name drop, mirror their language, and use their name in conversation (but not too often).
- Call out of normal hours and lunchtime -The gatekeeper won’t be there to protect your decision maker.
- Change your pitch if it isn’t working. Plan a call structure that is like a good story. An attention grabbing start, a compelling middle, and a great ending.
- Secure a good call list. Make sure you list is clean before calling. A good list is the best asset to your success
- Ensure your phone line is clear – No gremlins in terms of interference or dodgy signal.
- Find a ‘Trojan Horse’ – To get under their radar so that they will engage with you especially if they have already a current supplier of your services
- Follow up calls – Make your follow up calls on time and keep doing this until you know where you stand
- Get agreement from your prospect to call them back at a later date. Even if they are no interested now, things can change in the future.
- Have a pen and paper at the ready at all times. Make concise and good notes including language, style, and key information. Old school is sometimes better than keying it into a CRM.
- Have your diary open and ready to give dates for meetings
- Keep control of calls with the gatekeeper. Sound authoritative and you have a better chance of getting through. Keep what you say short and to the point.
- Try to avoid leaving voice mail messages.
- Listen carefully – God gave you two ears and one mouth to be used in that ratio.
- Sound professional on the phone with a clear speaking voice, pace, and tone.
- Make sure you are calling for the right decision maker.
- Make sure you have a relevant email to send should they ask for more information
- Make sure your data is as fresh as possible. Good marketing data is the key to effective telemarketing.
- Make you are able to talk ‘off script’ to really engage the prospect. Know your industry and jargon.
- Make sure you are passionate about your product or service you are calling about.
- Make sure you fully brief your telemarketing agency if you are outsourcing calling
- Make the calls – Don’t delay. Just get on the phone. Inertia is the worst enemy
- Prepare likely objection handling questions and techniques. You know the objections. Plan for them
- Plan your calls for the day – Know your products, market, competitors, pitch, and the issues your company resolves or the opportunities your company creates
- Read between the lines of what the prospect says. Clarify if you’re unsure.
- Role-play or record your calls to see what could have been done better. Listen back to improve your techniques with colleagues or a sales training company.
- Send timely information when requested including appointment confirmations
- Set realistic objectives – Based on your market, experience, and proposition
- Set realistic targets – How many calls per hour? How many appointments do you want to make? Over what timeframe?
- Smile when you dial – It transmits to your voice tones.
- Sound authoritative. You need to sound at least as important as the person you are speaking to. It’s peer to peer and you won’t get past the gatekeeper if you don’t.
- Summarize the conversation with the prospect to ensure that you have listened and understood their ‘pains’ before you go ahead and pitch/recommend your product or service
- Take good notes during the call – Include information on verbatim comments, language, tone, pace, and personality.
- Try to fool an IVR by dialing 0 to get to the switchboard. Or call another department and try to be put through to your prospect.
- Use a good CRM system – This is so you can quickly search and find follow up calls
- Assume you are going to get what you want and ask for it with that assumption in mind
- Use evocative and compelling words like huge, massive, significant, dramatic, and so on. It adds impact but don’t go too wild.
- Use the ‘feel, felt, found’ technique to combat objections along with good open questions
- Use frames of reference – Previous work, client reference points, and industry examples
- Treat people how they would like to be treated. Consider their motivations and needs and treat them accordingly.
- Use natural engaging language. Sound natural. Use simple English. It helps in building a rapport.
- Use technology to speed things up. For example click to dial CRM and Skype number recognition enables 1-click calling.
- Use telemarketing to follow up other marketing activity. For example emails or visitors to your exhibition stand
- Have a glass of water available for those ‘parched’ moments. Watch out for how caffeine affects you. Talking all day uses energy and hydration is important.
Motivation For Staff
Having motivated and happy staff is important in the process. If your staff are in the right frame of mind, they are more likely to perform.
Tips For Telemarketing Includes Sales Training
Sales training plays a big roll in calling success. If your sales staff have the right training from the right agency, they are more likely to be successful.
There are many sales training companies in the UK, finding one that knows your industry, speaks your language will be a likely one to be successful for your sales team.
Take Advice
Telemarketing top tips can be used by any business, from agencies to internal sales teams.
Lead generation for startups can be difficult, which is why we have put together this page offering useful telemarketing tips.
We at Marketing Quotes want to help UK businesses with their marketing. Sadly there are a lot of poor marketing companies in the UK, ones that give promises but fail to deliver.
Our advice is to shop around like any price comparison website, compare quotes and seek free advice. Rather than spending time on Google looking for the right agency, just fill in the form.
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