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Planning Your Telesales
In order to best utilize telesales for your business, you must be aware of what it can and cannot do to improve your business. Some businesses still utilize cold calling e.g. using the phone to directly call customers unprompted to sell them a service or product, might result in alienating your customer base and damage your company’s reputation. An alternate direction to cold calling would be to use telesales to reach your customer base. An example of using it would be to introduce yourself and your business to the customer before you send them a sales letter or to potentially set an appointment with them later.
You could also use telemarketing to reconnect with existing customers. Once your relationship with your customer has been established, you can use telesales to create repeat customers.
However you decide to use telesales, you will need to decide as to whether or not you want to train your employees in the art of it, or use a telemarketing service to do the work for you. Remember to also know the rules and regulations regarding telemarketing services e.g. cancellation rights and unsolicited cold calls. You don’t want to break the law unknowingly.
Cold Calls & Positive Sales Tactics for Calls
It should not surprise you to know that most employees consider cold calling potential customers to be a daunting prospect. Some employees even avoid the task, right up until the last minute. You want to be able to train your employees (or hire them!) to be confident, as not being confident in their tasks will not help their sales.
Your employees will need to employ the right tactics to make their cold calls successful and effective. For example, how cold calling is viewed can make a huge difference in confidence in your employees. If cold calling is viewed as advertising for future potential sales and customers, rather than automatically used to make a sale straight away, then your employees will feel much more comfortable utilizing it. This will lead employees to create well planned out calls that have clear objectives–not robotically scripted calls that come off as
cold and technical to the customer
Training your employees in telesales will give them confidence and better skills to fulfill their job description. Not only will it help them focus while also dealing with anger and outright hostility, but it also helps them develop the following skills:
– learn how to speak to the correct person and bypass the “gatekeeper”
– learn how to guide the consumer in reacting positively to their call
– learn how to build a relationship that organically leads to a sale, not pushing for it
– learn how to respond to questions
– learn how to close a sale and when to do so
If you have already decided to outsource your telemarketing branch, then this article is not for you. Otherwise, you should consider training your employees to implement telesales tactics the right way, so they will have the best negotiation and sales technique skills they can.
