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Now is the time for small business to do your own telemarketing calls

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

Top tips for small business to do your own business development calls. OK, so the business environment is challenging.

You can sit and wonder what to do to stimulate customers to come to you. Trouble is most of this costs : advertising, PR etc. A more cost effective way of doing it is to make your own sales calls. I always suggest starting with lapsed customers. These are the easiest to convert to becoming trading customers again.

Making small business proactive
Now is the time to become proactive

You can also spend time profiling people to call on Google. Why not do what we call twinning? Look at the customers you already have, and look for others like them. For instance if you do good business with pharmaceutical companies, look for more of them. If your business is geo-centric i.e. likely to be used by local businesses, look local.

It certainly isn’t worth putting together (or worse still) buying a list that is indiscriminate.  You’ll find it demoralising to keep talking to people who have no requirement for your product or service.  Certainly spending time analysing and building a good list to begin with will pay dividends.
Andrew is planning on running a range of marketing seminars over the coming months for owners of small businesses. Entitled ‘Selling your way out of recession’ it will focus on the easy approaches to selling that will give you the best opportunities to build your business or ensure it’s future (depending on where you are currently.)
Please drop us a note to info@tomarket.co.uk if you’d like more details about these sessions. They will be run in a series of locations, aimed at small business owners in Birmingham, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Northampton, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Coalville, Thrapston, Oakham, Uppingham and wider parts of the East and West Midlands.

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Posted in business development, business growth, Cold calling, Forthcoming courses, Marketing, owner managers directors, seminar, small business marketing | No Comments »

Why your elevator speech is important – sales advice

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

There are many reasons why your elevator speech is important. This is all part of effective sales advice.

First what is an elevator pitch? It is as you’ve probably guessed an American term, which we use in the UK unaltered. It is a finely honed script that you use when someone asks you what you do for a living. The theory is that you can deliver it in the time it takes to take a ride in an elevator (or lift if you’re British.) It is the sort of thing you do often – especially if you’re a business person who attends networking events.

How to prepare your elevator speech

Get your elevator speech nailed

How long should it be? Well I reckon 30 seconds should do it tops. Remember that although people ask you what you do, they’re not that interested – not really! What they really want to talk about is themselves.

Make your description short, and specific. I may use something like “…..I train telephone based teams. So telesales, telemarketing and customer service. In fact any group of people who spend all their working day talking to customers on the phone. And so it’s not industry specific. I work with many different industries. And what do you do?”

Avoid grand, wordy, vague descriptions. How often do I meet business consultants who say something like “….we help companies leverage more profit by helping them optimise the working performance of their employees…..” I don’t know what they generally say after that as I’ve already switched off! Apart from which that’s what all conusltancy based services do. And I’m still none the wiser about what you ACTUALLY do!

I came across this example recently, and this was an example of a GOOD WAY to do it. “…to do so effectively, I’d like to know more about you and your interest in my work. Then, I’ll have a context for telling you about my work and can relate what I do to your specific situation.” Ooh dear no ! It might work in America, but it’s not a wise strategy in the UK.

You may want to finish your introduction with an example of your work – name dropping a client if appropriate.

“I’m a web designer, specialising in e-commerce site and recently I worked on the new site for ABC Print.” or “I’m a freelance financial director and I was working on a large merger for DEF Engineering in Nottingham recently.

This all helps give you creedence.

Work on your elevator speech (or pitch), make it concise and then use the same one consitently so that it sounds natural – until such time as you decide to change it.

The best of luck. ‘Inspire me, don’t bore me’ is the motto!

To Market runs telephone sales and telemarketing training courses across the East Midlands, Peterborough, Cambridge, Leicester, Northampton, Derby, Nottingham, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Coventry, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Peterborough, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, Milton Keynes, Lincoln, East Midlands as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire

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Posted in Cold calling, communication skills, Field sales training, Marketing, owner managers directors, Sales tips, Selling advice, telesales, Telesales tips | No Comments »

7 tips on how to make cold calls

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

7 tips on how to make cold calls. Need to make cold calls, but after some tips?

Making cold calls is an integral and therefore important part of growing your business. If you want new customers, you have to approach them for the first time (at some point !) If they come through advertising great, but if not, you’re going to have to pick the phone up and make that call. OK, so here’s some ideas on how to do it …….

 

Cold calling is an integral part of generating new business

Cold calling is an integral part of generating new business

1.  Remove the stigma of thinking of it as a cold call. It is just another business call that’s all. And remember everybody is your customer, it’s just that some of them haven’t bought from you yet.

2. Don’t have a script to use verbatim, but do have a call guide. A list of questions you ideally want to ask, and some words for the key message or messages you want to get across.

3.  Your main focus initially on the call should be to engage with the decision-maker on a human level, forget “trying to sell” for a moment and work to build a rapport, just as you would socially. Your first aim is to get them to warm to you.

 4.   Make sure your call is relevant to the target person, or make it relevant. If you can’t – don’t make the call, you’ll be wasting your time.

 5.   Be aware that as little as 5-20% of the impact of your communication comes from the words you use. The rest comes from the way you say it. So make sure you sound enthusiastic and believe in what you do. Refer to Jamie Oliver, Gok Wan and Mary Portas for details!

6.     Learn from every call you make. You’ll find phrases that people seem to respond well to, and perhaps benefits that don’t light people up. Change your approach as you learn.

 7.   Keep a record of all your call activity. So this includes number of calls, how many you get through to, and who you need to diarise for future contact. This will motivate you more even when you’re not getting the results. “At least I can see I’ve made 100 calls today ……..” Not every call gets you the perfect result, but sure as eggs is eggs, if you don’t make those 100 calls, you won’t get any of the perfect results!

 The best of luck.

To Market carries out telesales training and cold call training for teams across the West Midlands, East Midlands, as wll as Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Coventry, Birmingham, Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby, St Ives, Cambridge, Newmarket, Oakham, Uppingham, Loughborough, Warwick, Stratford on Avon, Leamington Spa plus Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Suffolk.

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Posted in business growth, owner managers directors, sales development training, Selling advice, small business marketing, telemarketing, telephone techniques | No Comments »

Unsolicited telephone sales calls can be illegal

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Unsolicited telephone sales calls can be illegal. So this means you can’t simply start calling names and companies at random from a list. And you certainly can’t do what some companies used to do in the 80’s which was to call numbers out of the Yellow Pages to make sales calls. 

Make sure your telesales activity stays the right side of the law

Make sure your telesales activity stays the right side of the law

As long ago as December 2003, the government introduced legislation which made it unlawful to make unsolicited calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls. Both consumers and businesses can register their unwillingness to receive telephone (TPS) and fax (FPS) communications on a central register.

Over 15 million consumers and businesses have already registered their numbers which means these businesses and consumers must not be contacted unless permission has been explicitly granted to the calling company. There is a potential fine of up to £5,000 for each breach of the legislation. So this means you must ensure your in-house list must be checked periodically, and any lists you buy in should already be TPS checked. Any reputable list supplier will do this as a matter of course.

Incidentally there is a shelf life of 3 months on these checks meaning that any list that has not been checked for 3 months should be checked again. There are many companies that will provide a service to check your numbers for you, such as www.numbercheck.co.uk.

We find that this is a much more serious issue if you operate and sell in consumer markets and phone people at home. Most companies don’t register their office numbers thank goodness as the whole economy would grind to a halt, but many householders do.

This is brought to you as part of  To Market’s public service! If you want further information or advice on this subject, we suggest you have a look at the telephone preference service’s website http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ctps/what/ for all the official information.

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Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, owner managers directors, small business marketing, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, Telephone preference service, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »

Hire an interim to support your new telesales manager

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Hire an interim to support your new telesales manager. You may have a new team leader, or a supervisor who you’ve just promoted to run the team for you. This is something they deserve and have worked for, and you want to acknowledge their contribution. However you may also acknowledge (perhaps privately) that they don’t have all the rounded commercial and business skills that will help them become an immediate success. This is a situation we are coming across increasingly at the moment as clients seek to motivate and reward the staff they already have without wishing to commit to management wages and extra salaries.

Help support your telesales or telemarketing team leader

Help support your telesales or telemarketing team leader

You want them to lead the team on a daily basis, but you recognise that they may need some help and assistance setting up good management reporting systems and training. Perhaps they’ve never had to look at key performance indicators before, perhaps they don’t know where to start. Have they ever trained a team ? And what are they like at working with you to set up a good motivational commission scheme ?

Other areas we typically look at include the quality of the database.  What’s the quality like ? Have they had to evaluate it before ? In order to help your team supervisor or team leader make a quick success of their role and in order to help shorten the learning curve, we can work alongside them on an interim basis to help get the systems set up. Once that’s done, we step away and you then manage your team in-house.

Hiring an interim on a fixed number of days per month can give them the support they may need to get things set up without you commiting to the ongoing cost. If this is an idea you’d like to explore further, just drop us an e-mail to info@tomarket.co.uk and we can have a chat.

We can help you with interim telesales or telemarketing management across the West and East Midlands including Leicester, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Milton Keynes, Melton Mowbray, Daventry, Northampton, Newmarket and Cambridge

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, owner managers directors, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »

Create a dynamic atmosphere with your telesales team

Monday, December 21st, 2009

It’s really important you create a dynamic atmosphere within your telesales team. Winning teams look, sound and behave different to other teams. You may believe that the feeling of success and the buzz comes from the success itself. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t encourage the team to produce this energy themselves. This is one common theme with team audits we carry out on teams – where we go and listen in to them for 2 hours while they talk to real customers and prospects on the telephone. http://www.tomarket.co.uk/teamaudits.php for more details of our team audits.

Motivate your telesales / telemarketing team - success brings success

Motivate your telesales / telemarketing team - success brings success

In one report for a Birmingham client in metal manufacturing we wrote “Consider working on some more ‘jazzy’ ideas for making it feel more like a sales office. We could work on this with the team collectively.”

Teams often have whiteboards in the office to record something, but it’s frequently not in real time. One car company we visited in September (2009) had a whiteboard divided up into sections with each persons name down the left. It was titled Targets 2008 ! and there were no numbers anywhere on the board ! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ! Instead use your whiteboard to monitor activity and give feedback to your team.

Having a series of KPIs (key performance indicators) is another important part of this. Every member of the team needs to know how they’re doing against what the company requires. Again in realtime, not just at the end of the month. How can a person be motivated if they don’t know how they’re doing ?

There are many more ideas about motivating your team through creating the right atmosphere, and if you think your team would benefit from some more structured working and an injection of energy, give us a call today on 01858 461148. We can kick some ideas around.

To Market runs team audits with companies across the company and we can agree the fee with you in advance. We work across the East and West Midlands including Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Leicester, Northampton, Derby, Nottingham, Cambridge, Newmarket,Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Huntingdon, St Ives as well as wide parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk.

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, owner managers directors, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »

Get advice on why not to hire a new telesales manager

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Get advice on why not to hire a new telesales manager. If you are currently looking to build up the telesales or telemarketing function in your company, you may be looking at recruiting a new telesales manager. Alternatively you may be looking to recruit one who has left. However there is a flexible alternative.

Hiring a short term telesales manager gives your business flexibility

Hiring a short term telesales manager gives your business flexibility

You can hire in a manager for a limited period of time. You can agree some objectives for them, and you can ‘hire’ them for a fixed number of days per month. A package might be between a half a day per month and say 6 days per month. In this time a quality telesales or telemarketing manager will be able to help you set up good managment systems and KPIs (key performance indicators) for your team. They should also be responsible for training and agreeing with you some targets and benchmarks for activity and results.

We can come and have a chat over a coffee about how this may work for you.  We can give advice on what to look for, and what an interim or short term contract telesales manager may be able to offer you. So if you’re in Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Newmarket, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, Oakham give us a call on 01858 461148  and we’ll have a chat.

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, Marketing, owner managers directors, small business marketing, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telesales team management | No Comments »

What is the difference between commission and bonus ?

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

What is the difference between commission and bonus ? This is a question we’re asked frequently by clients. Not only what is the difference, but equally importantly, “do we need both of them ?” and “how can we use them both to motivate our team in different ways ?”

Get your commission and bonus schemes right and this is what should happen to sales

Get your commission and bonus schemes right and this is what should happen to sales

Indeed we think commission, bonus and campaign incentives all have a place in how you reward your telesales or telemarketing team. It is worth spending some time thinking these elements through too, because if you get it right you can motivate your telephone team to produce better results, increased sales, more appointments, higher numbers of quotations etc. You don’t mind paying more if you get more do you ? However you don’t want to pay more for the same or less !

Commission should be a regular payment for doing the telesales or telemarketing job well. It should be a constant, and the best performers in your team should earn the most. In addition it must be easy (for them) to work out at the point of getting the order. After all if it isn’t, it can’t motivate them can it ?! So a percentage of order value is a common version of this.

“My commission rate rewards me at 2% of order value.” “Great so if I can get this deal for £500 this morning, that means that will be £10 in my sky rocket (or pocket – for those of you not familiar with cockney ryhming slang !)

Bonus however is for what you reward individual members of your team with on top of their core job. So if you sell any of the platinum service plan we give you £50. You can tailor this then to sales of your more profitable products or services, or end of line stock that you want to clear etc. Alternatively it could be for achievement of quarterly target. Bonuses then should be for specific (relatively) short run campaigns or business objectives. This allows you to direct the guns in a particular direction until the objective has been achieved, or time has passed.

Then on top of commission and bonus there are incentives and for a phone team these are the fun bit. Very short term and with a high profile to add some energy and dynamism to a team’s activity and performance in the short term. But this is perhaps a subject for another day. In the meantime, there is a slightly more indepth article at ezine articles. Follow the link here http://ezinearticles.com/?Should-I-Pay-Commission,-Bonus-Or-Run-Campaigns-For-My-Telesales-Or-Telemarketing-Team?&id=2088836

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Posted in Commission schemes, Marketing, owner managers directors, Telemarketing management, telesales team management, Telesales tips | No Comments »

Small business owner in need of help developing telesales ?

Monday, December 7th, 2009

You run a small to medium sized business and you feel telesales has a place in your business. It is after all a proven and highly measurable way of developing new sales opportunities.  You’d either like to develop the team you already have, or alternatively you might be keen to set up a team.

Get personalised one to one mentoring help for your business

Get personalised one to one mentoring help for your business

The thing is you’re an expert in something else – not in setting up and running a telesales or telemarketing team. Furthermore you probably don’t want to be !  

We may be able to help. We can offer bespoke tailored mentoring work with you personally, to help you develop your telesales or telemarketing team. And if we are working with you personally, there is also the possibility that some or all of it could be funded through Train to Gain.

If this is something of interest to you, and you’re based in Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, Oakham we can help. First we’d like to have a chat over a coffee at your place – and we can take it from there. Give us a call on 01858 461148. We’d be keen to offer you any help, advice or tips we can.

You get some specific tailored help directly applicable to the needs of your business. We can provide you with anything from half a day per month to 5 days per month.

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Posted in business development, business growth, Free training, Funded training, Marketing, owner managers directors, partially funded training, Personal development, sales development training, small business marketing, telesales team management, Train to Gain funding | No Comments »

Don’t hire a new telesales manager yet !

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Many companies are in the situation where they want to develop a more effective telesales or telemarketing team, but don’t necessarily want to commit to spending £40,000 a year that it would cost to secure a quality manager.

How to find a quality telesales manager for your team

How to find a quality telesales manager for your team

Furthermore the economy is fragile and so you want to maintain flexibility. A great and increasingly popular solution is to hire a quality telesales manager on a short term contract. And if you can negotiate a flexible and open agreement where you’re not even committed to them for as long as a year then so much the better !

By agreeing to take on someone with a track record in successful telephone team management you can improve your own systems and processes so that after they’re gone, you can run the systems yourselves. Often a team leader or supervisor can look after the team on a day to day basis and they might only be costing you £20,000 a year.

Our advice on beefing up the telesales management in your company is that you should expect a good telesales manager to help you with such varied issues as ;

  • Advice on your team’s callpots. Do you have enough names, too many, about right ?
  • A check on your database quality. The best sales team will struggle and get demotivated if they’re working poor quality leads.
  • Input into setting up some effective KPIs and management reporting systems. This gives you complete control then. Disciplinary procedures rely on evidence. Underperformers must know they’re underperforming.
  • Advice on how to set up and run easy incentives schemes
  • Help integrating incentives into company campaigns
  • Added value in terms of general marketing advice on things such as your website. Optimising it so that it brings in more visitors is straightforward, it just takes some time and dedication.

If the idea of hiring in an interim telesales or telemarketing manager is something that appeals to you, feel free to contact us on 01858 461148 for some tips and advice. Alternatively go to Associated Learning Systems site where you will find an audio CD on the topic of how to set up and manage an effective telephone team. Click through here http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=2

We have worked with companies in many areas including ; Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, and Oakham

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, Marketing, owner managers directors, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telesales, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »

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