Archive for the ‘Getting past gatekeepers’ Category
Friday, March 26th, 2010
Befriend the gatekeeper – it’s the only way ! Honestly, it is !
Gatekeepers, receptionists, secretaries, PAs can be the bane of your life to any aspiring telemarketing or telesales person, and this is a hot topic when we discuss telesales or telemarketing training with clients. However it is important to remember a few truths.
Befriending gatekeepers - get them onside
First the gatekeeper has all the power. They decide whether they are going to put you through or not. So why take them on ? No point.
And like anyone else they will respond better to people they warm to. Be friendly and human with them. This doesn’t mean talking about lots of random “I’m trying to be your best friend” type of stuff either.
Use words like help, advise, suggest as this subtley shows that you respect their position. “I know Phil Smith is busy, but can you RECOMMEND the best time to get hold of him ?” You may be surprised how many times these types of approaches work.
Always be polite and respectful, and it will get you more of what you want.
If you speak to the gatekeeper a lot, then it is fine to develop a more social relationship – ask them about their holiday etc, but never do this if it may be considered to be inappropriate.
Getting past the gatekeeper is one of the hot topics at the moment on telesales and telemarketing courses, and so we are looking to include this in a series of short, sharp training sessions we will be running, monthly 2 hour open course training over a 12 month period. These will be offered to businesses across Birmingham, Solihull, Lichfield, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham, Mansfield, Leicester, Coalville, Loughborough, London, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Grantham, Stamford, Peterborough, Cambridge, Newmarket, Bury St Edmunds, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Stratford, Kettering, Wellingborough, Corby, Market Harborough, as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, the East Midlands and West Midlands.
Tags: dealing with objections, objection handling training, overcoming objections, overcoming objections on the telephone, telemarketing skills, telesales training
Posted in Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Selling advice, Telesales tips, communication skills, sales development training, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Getting past the gatekeeper – 5 top tips. One of the parts of our interactive training sessions I particularly enjoy is when we brainstorm ideas as a group. This is one of the fun parts of our training work on getting past the gatekeeper, or getting past the receptionist as it often is.
Here are 5 top tips that have come from training groups we’ve run ;
- Build in continuity if you’ve spoken to them before “He asked me to call him” or if untrue, instead try “we agreed to speak round about now ……”
- Go via another department (accounts or HR for instance) and ask to be transferred. This also often helps get the name.
- Ask for them by name : directly, assertively and confidently. You could also simply ask for them by their first name if appropriate.
- Use the fear close. Spell out ‘dangers’ of not taking your call. Does depend on the industry you’re in. This can work with compliance industries such as Health & Safety. Not many receptionists will be brave enough to block you in response to lines such as “I just wanted to chat to him about the forthcoming legislation and I’ve got some information for him that will help you stay the right side of the law” will they ?!
- Be prepared to engage the receptionist or PA in conversation. Use their name back to them, and use words like help, advise and suggest. You will be appealing to their ego and sense of power.
There are many m0re of these tips and we are collecting more all the time, but I hope these help you. They certainly help us, and the countless people we work with. The best of luck, and I mean that most sincerely folks !
To Market runs training sessions to include this bane of our lives across the Midlands including Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Northampton, Corby, Kettering, Loughborough, Daventry, St Ives, Cambridge and wider parts of the East and West Midlands
Tags: advice for free on telephone selling, advice on telemarketing, free advice on telephone selling, telemarketing tips, telesales advice, telesales techniques, Telesales tips, telesales top tips for free, tips on selling, tips on telephone selling
Posted in Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Selling advice, Telesales tips, communication skills, sales development training, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Having a range of quality questions to use when talking to prospects on the phone can be massively helpful and can get you further than perhaps your competitors will on the phone. You may have done work on open and closed questions before. You may even have done them with us.
Questioning techniques for telesales and telemarketing
The next stage is to develop some great questions that will help you get that bit further. We were carrying out some work with a client in Kettering, Northampton recently and we were talking about how to deal with the objection “I’m happy with my current supplier thank you.” A quality question could be “ok that’s interesting, what is it about dealing with ABC that you particularly like ?” Whatever they answer is going to help you understand what is important to them.
If someone is considering a number of different options or suppliers, certainly a question which works well for us is “and how will you decide who to go with ?” or another way of asking the same question is “and what are the most important factors in helping you decide who to choose ?” As soon as they’ve told you that you know what you need to sell against. Forget everything else – just focus on what is important to them – which they’ve just told you !
Any tips you have for us, let us know at info@tomarket.co.uk. We’re always keen on new ideas.
Tags: dealing with objections, free tips on telesales, telesales advice, telesales ideas, Telesales tips, telesales top tips for free
Posted in Field sales training, Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Telemarketing management, Telesales tips, communication skills, contract cleaners, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Telesales and a host of other good business initiatives has helped produce a 30% rise in turnover for a Cambridge based company since the beginning of the year.
To Market is pleased to have worked with a Cambridge company in training and development for their telesales team at the beginning of 2009. An intensive 2 day course for the 8 people they have in telesales in their Cambridge office has produced some fantastic results. In a business to business market sector that has seen market falls of 8% year on year, this company has produced increased turnover of just under 30% in the same period.
Cambridge telesales and telemarketing training
Training work on benefits selling, overcoming objections, dealing with gatekeepers and telephone techniques training has helped the team maximise sales opportunities. Additionally the introduction of new KPIs key performance indicators and a stronger focus on telesales activity has seen contacts and dial rates increase 37% for the team as a whole.
As the market picks up, success awaits those companies who invest in their teams to make sure they are the absolute best they can be. Fortune favours the brave. Bespoke tailored training available for business to business organisations in areas such as Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Northampton, Kettering, Wellingborough, Corby, Daventry, Grantham, Stamford, Newark, Cambridge, Newmarket, Derby, Nottingham, and Peterborough as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire. Talk to us, we’ll explain how.
Tags: cambridge, leicester, northampton, sales team development, telemarketing training, telemarketing training programmes, telephone techniques training, telesales growth, telesales skills, telesales training
Posted in Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, business growth, communication skills, sales development training, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Friday, April 24th, 2009
Good news is that there is a new sales course with partial funding available through Train to Gain.
To Market is now able to off you a one day course entitled the
21 things you need to know to sell more products to more customers
You can commission us to run this course in-house on your premises, or if you have less than 6 people for training why not join us at one of our open courses ?
For anyone new to selling, or someone just in need of a brush-up on technique with some top tips on selling skills and sales techniques this course is for you.
During the day we cover ;
§ Identifying needs
§ Getting past gatekeepers
§ Benefit selling
§ Questioning skills
§ Expression, energy, emphasis in the human voice
§ Opening the sales call
§ Dealing with objections
§ Call wrap-up
§ Getting commitment
Provided you are a SME (small to medium sized business) and you are the owner, a director or a senior manager within your organisation, and you undergo the training yourself, then there is funding available for this course through Train to Gain which means you get this one day course for up to 6 people for just £500. The normal fee is £1,500. So yes the government (bless them) will put £1,000 into training for you and your team.
What do you reckon ?
For more details and to register your interest just e-mail us at info@tomarket.co.uk and we’ll get the ball rolling for you.
Tags: Field sales training, funded sales training, getting past gatekeepers training, identifying needs, introduction to sales training course, introduction to selling, objection handling training, sales techniques, selling techniques, telesales course
Posted in Field sales training, Funded training, Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Train to Gain funding, communication skills, partially funded training, sales development training | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Recently To Market was commissioned to run in-house training for a plastic packaging company. We’ve worked with them over many years and the customer service course went well.
We’ve carried out both customer service and telesales training for companies who specialise in the manufacture of plastic packaging.
This training can be based around whatever your business challenges are, but we’ve worked on new sales development, identifying needs, lead qualification, overcoming objections, advice on getting past gatekeepers plus questioning skills. That’s on the telesales, telemarketing and internal sales courses.
On customer service training we work on handling conflict, dealing with complaints, complaint handling in other words, exceptional customer service training and how to delight the customer.
Packaging is one of the industrial market sectors we specialise in so if that’s your bag so to speak give us a call on 01858 461148 or e-mail us info@tomarket.co.uk
Tags: customer service training, exceeding customer expectations, exceptional customer service training courses, in-house telephone skills training, telemarketing training, telephone skills courses, telephone techniques, telesales training
Posted in Customer service management, Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Uncategorized, communication skills, customer handling, customer services, telemarketing, telesales | No Comments »
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
Shall I leave a voice-mail message is a question I get asked a lot. And it is complicated in that the answer is “it depends !”
Certainly when I am training telephone sales and telemarketing people or anyone making outbound calls I suggest that you have to consider it on a case by case example. Not very helpful you may think. But let me explain. Generally, and the majority of the time if you get put through to someone’s voice-mail I suggest not leaving a message. First of all if you did this on every call where this happened, it would take more time. Admittedly it might only take 45 seconds or so, but imagine if you did that 50 times in a day, that’s nearly 40 minutes gone that will never come back. Most of the time people won’t call back anyway.
The second reason for not leaving voice-mail messages is that if you’re leaving them frequently it makes you sound more desperate. And whatever the reality you certainly don’t want to give that impression ! Added to that of course if you keep leaving messages you remove the incentive for them to call you back. They’ll be thinking “I do want to talk to Tom, but he keeps on calling so I’ll wait for him to call again.”
So that’s the advice – don’t leave voicemail messages. HOWEVER there are exceptions, and here are the main 3 I work with.
1. This is a new prospect you’ve not spoken to before. You will often be calling people you have no previous call history with. It could be a brand new company, or perhaps more likely it may be a new contact at an existing company. Either way you have no dialogue with this person. And remember it’s people who buy your products and services not companies or organisations. So in this instance it may be a good idea to leave a message on their answerphone. Because it may just be that they are looking around for the types of products or services that you supply. And if they don’t know about you, well ………. they don’t know about you, do they ? Don’t rely on the fact that you sent the previous job holder an e-mail or brochure a year ago either. Somebody new into a role will frequently look to stir things up a bit and look at new ways of doing things. Now is your time to strike ! In this instance leave them a message to let them know what you do, and of course leave your contact details.
2. You’re following up a proposal. Frequently you will be following up some work you’ve done on their behalf, such as a proposal, or a demonstration, or you’ve sent a brochure with product details and prices. In this instance it is worth leaving a message as you have had a dialogue with them about something specific. People buy more frequently if you make it easy for them to buy. So leave your details. It also shows you’re professional. That is what professional people do – they follow things up, and see them through – so be a professional. Professionals get paid more because they are more successful more of the time. Finally you’ve put some time and effort into this person and their company and so you have a reasonable right to expect something back, in the form of some feedback from them and a definitive response. Otherwise you’ve just wasted your time haven’t you? It certainly doesn’t mean they owe you an order (however much effort you’ve put in), but it does mean that you have the right to expect a response. So leave a specific message that you’re “following up the recent proposal I sent you through…………. and I was wondering if you’d had anymore thoughts on it.” That sort of thing.
3. It’s been a while since you’ve spoken. Marketing is all about brand awareness and so you do want to make sure they remember you, and recall you if they’re in the market or even talking about it within their company. So if it has been a long time since you’ve spoken to them, or you’ve taken the advice in section 1 here and not left a message on the previous 8 times you’ve called them over the last 6 weeks, it might be a good time to do it now. You want to avoid a situation where you lose an order simply because you weren’t talking to them at the right time – especially if you’ve been trying to make contact and can never get through.
We run training courses all around the UK, both in-house and off site open courses, follow this link to the telesales and telemarketing training page http://www.tomarket.co.uk/training.php
Tags: advice on telemarketing, free advice on telephone selling, free tips on telesales, telemarketing training, telephone sales, telephone techniques, telesales training
Posted in Field sales training, Getting past gatekeepers, Selling advice, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
Telesales masterclass on 9th & 10th September – so straight after the school holidays ! This course is ideal for anyone in Leicester, Northampton, Coventry, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Peterborough, Milton Keynes, or wider parts of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire.
This 2 day telesales and telemarketing training course is for anyone who wants to be selling more on the phone, and covers a range of selling techniques, telephone selling, and closing the sale. The telesales course will be a lively, fun 2 days helping you adopt new communication skills techniques.
We will be covering how to open a sales call, telephone techniques plus communication topics such as questioning skills, identifying needs, probing, dealing with objections, selling benefits.
You can e-mail us for more details including course schedule and fees at info@tomarket.co.uk. If required you can reserve a place at no obligation and then let us know if you want to book. This course will be run by Andrew Seaward – Senior Trainer at To Market
Tags: corby, coventry, kettering, leicester, Leicestershire, northampton, Northamptonshire, sales skills, selling on the telephone, selling techniques, telemarketing training, Telephone skills, telephone techniques, telesales training Leicester, training in telesales, Wellingborough
Posted in Forthcoming courses, Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Selling advice, communication skills, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
To Market runs telesales and telemarketing training courses in the UK and we frequently train in Leicester, Northampton, Coventry, Cambridge and Birmingham.
Andrew Seaward of To Market explains in sales training for telesales teams that the elevator speech is where you explain what your organisation offers in the time it takes to ride in an elevator or lift (as we call it.) It is really important to hone this so that it is clear and concise. We all naturally have a short attention span and will mentally ‘glaze over’ within a minute or so.
At To Market we help businesses deal more effectively with their customers over the phone. That’s it. If you want to know more we also explain that we offer telesales and telemarketing training courses to business all around the UK, especially in the Midlands covering Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Peterborough, Solihull, Lichfield, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Nottingham and Derby as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Nottinghamshire, East Midlands and West Midlands.
Telesales and telemarketing is at the forefront of identifying new business, and ensuring business growth. Make sure your team is at the top of their game. To Market training for telesales and telemarketing includes closing the sale, overcoming objections, handling objections, getting past the gatekeeper and buying signals. So make sure you invest in the most important part of your business- the front end – your telesales or telemarketing team. To Market telesales training courses will help you achieve this. Click here to find out more http://www.tomarket.co.uk/training.php
So wherever you are in the UK, especially the Midlands, Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Peterborough, Solihull, Lichfield, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Nottingham and Derby as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Nottinghamshire, East Midlands and West Midlands, we look forward to speaking to you.
Tags: appointment setting by phone, selling more on the phone, selling skills on the phone, telemarketing training, telephone selling, telephone techniques, telesales courses, telesales training, teleselling training
Posted in Field sales training, Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Selling advice, communication skills, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Telesales training courses can be run in-house at your premises. We also run a range of open telesales courses around the Midlands : in Leicester, Northampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Peterborough, Cambridge, Nottingham, Derby plus other sites in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, West Midlands, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Milton Keynes, East Midlands
Our telesales training courses and training programmes are designed to help you sell more on the telephone by getting round the gatekeeper, objection handling plus we cover buying signals, closing the sale, getting the deal. We run strongly interactive courses to help questioning skills and questioning techniques, how to direct the conversation plus understanding the impact of the human voice as well as listening skills, and telephone professionalism. Full details are available at the To Market website.
The training company is telesales and telemarketing training specialists and is headed by Andrew Seaward who has more than 20 years experience within customer service and telesales team development. He is supported by Alan Cook who is a training specialist in the travel industry having worked
in telephone skills training for many travel agents over the years.
Tags: increasing telephone sales results, selling more on the phone, telemarketing training, telephone sales, telephone techniques, telesales courses, telesales training
Posted in Field sales training, Getting past gatekeepers, Independent audit of telemarketing team, Overcoming objections, Telesales team assessment, benchmarking telesales teams, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »