I was talking to a team in plastics and packaging recently, and some interesting things came out of my observations.
If you are involved in new business development and you have an internal sales team or telesales team or even a sales team that you are getting into the office to do more proactive calls, it is really important to have a process around this work.
You MUST have a system that allows you to note some brief details about what happened on the call, and when the contact should be contacted next. That way a call is only ever a cold call once. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated - we set up our system in Excel initially.
It is also important to keep a record of which marketing initiatives you send them (letters, marketing e-mails, brochures etc.) That way you always have something to talk about, and you can also manage your customer base to ensure that they are getting sales and marketing messages from you. After all you don’t want to forget anyone. If there is business to be had, you at least want to be in with a shout.
We have an audio CD that covers the subject of how to set up an effective telemarketing team, how to keep it working successfully and in a motivated way. You can click for more details here http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=2