Posts Tagged ‘free advice on telephone selling’

Getting past the gatekeeper – 5 top tips

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 ;

  1. 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 ……”
  2. Go via another department (accounts or HR for instance) and ask to be transferred. This also often helps get the name.
  3. Ask for them by name : directly, assertively and confidently. You could also simply ask for them by their first name if appropriate.
  4. 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 ?! 
  5. 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

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Posted in Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, Selling advice, Telesales tips, communication skills, sales development training, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales | 2 Comments »

What to do if you lose an order

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Sadly sometimes it’s gonna happen. Despite your best efforts and the positive thoughts you had about this job, you find out you did not get it. At this point many salespeople simply give up and move on. After all there’s plenty more fish in the sea. However you’re a professional and so you’re keen to learn as much as you can from this situation. Good !

Professional telesales & lost orders

Professional telesales & lost orders

Often you will hear of this lost order indirectly. It seems customers don’t want to deliver bad news in person. So strangely if you’re going to get additional information about what happened and why, you will need to make it easy for them ! As I said – strange that !!

Contact them by phone, and explain that you’re keen to learn from the experience both personally and from the company’s point of view. Phrases such as “I’m interested in knowing about how we stand in the market place and so I’d like to ask you why on this occasion we weren’t successful in winning your business. Hopefully that way we can learn from it, and improve what we do in future.”

Because their guard is down, you will often find out valuable information. It will also tell you about what is important to them in choosing a supplier. You will be amazed how often it isn’t the price !

Having a dialogue with the customer is important too as it helps you start the dialogue for next time. And as many of your other competitors won’t be doing this, it starts to build your opportunities for next time. Also of course, if your victorious competitor lets them down, they’ll be on the hunt for an alternative supplier. And if you’ve already spoken to them and they know you’re not harbouring a grudge, they’re much more likely to try you aren’t they ?

To Market runs training for companies across the Midlands including Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Coventry, Leicester, Northampton, Wellingborough, Cambridge, St Ives, Corby, Kettering, Daventry and wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and the West Midlands

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Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, Telesales tips, communication skills, sales development training, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales | No Comments »

Keep telesales language and suggestions positive

Friday, January 8th, 2010

What you say on the phone is extremely important. And people you talk to will pick up on things without you or them even realising it ! Also remember that what you say reflects what is going on in your head, (the internal dialogue as NLP practitioners call it) so staying  positive is key.

When carrying out team audits with telesales, telemarketing and internal sales teams we often notice agents being apologetic or negative about the suggestions they are making. This is a great shame as it undermines what you are offering.

Positive language and suggestion will help you sell more

Positive language and suggestion will help you sell more

On one team audit we carried out for a Midlands based vending machine company we advised the client to brush up on some of the sales language. “Is there any way I can send some info out ?” suggests that you are asking them a big favour. It also implies you are expecting a ‘No’ too.  In training, we often talk about how asking a question framed as a suggestion sounds so much more assertive. An alternative therefore might be “OK, what I’d like to do is send you some information about our latest range of vending machines. I’ll then give you a call early next week when you’ve had the chance to have a look at it. Is that ok ?”  

I’m not pretending that making such changes to your ’script’ is easy to do instinctively, being a good salesperson requires practice, and so does being an effective phoner. And remember your voice is the only tool you have to use.

On another team audit http://www.tomarket.co.uk/teamaudits.php with a company in the board packaging industry we noted the need to minimise negative language. One one call Tim said “I’ll find out what went wrong” in answer to a question from a customer who’d had problems with a previous product. There are other ways of wording this so that it doesn’t sound so serious. “Ok, I’ll have a look into that for you, and I’ll ask Sharon our product devlopment manager to give you a call to discuss it with you. Would that be ok ?” 

Finally when talking business with clients and prospects avoid provocative phrases “to avoid harassing you on a weekly basis.” Make it sound warm and human by all means but don’t ’suggest’ things which have negative imagery. Unless you’re marketing Marmite – in which case “you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it” is probably ok !

This is a topic that comes up frequently in our courses in Leicester, Northampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Daventry, Solihull, Lichfield, Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, Nottingham, Derby, Loughborough, Melton Mowbray as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, the East and West Midlands

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Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Selling advice, Telesales team assessment, benchmarking telesales teams, communication skills, telephone techniques, telesales, vending | No Comments »

Free telesales advice and tips seminar

Monday, November 16th, 2009

As we’re all aware at the moment, times are challenging. There are fewer customers about, and many of those that are have cut their spending. A number of people we’ve spoken to are keen to find ways to sharpen their selling, and improve their sales effectiveness on the phone, but have limited budgets to invest in full scale training.

So we’re planning on running a free seminar in late January 2010 for directors, senior managers and small company owners where we will offer some key tips and suggestions for making more effective use of the phone in developing sales relationships with customers. The initial seminar or free telesales workshop will be held in the East Midlands – likely to be in Leicestershire or Northamptonshire (possibly Leicester, Kettering, Northampton, or Corby).

At this stage we’re interested in knowing who would like to attend this event. Numbers are likely to be limited to 20 or so. So if you’d be interested in registering your interest for this event – just send us an e-mail to info@tomarket.co.uk and we’ll then send you the full details once we get nearer to the event. 

Also, depending on how the initial event goes, we may look to run them at other venues in Birmingham, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Warrington, Lincoln, Solihull, Lichfield and South Yorkshire. So if these venues would suit you better, please let us know via e-mail.

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Posted in Forthcoming courses, Free training, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, Telesales tips, benchmarking telesales teams, communication skills, owner managers directors, sales development training, seminar, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »

Shall I leave a voicemail ? Tips for telesales and telemarketing teams

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

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Posted in Field sales training, Getting past gatekeepers, Selling advice, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »