Posts Tagged ‘free tips on telesales’

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

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in communication skills, Independent audit of telemarketing team, sales development training, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telephone techniques, telesales, Telesales team assessment, Telesales tips | 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

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

Don’t apologise for your sales call

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Don’t apologise for your sales call. What you or your team does is an important job. It was Robert Louis Stevenson who said “everyone lives by selling something.” You should never feel guilty about doing a sales role. I notice from team audits sometimes http://www.tomarket.co.uk/teamaudits.php that telesales or telemarketing staff routinely apologise to the decision maker, but this gets the call off on a submissive foot.

When working with an I.T. software provider recently and carrying out some work to benchmark their team, Nicole said on one call “this is just a brief call.” 

Tips and advice on making telesales calls

Tips and advice on making telesales calls

I don’t particularly like this phrase as it undermines what you are doing. It makes it sound a bit apologetic, and therefore indicates you’re ready for them to say they haven’t got time to talk to you. On one call in particular, when the decision maker wasn’t ready to move forward, she used the phrase ‘no problem at all’ three or four times in quick succession.  To show that we are mentally engaged it is important that we don’t overuse phrases too much.

So be loud, be proud ! If someone doesn’t want to speak to you, that’s fine, but always find out as much as you can about why not. Perhaps another time would be more convenient. In any case the more you can find out the better placed you’ll be. If they don’t want to talk, there is always a reason why. It may be that they don’t have a use for your services or product, but then you want to know that don’t you ?

And whatever you do, don’t ever say “this is a courtesy call !” Or at least not in my earshot anyway. I strongly dislike this phrase ! After all, what IS a courtesy call. An apologetic sales call ? Don’t get me started ………..

We regularly carry out telesales and telemarketing team audits in Leicester, Northampton, Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, Loughborough, Coventry, Daventry, Birmingham, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, and Rugby and we now have a bank of team audit reports from industries such as vending machine suppliers, beverage systems, fork lift trucks, car leasing, car dealerships, plastics manufacturers, I.T. software developers, local councils, outsourced business services, telemarketing agencies, fire detection systems, industrial manufacturers and many more.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in communication skills, Independent audit of telemarketing team, sales development training, Selling advice, small business marketing, Telemarketing management, telephone techniques, telesales, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management, Telesales tips | No Comments »

Quality questions – telesales use

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

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: , , , , ,
Posted in communication skills, contract cleaners, Field sales training, Getting past gatekeepers, Overcoming objections, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management, Telesales tips | No Comments »

To Market training now on Twitter

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Andrew Seaward head of training company To Market is now using Twitter. There will be links in future from the Twitter account back to some of the articles published on the blog. This way it makes more of our information more accessible. http://twitter.com/AndrewSeaward 

What is all this social networking about though ? Are you on Facebook, Twitter etc ? And if so do you find it improves your business prospects ? We’d be interested to hear.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in communication skills, Customer Service tips, customer services, Selling advice, telephone techniques, Telesales tips | 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

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