Many telesales calls fail within the first 10 seconds of having made contact with the decision-maker. Make sure this isn’t you.
The reason many calls fail, is that once the telesales person has got past the receptionist, P.A. (aka the gatekeeper) the temptation is to think that the job is done. But of course it’s not. It’s only just started!
You must ensure that the opening of the call is interesting. Just repeating a cliched phrase about what your company does is not enough. What the listener wants to know is how you can help. So work out your ‘story’, your approach, the angle. It may sound like a lot of work, but it isn’t really, and what price failure?
Make sure your telesales call gets past those opening 10 seconds
Make sure you link your call to their situation. “You’re a bakery and we supply personal protective equipment to people in food manufacturing all over the county…..” or “……we’ve not spoken in a while, but we’ve just brought out the new super improved blah-blah and given that you bought one from us a few years ago, I thought this is something you might be interested in…..”
Another approach where you’ve spoken to the contact before is to use your notes from the previous call as the reason for the call. ” ……..last spoke 6 months ago, and at that time you said you might start looking again at training / your vending / PPE / insurance requirements once you got the new budget through. So tell me has that now happened?…..”
In any of these situations you are explaining clearly and succinctly why you’re calling. You are more likely to get their attention and it will be easier to engage them in what you have to say.
Back this up with enthusiastic language : brand new, exciting, whizzy, fantastic to describe your latest product or service. Clearly it is more convincing if you believe in it yourself!
Talk to them about their situation or even better get them to talk about it. Then you simply link in the things you can offer that they’ve just said are important to them. “Yes of course, like you everyone is looking to reduce overheads at the moment. I’m pleased to say our new machine uses 30% less power, and they claim that in an average application it saves the customer around £xxx per week.”
So no more we sell blah-blah alright?!
To Market covers this subject and other pearls of wisdom on both in-house and open courses across the Midlands, covering Solihull, Lichfield, Birmingham, Coventry, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Warwick, Peterborough, Newmarket, Cambridge, Bury St. Edmunds, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and the wider East and West Midlands.