Telesales - Why We Should Give Them a Chance

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By Steve Usher

There are many controversial practices within certain industries, cosmetics have animal testing, sports events have ticket touts, cinema has DVD piracy, and farming has seal-clubbing…don't worry, I'm joking. No, possibly the worst of these (excluding seal-clubbing) is that arm of marketing and advertising that leaves us so infuriated that we often resort to abuse, Tele-sales.

As with everything maddening, there are degrees of annoyance. I would much rather receive a sales call than, say, see my house burgled, by a Big Brother winner, on a Monday, in Hemel Hempstead, whilst the salient realisation dawns on me that I am in fact naked. Thankfully that can never happen, as it almost technically illegal to move to Hemel Hempstead, but nevertheless, there are degrees. So where does telemarketing stand on the great scale of vexation? Do we really hate these calls as much as we claim? Or are they just an excuse to vent our daily angers at a faceless innocent?

We have within our power the ability to hang up the call at any moment, so why do we make such a drama of how these calls are the plague of our existence, steaming like a pot of mussels after each and every call we receive? The main reason I can attribute this to is the interruption, the glacial nonchalance of the sweaty, spotty post-grad student sat in a call centre somewhere in between a village called Affluence and a city called I Wasted Three Years On A Degree.

Having had first hand experience of working in a call centre, for which I apologise and feel remorseful to my very core, I can unequivocally declare that there is a beating heart of unalloyed malevolence pumping nothing but a disgustingly nefarious ethic in to the minds of their staff, many of whom are still relatively impressionable. On a day to day basis we would be taught how to deal with the anger and retaliatory nature of a large percentage of our unsuspecting victims. We would be trained to react with politeness but determination, and to keep selling until the potential customer had hung up. That for me was the hardest element of the job, I have no objection to speaking to strangers, and to some extent I have no objection to a hard sell, but I could not bring myself to bludgeon my way in to these peoples lives, pretend to be their best friend, and worst of all act as though I was working for someone I wasn't.

Without naming names, I was told that my introductory speech should read something akin to "Good morning sir/madam, my names Steve and I'm calling on behalf of xxxx". Like I said, naming no names, but for the xxxx you can replace with Google, O2, Microsoft, and many more.

'On behalf of', what a ridiculously ambiguous statement, and I completely understood the callers need for clarification, which happened a large number of times. The largest chunk of my time was spent appointment setting, and seminar booking, which is the easier end of the scale in terms of the product you are trying to sell. These seminars were aimed largely at the technology sector, so I was calling IT Technicians and Directors, who frankly will have known of my 'products' beforehand through alternate media if they were in the slightest interested, and the bookings I made I can only accredit to luck.

So where is the defense for telemarketing? I don't believe this case is quite finished just yet, although I know I can not metamorphose the truth in to something truly acceptable.

If we remove all inimical thoughts and take a look at the calls through set of clean eyes, or should that be ears? We see that in most cases there are offers here that would be beneficial to us, they would enhance our life should we accept them and give these calls a fair chance. One of the most common calls I receive is from Vodafone trying to extend/modify my contract, and recently I came to the end of my contract and predictably got that call to renew. I took this as an opportunity to see if I could work this to my favour, having heard many stories of people bartering a good deal. I was originally paying £40/month on a fairly comprehensive package, and had just a couple of months previously received a new phone from them, the model of which I forget, but suffice to say it was nothing remarkable. Having nothing to lose, I said I would renew so long as they sent me a Nokia N95 8Gb, and dropped my monthly rate for the same package, and to my joy this is exactly what they did. I am now on exactly the same package, with a rather brilliant phone, and paying precisely half of my original monthly fee.

This is just one example, but I'm sure if we were all truthful with ourselves, we could admit to other examples of this nature of experience, an experience that would never have happened were it not for some sweaty, spotty post-grad student sat in a call centre somewhere in between a village called Affluence and a city called I Wasted Three Years On A Degree.

My view is that rather than instantly becoming irritated at hearing that overly polite introduction, is to disregard the voice, and listen to the words, to take away from the call the information to make an informed decision as to whether their offer will benefit you or not. This is not an easy achievement of that I am acutely aware, but the person on the other end of the phone may be someone just like me, who needs an injection of cash after a relocation and actually doesn't want to ruin your day at all.

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Teach, Coach And Lead With Integrity

By: Louis Jordan

There is no one-thing that makes a sales leader great. But, there is definitely one thing that can make them poor - an inability to coach and develop their employees.

Tell a salesperson to go sell and he will struggle for a day, teach him how to sell and he will sell for life. Ok, so that is not exactly how the quote goes, but you get my point.

At one time sales management started and finished with "this is your desk, this is your phone, this is the yellow pages, go get 'em". This may have worked many years ago, but today customers are more sophisticated, markets are more competitive and expectations for ramping-up are shorter.

Simply telling your employees what to do is as redundant a form of leadership as "always be closing - and - Lot's of little yes' lead to a big yes" are as forms of selling.

The essence of great coaching, in my opinion, is being able to get each member of your team to understand what does and does not work and most importantly, the reasons why something does and does not work. With a team of ten sales people you may have to find ten different illustrations, descriptions or analogies to see all ten light-bulbs go off.

To illustrate this point take a moment to think about the most successful coaches/managers in professional or College sports. How many of them were great athletes themselves? Conversely, how many average, but smart, or less than average players became great coaches/managers?

From Wooden to Lombardi, to Auerbach, to Bryant, to Shula, to Walsh….. And the list goes on. Those who are regarded as some of the greatest coaches/managers of all time had one thing in common - They were able to get every member of the team to understand what had to be done, why it had to be done and how to do it. - they were all great communicators.

Athletes and sales people who have been blessed with a natural ability to perform their tasks will often lead their peers in performance, and just as often struggle when given a chance to coach others. It is difficult to put into words what comes naturally. I have had dozens of conversations with managers who were great "natural" sales people. Often, the more natural talent they posses the more frustrated they become when their reps just "did not get it". Conversely, the sales people get frustrated that their manager can not explain how to get it done.

Your goal is to unlock understanding in each member of the team. Find a way to get your employees to understand why something works the way it does and why something else does not work. It is only after you have taught them how to perform a task that they can have any chance of repeating it on a regular basis.

Go to any driving range and you will see hackers whacking away at golf balls with their over-sized drivers. Nine out of ten drives will slice right or hook left, one out of ten will

go straight and look like a great shot. The secret is getting them to understand why the ball went long and straight, because without that knowledge there is not way they can repeat it.

Your job as a sales coach is to get your team to understand why that "perfect" telemarketing call, foot canvass, appointment, presentation, proposal or sale was perfect so they can give themselves a chance of repeating it, every time.

Good luck, and enjoy the process.

Our goal is to provide honest recommendations on all aspects of sales and leadership, including: interviewing, coaching, cold calling, telemarketing, attending appointments, vertical sales, recruiting, territory management and anything else our readers or contributors suggest. We would be honored to have you visit our site. http://www.integrity-sales-leadership.com

Telemarketing - Generate Big Revenue from Simple Creative Ideas & Small Budgets

By Yoshiko Choy

Develops and Sells the SFA Software Salespeople can Access Online.
Hello, This is XX calling from XX (company), may I have a moment of your time please….?

Statistics shows that Telemarketing responses fetches 4 times more than mail-generated leads. And you would think that the cost could be exorbitant, since large corporations have spent millions of dollars prepping up their telemarketing centers. Well, it's Yes and No. If you are running a large corporation and looking to expand sales exponentially at a faster pace, yes.

But if you run a small business, you too can have a piece of the telemarketing pie. There are approaches which from my past experience have proven workable and more importantly profitable to say the least.

The one of the critical issues is to examine suitability of your business for the telemarketing channel of distribution. There are industries which telemarketing has become the norm in generating escalating revenues & profits but there are those which do not leverage upon telemarketing, not due to budget constraints but that there are more appropriate distribution channels. Take for instance, the very familiar credit card call industry. You will see rows and rows of telemarketers calling round the clock to solicit card applications. Conversely, if you are in the fruits wholesale distribution business, it is highly unlikely that you would resort to telemarketing as a distribution channel.

You will also need to analyze the function of telemarketing as marketing tool in your business. You can activate telemarketing activities for expanding revenue, as a sales support tool as well as build rapport. Call supporting activities for the credit card businesses, the cell phone businesses for instance, would center around after-sales services. Calling clients on service evaluation after sales would be building rapport and generate feedback for product and service enhancements. These are very diverging objectives which separately achieve different purposes altogether. The pitch and script would be highly diverging as well.

The "recency" of your call list is critical as well. Lists from events and campaigns must be called within the month to ensure higher recall rate. The sooner you call your prospects, the higher the recall rate and the better the chances of closing the sale. The catch is of course the National Do Not Call List. So ensure that the potential clients you call are on this list.

Finally, your success largely depends on The Reward, essentially the effectiveness of your incentive scheme.

I shall share below an example of my past execution of telemarketing as a sales generating tool. In this instance, our discussion is centered on the small business, with tight operations and marketing budgets.

For effective telemarketing, you could consider training one or two existing staff to spend 30% to 50% of their time conducting telemarketing out of a potential client listing generated from your many events and campaigns as well as existing client lists. And Viola!! Leveraging on existing manpower resources, you have created a new channel of distribution!

Handpick staff who have tact and are able to take rejection, and practice, they will start converting the leads to sales, and start earning! Remember, Telemarketing is a prolong activity channel which yields results over time. Persistence and positivism is essence.

In terms of rewards, on top of their usual salary, you should incentivize your telemarketers with a generous percentage of telesales revenue generated by them. This is especially viable for business costs which run on incremental variable revenue model. For instance, if your business is leveraged upon total fixed cost, and any revenue above your fixed cost is variable revenue or profits. Hence, any amount generated by your telemarketers is essentially variable revenue on top and above your normal fixed costs and fixed revenue.

Yoshiko Choy is an entrepreneur and a management consultant in business & marketing with 17 years of experience in Locals & MNCs as well as an avid online marketer. She holds an Executive MBA with California State University. Read about business & marketing management trends at her http://businessfast4ward.com Also get the latest reviews and updates on niche marketing, visit http://onlinenichemarketing.org