Cold Calling

1. Cold Calling Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

2. Love it or hate it, cold calling is part of the day job for lots of sales people. And to achieve telemarketing success there are key skills that have a major impact on results. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

3. Be Enthusiastic We aren’t all on happy pills all of the time but why would a buyer engage with someone that doesn’t sound motivated about the company they represent and the proposition they are talking about. Attitude is everything and if yours is downbeat, you can kiss goodbye to cold calling success Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

4. Be Interested What do most people like to talk about? Themselves. What are they most interested in? Their challenges or opportunities. So, remember that it’s not about you or your products. If you want more sales, learn to be genuinely interested in your buyer and work out what you can do to support them. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

5. Be a Good Facilitator You show interest in the person on the other end of the line by asking relevant questions at the right time. If you build good rapport, you enhance your chances of success by facilitating the conversation around the topic of most interest to the buyer. If your solution isn’t right for them, say so. If you can, recommend other solutions. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

6. Be a Listener more than a Talker No one likes to be sold to or talked at. A telemarketing call should be dialogue not a monologue, presentation or pitch. If you ask good questions and are interested in the other person, you are probably someone that can stop and listen and shut up at the right time during the conversation. Conversation flow should ideally be no less that 50:50. But, all too often, it’s 90% sales person and 10% prospect. Listening is a key people skill and one many telemarketers need to learn. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

7. Be Resilient Telemarketing can be a tough job. That’s not least down to the inherent level of rejection you get. Remember, rejection generally isn’t about you. It’s nothing personal. Sometimes the time just isn’t right or the buyer has other pressing priorities. So, when you get rejection, dust yourself off and move on to the next potential winning call. And, don’t forget to schedule a follow-up call with the prospect for the future. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

8. Be Persistent Persistence means continuing to call (albeit making sure you’re targeting the right market with an appropriate proposition) and making those all-important follow ups. A client informed me recently that he won a new client from what he thought was a new enquiry. When he went to see them, they informed him that it was actually the result of a cold call we made to them nearly 17 months ago! The time just wasn’t right before but, as we’d kept in touch, we were front of mind. And after 17 months the need has arisen for our clients services. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

9. Be a Problem Solver Overcoming objections is a key skill when it comes to successful outcomes. They are an inevitable reality of cold calling life. Therefore, since most objections tend to be standard, plan for them and practise your response. Make sure those responses include good questions to clarify the objection rather than another sales pitch trying to over-convince the buyer how much better you are. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

10. Naturally, these tips do not represent all of the skills you need to be successful in cold calling but they will go some way towards enhancing your results. You also need to sound confidence in both your self and the company Knowing your target market which means we need to develop a good quality database from which to work Errm, wot, personal remarks, strong accents etc do not help with call success Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer. Would you like to receive a call from you? Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

11. Lets Repeat all of that again Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

12. Lets Repeat all of that again because telemarketing for beginners can be quite daunting. There’s often an expectation that prospects will be rude and / or put the phone down at every opportunity or a fear that you’ll get stuck, not knowing what to say at a crucial time in the conversation or become tongue tied at the key moment. And there’s also the threat that you won’t know how to handle tough questions when they come along. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

13. There’s often an expectation that prospects will be rude and / or put the phone down at every opportunity or a fear that you’ll get stuck, not knowing what to say at a crucial time in the conversation or become tongue tied at the key moment. And there’s also the threat that you won’t know how to handle tough questions when they come along. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

14. Professional b2b telemarketing is a very effective way to generate sales opportunities and drive revenue. Good callers are therefore worth their weight in gold. But, they probably didn’t start out being high achievers. They had to make their very first call in the same way as novices have to start in any role. Almost certainly, they had a positive attitude and high energy levels (pre-requisites for success) but they had to start at the same point as every other cold-caller. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

15. Don’t Sound Like a Telemarketer. Effective telemarketers sound comfortable and relaxed and use natural language. Prospects don’t respond to stiffness and scripted calls. The more you use stock intros like ‘How are you today?’ and over-rehearsed lines, the more the prospect will pick you out as a typical telemarketer from the outset. So, try to soften your initial approach to sound more genuinely interested and interesting and the conversation will have a much better flow. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

16. Play the Numbers Game. There’s no getting away from it. Assuming that prospects don’t simply walk up to your door and ring your bell, you’ll never do any business with someone you don’t call. So, make enough calls to make the ratios work in your favour. That means focus and not becoming distracted by other tasks. A good rule of thumb for b2b telemarketing is 100 calls per 7-hour day. However, it’s dangerous to assume that this is correct in every case. If you’re having really engaged conversations, the ratio can drop to 70 calls / day. If it’s voicemail city, then you should be up in the 140 calls/day bracket. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

17. Planning is Everything. Preparation is everything especially where data is concerned. Bad data is the one thing that derails telemarketing more than anything else. Therefore, your pre-call planning should encompass identifying and refining your target market. This may mean building a list of decision maker job roles in the right locations, with the right size of business and sector with which you can trade profitably and, ideally, where you can showcase examples of your previous successful work. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

18. Work out What Floats your Prospect’s Boat. Why should they bother to speak to you? What have you got that they need that they can’t do themselves? Why would they use you if they already have a supplier of what you offer? Answer those questions and you’ll generate better results. Don’t wing it and make it up on the spot. While scripts may sound stilted, you do need to be clear on why you’re calling and what’s in it for the prospect. Therefore, do some research on likely challenges or issues and weave those into your reason for the call in order to engage the customer from those important first few seconds of the call. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

19. Wear Some Armour. Telemarketing isn’t easy so you need to build some resilience to rejection. If you don’t, it will be a task that becomes increasingly daunting. It isn’t for the faint hearted. You need to be goal oriented if you want to hit the heights. The prize is significant for success but it won’t be plain sailing. So learn to deal with rejection and move on the next potential opportunity. After all, the next prospect has no idea what happened on your last call. So, brush yourself down and start afresh. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

20. Handle Objections. It’s inevitable that there will be road blocks. The best telemarketers probably received the most No’s. And they certainly learn to embrace objections. They get used to them and develop ways to overcome these spoilers. You’ll get blocked by gatekeepers and by decision makers that won’t want your services. Work out likely objections and prepare answers as far as possible. Objections shouldn’t be a surprise and, if you’re ready for them, they shouldn’t derail your long-term progress. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

21. Build Momentum. Good systems combined with good data enhance call efficiency. We advised that telemarketing is a numbers game and, to a large extent, that’s true. Equally, making sufficient calls enables you to build your warm call-backs and this becomes your sales pipeline. If you’ve been making enough calls over a reasonable period of time, a good percentage of your calls, every day, will be call-backs at times when the prospect is either expecting your call or when contracts are due for renewal. As a consequence, the momentum you build as you go along paves the way for future results. Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing

22. Applying these tips won’t transform your results overnight. However, if you apply the principles behind these tips, you will improve your chances. And, if you devote the time that these components require, you will see your results improve. So lets start cleaning up some data Accounts Direct – About Telemarketing