This is a guest post written for us by Ginnie Richards
Telesales, often referred to as cold calling, continues to be among the most effective ways to generate new leads and sales. To be successful, however, a telesales campaign must be properly planned and executed. Here are a few tips to ensure your success:
Establish your goals. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve is crucial to a winning campaign. Whether you are seeking to generate sales, conduct market research or encourage enquiries, you must tailor your campaign to its objective.
Stay up to date. To be effective, callers must have all the latest data and company or product information. They must be fully aware of who they should be targeting and be fully up-to-date with all details of the information they want to impart.
Scripting. While callers should not sound scripted, it is important that they rehearse their delivery. They must also be very clear about what they are meant to achieve. Practice and familiarity should allow the callers to be flexible and to adapt to any given situation.
Targeted audience. It is sometimes the case that callers need to speak with a particular individual. Under these circumstances, they must ensure that they reach that person. They will need to know how to locate them and how to get put through to them. This may mean building a good rapport with switchboard staff so that they are not blocked.
Be positive. Callers should maintain a positive focus and remain pleasant while promoting the product or service. Avoiding a hard sell approach will encourage a better response and precipitate interest in further contact or a request for further information.
Question. By asking questions callers will be able to establish a rapport with the listener. The call will seem less hard sell and the more conversational tone that will result will very likely elicit the sort of response you are hoping for.
Voicemail. There are times when callers will find that they get no response other than an answering machine or voicemail. If this occurs they should not just hang up and move on to the next call. Nothing is more annoying than when callers do not leave a message. It is much better that callers identify themselves, explain why they are calling and say when they will call again.
Follow up. If callers leave a message or otherwise promise to follow up a call, then they must make good. The return call should be made as and when promised and, if the promise is to send out information, then that must be done. This shows commitment and respect for the customer.
Monitor calls. By monitoring calls you can check that your callers are following the plan and, if they know that calls are likely to be monitored, they will be sure to do the best they can. Also, replaying calls will give you some idea of their effectiveness. You will be able to establish what is working and what is not and what techniques are proving to be the most effective.
Evaluate. Before beginning your campaign, you should have in place a planned programme of evaluation. Ongoing evaluation is vital. You must monitor exactly how it is progressing and how well it is achieving the objectives you have set. This will allow you to modify your approach, if necessary, to make the campaign more effective.
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